One of the interesting things about NNTP’s structure is that the moderator and the host don’t need to be the same entity or even use the same software. The same goes for UX elements. It would be entirely possible to run something-that-looks-like-a-blog on your own site, have it use hypothetical-lesswrong-hosted NNTP for hosting its content (buying you native-client support for users who want it), and still have ultimate control over who can post what. I’ll be describing how that works at some point.
It would rely on goodwill from the LW hosts, of course; but the worst they could do is stop hosting you—and they could not hold your content hostage as long as someone, somewhere, has kept a local cache of it. You could even self-host and still interoperate with the site, because the system was designed to be decentralized even though it doesn’t have to be used that way.
One of the interesting things about NNTP’s structure is that the moderator and the host don’t need to be the same entity or even use the same software. The same goes for UX elements. It would be entirely possible to run something-that-looks-like-a-blog on your own site, have it use hypothetical-lesswrong-hosted NNTP for hosting its content (buying you native-client support for users who want it), and still have ultimate control over who can post what. I’ll be describing how that works at some point.
It would rely on goodwill from the LW hosts, of course; but the worst they could do is stop hosting you—and they could not hold your content hostage as long as someone, somewhere, has kept a local cache of it. You could even self-host and still interoperate with the site, because the system was designed to be decentralized even though it doesn’t have to be used that way.