"David Kaye" wrote ...
(G) wrote:
On these newsgroups, I get the impression the young people do not use,
or do not like to use USENET. Perhaps they are somewhere else.
It was not like this10 to 15 years ago. And, there is a lot
of frustrated old people around here.

10 to 15 years ago there weren't Web-based forums. In fact, 15 years
ago there wasn't a Web as we know it. Google Groups may have been the
salvation of Usenet.

OTOH, the view from Usenet is that Google Groups may be the
death of Usenet. In much the same way as AOL was a great blow
to the internet. i.e. suddenly foisting thousands of illiterate users
onto the service and significantly raising the level of chaos.

Actually, someone operating a for-profit news server could build some
market share by touting the uncensored nature of Usenet. They could
sell access and news clients for those people who don't have them.

Yes, people have been doing this for years and they have a large
and growing customer base. Many smaller ISPs outsource NNTP
service to large commercial providers such as Supernews, et.al.

Google Groups user interface is so desperately bad, I don't see
how anybody can tolerate it. The real thing, even with a lowest-
common-denominator newsreader like Outlook Express is so
much faster, more direct, more convenient, more efficient, it isn't
even a close comparison.