On of the first things that drew me away from the safe confines of CompuServe was Usenet News. The semblance of free and unfettered debate with like minded peers was irresistible. While there were a few posts that were genuinely stupid there was also a sense of community to the news-net. Off topic posts, wasting bandwidth and spamming were all vigorously attacked by the old-guard. At its most trivial you might be criticised poor spelling but in general the balance was right. The newsgroup performed a purpose as a combined news-board, discussion group and social gathering.
It would be unfair to say that there has been a backlash against newsgroups but it is true to say that the leading edge of the Internet phenomenon has moved on. The Usenet has increasingly become more boorish, more ignorant and more cluttered. Junk mail and rudery have become the norm while FAQs and genuine news are on the decline. Take the recent spate of Microsoft newsgroups; a very well thought out heirarchy but the content is like all poor souls wailing questions, with scant few answers. What has gone wrong? Well it's fair to say that a good newsgroup relies on having a core of subscribers who contribute FAQs, technical support, netiquette and generally set the tone of things. If this core is too small the group appears spasmodic and pointless; threads turn into flames, morons swamp the grain of common-sense. If you doubt me visit alt.music.oasis.
Usenet newsgroups are still remarkably popular with even relatively new hierarchies like uk.politics achieving massive traffic levels. However I've found that posting anything lengthy or closely argued gets little or no response from groups that otherwise would rip a news morsel to shreds. It is one of the sad truths the Internet teaches that few people actually care about the other person's opinion more than vigourously expounding their own. This is the antithesis of true discussion; a denial of real debate. To deny the possibility of a change in one's own opinions is to negate any dialogue.
A few years ago the ultimate goal of any Internet grouping was to have it's own big 7 newsgroup. Fanbases mobilised from mailing lists and other newsgroups to campaign for a place of their own on the Usenet. Now the typical response of any interest group is to create a homepage with a web-board or IRC area. The paradigm has shifted from speakers corner to that of a caf.
I remember the Internet once being described as a renaissance of caf society. For a while newsgroups served this function, yet now I think the baton has passed on. A caf combines the come-one-come-all aspect of the pub with the members-only aspect of an exclusive club. You can get in but if you don't fit in you'll feel uncomfortable. But what about the uninvited bore, who shouts everyone down with the same old lines? On the Usenet there really is no way of stopping someone posting, as users of rec.arts.drwho or uk.media will tell you if you mention David Yadalle or Mike Corley. If the spam-poster is sufficiently thick-skinned, persistent or just plain sad and mad they'll find a way through.
Yet a web-board can mount a defence against the vandals. Once a consensus builds it only needs the site manager to bar posts from the relevant IP addresses. Indeed the risk of this communication paradigm is that a board owner will stifle free debate. These are constraints familiar to the ma! gazine editor or the BBS. The role of host is to filter without being censorious. The rejoinder to those who challenge this is 'if you don't like it start your own board'. Of course there will be paedophile boards and neo-Nazi sites (one in Quebec is being shut down, hurrah!) but there are clear bounds of ownership here. Web space belongs to someone, it is bytes on a hard drive, unlike the rolling, ownerless, constantly mutating chain-letter-on-acid that is Usenet News.
The positive fallout of this sea change is that it makes the pro-censorship stance of Scotland Yard increasingly meaningless. The charge of "Why does your server carry alt.perverts?" does have its counter-arguments but they sound technical and obscurely liberal to the general population. Yet with the web board model the reply becomes an obvious "Why were you visiting www.perverts.com in the first place? Didn't you see the warnings? What did you expect there?". Maybe this is not enough for Mary Whitehouse but I reckon it'll satisfy most parents savvy enough to install Cybersitter et al.
Allan Toombs
http://www.escritoire.demon.co.uk/index.htm