As far as I experienced it (mostly de.*), old-timers were rejecting any little piece of modernization (sometimes going as far as claiming that Umlaute must not be used -- and that in German!), and clinging to a shared culture that was unwelcoming, backwards-oriented and conservative.
Users hated that and used web forums more and more, even for subjects where thriving Usenet groups existed and were regularly found by newbies.
Usenet regulars told themselves that their technically superior Usenet was winning, even when the ship had already hit the iceberg.
I used to be part of that conservative cabal, and I regret it today (though our fight against the trolls and "net terrorists" was a necessary one, we became extremist ourselves).
As do many many others. But it's too late. Usenet is dead.
Just to establish bona fides: I ran a Freenix-competitive Usenet server in the mid 90s (we were competitive because we independently co-invented the INN history cache). Hosting discussion groups was cheap and easy. Hosting binaries was a logistical nightmare. We were required to build expensive, cutting-edge storage systems to keep up with them. Falter on binaries coverage even a little and customers would revolt.
Had binaries not happened to Usenet, lots and lots of companies and even small non-profit organizations could have set up competitive Usenet servers. Instead, software piracy forced Usenet to centralize to just a small set of well funded providers. This in turn cut off access to Usenet for lots of users, which further amplified the vote pirates had over the evolution of Usenet.
Eventually, the few real Usenet providers that remained realized how non-remunerative the service was for them compared to virtually anything else they could be doing, and Usenet obtained its destiny as a second-rate faux-anonymous P2P piracy network.
Falter on binaries coverage even a little and customers would revolt.
Doesn't this suggest it had less to do with binaries than the kind of users it had and could retain/attract? My impression at the time was that it was too clunky for new users (convoluted setup, specialized text or native clients, obtuse topic hierarchy, etc) and binaries or not, the web killed it just like it killed ftp sites, standalone email clients and so on. Why weren't companies running servers just for discussions (or maybe there were? what happened to them?)
Binaries made Usenet massively --- orders of magnitude --- more expensive to run. Fewer service providers ran their own Usenet service. Fewer people got access to Usenet. A death spiral commenced.
Obviously, I saw a different niche of Usenet, but I ran my own personal INN with few users and never carried binaries. None of the relevant German news servers carried binaries, and for a time they thrived.
I had slight hope for a renaissance of decentralized Usenet service (instead of the big two: T-Online and Uni Berlin), when a very influential netizen posted a "how to run your INN, and you get a feed from me" on his blog and dozens of small, personal INNs sprang up. Ultimately it did nothing.
I still don't believe that binaries were very relevant to the demise of non-binary Usenet. Both offers were very distinct, AFAIR.
Either you did "discussion Usenet" which didn't make money, and never really did much, then the egress of users killed you over time, because your employer couldn't see a reason to keep your news server running. Many servers mostly ran under the radar for the last years, with admins almost trying to hide that they had this little thing besides their mail server and other duties.
Or you did binary Usenet, then you made money, but were in a totally different line of business: selling pirated music and software to your customers.
Again, all observations mostly limited to de.*, which was pretty big.
Not really.
As far as I experienced it (mostly de.*), old-timers were rejecting any little piece of modernization (sometimes going as far as claiming that Umlaute must not be used -- and that in German!), and clinging to a shared culture that was unwelcoming, backwards-oriented and conservative.
Users hated that and used web forums more and more, even for subjects where thriving Usenet groups existed and were regularly found by newbies.
Usenet regulars told themselves that their technically superior Usenet was winning, even when the ship had already hit the iceberg.
I used to be part of that conservative cabal, and I regret it today (though our fight against the trolls and "net terrorists" was a necessary one, we became extremist ourselves).
As do many many others. But it's too late. Usenet is dead.
Just to establish bona fides: I ran a Freenix-competitive Usenet server in the mid 90s (we were competitive because we independently co-invented the INN history cache). Hosting discussion groups was cheap and easy. Hosting binaries was a logistical nightmare. We were required to build expensive, cutting-edge storage systems to keep up with them. Falter on binaries coverage even a little and customers would revolt.
Had binaries not happened to Usenet, lots and lots of companies and even small non-profit organizations could have set up competitive Usenet servers. Instead, software piracy forced Usenet to centralize to just a small set of well funded providers. This in turn cut off access to Usenet for lots of users, which further amplified the vote pirates had over the evolution of Usenet.
Eventually, the few real Usenet providers that remained realized how non-remunerative the service was for them compared to virtually anything else they could be doing, and Usenet obtained its destiny as a second-rate faux-anonymous P2P piracy network.
Falter on binaries coverage even a little and customers would revolt.
Doesn't this suggest it had less to do with binaries than the kind of users it had and could retain/attract? My impression at the time was that it was too clunky for new users (convoluted setup, specialized text or native clients, obtuse topic hierarchy, etc) and binaries or not, the web killed it just like it killed ftp sites, standalone email clients and so on. Why weren't companies running servers just for discussions (or maybe there were? what happened to them?)
Binaries made Usenet massively --- orders of magnitude --- more expensive to run. Fewer service providers ran their own Usenet service. Fewer people got access to Usenet. A death spiral commenced.
Obviously, I saw a different niche of Usenet, but I ran my own personal INN with few users and never carried binaries. None of the relevant German news servers carried binaries, and for a time they thrived.
I had slight hope for a renaissance of decentralized Usenet service (instead of the big two: T-Online and Uni Berlin), when a very influential netizen posted a "how to run your INN, and you get a feed from me" on his blog and dozens of small, personal INNs sprang up. Ultimately it did nothing.
Of course, there was another niche, Hamster (http://www.tglsoft.de/freeware_hamster.html), that did a lot for Usenet.
I still don't believe that binaries were very relevant to the demise of non-binary Usenet. Both offers were very distinct, AFAIR.
Either you did "discussion Usenet" which didn't make money, and never really did much, then the egress of users killed you over time, because your employer couldn't see a reason to keep your news server running. Many servers mostly ran under the radar for the last years, with admins almost trying to hide that they had this little thing besides their mail server and other duties.
Or you did binary Usenet, then you made money, but were in a totally different line of business: selling pirated music and software to your customers.
Again, all observations mostly limited to de.*, which was pretty big.