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Usenet & the origins of social exchange on the Internet

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  Usenet & the origins of social exchange on the Internet RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-01 20:04 +0000
    Re: Usenet & the origins of social exchange on the Internet Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-09-01 21:11 -0400
    Re: Usenet & the origins of social exchange on the Internet "tdk" <forum.tdk@squte.com> - 2014-09-05 11:57 -0500

#4628 — Usenet & the origins of social exchange on the Internet

From the «Finally a place we can insult people from a distance» department:
Title: Usenet and the origins of social exchange on the Internet
Author: zafiro17@pipedot.org
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 10:56:11 -0400
Link: http://pipedot.org/story/2014-08-31/usenet-and-the-origins-of-social-exchange-on-the-internet

Slate is running an interesting piece called  "The First Gay Space on the
Internet"[1]. But it's only marginally about homosexuality; it's really a look
at how people use the Internet to meet, exchange opinions, and discuss things
of interest. And that makes it relevant even today.

Many newsgroups were purely informational, useful for technical discussions
or sharing of news or jokes or porn. But soc.motss was genuinely a new kind
of community, a diverse set of people who felt at home and most like
themselves on the Net, and who had discussions there that they couldn’t have
anywhere else. Before Facebook preferred status updates to long posts and
Twitter reduced the size of a rebuttal to 140 characters, soc.motss proved
that online discourse was indeed compatible with open-mindedness, subtlety,
and civility.

The article goes back to a time when bandwidth was limited and expensive, and
people took a long time to compose and write down their thoughts before
posting. It points out early newsreaders were unthreaded, so any newsgroup was
bound to have more readers than contributors. The Internet has come a long way
from then, but the long, written form is in decline, and quick,
heat-of-the-moment posts or diatribes are more the norm. If you agree, click
the "like" button and then move on.

Links:
[1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/08/online_gay_culture_and_soc_motss_how_a_usenet_group_anticipated_how_we_use.html (link)

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#4630

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On Mon, 1 Sep 2014, RS Wood wrote:

> From the «Finally a place we can insult people from a distance» department:
> Title: Usenet and the origins of social exchange on the Internet
> Author: zafiro17@pipedot.org
> Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 10:56:11 -0400
> Link: http://pipedot.org/story/2014-08-31/usenet-and-the-origins-of-social-exchange-on-the-internet
>
> Slate is running an interesting piece called  "The First Gay Space on the
> Internet"[1]. But it's only marginally about homosexuality; it's really a look
> at how people use the Internet to meet, exchange opinions, and discuss things
> of interest. And that makes it relevant even today.
>
> Many newsgroups were purely informational, useful for technical discussions
> or sharing of news or jokes or porn. But soc.motss was genuinely a new kind
> of community, a diverse set of people who felt at home and most like
> themselves on the Net, and who had discussions there that they couldn’t have
> anywhere else. Before Facebook preferred status updates to long posts and
> Twitter reduced the size of a rebuttal to 140 characters, soc.motss proved
> that online discourse was indeed compatible with open-mindedness, subtlety,
> and civility.
>
But even technical newsgroups were "social".  SOmeone who didnt' ask 
properly could be ignored, or given a minimal answer, while someone who
was a regular participant, or even just asked the question well, would get 
better answers.

You'd see dominant people, not because they were bossy, but because they 
had better online skills, or just better information.  Sam was a big 
participant in sci.electronics.repair 20 years ago, always ready to answer 
questions but also putting lots of time into the FAQ that's really 
multiple books about the repair of electronic equipment.

The newsgroups, in retrospect, counted on newcomers, they kept the 
newsgroups alive.  Once they stopped coming (and sometimes it was because 
the regulars got too incestuous, more interested in each other than the 
topic at hand), the newsgroup further declined, even if traffic continued.

Latecomers didn't really grasp this, they saw the internet as write only 
space, and since they tended to see writing as formal, they saw the 
internet as a formal space, rather than initimate like the newsgroups. 
In early 1997, I pointed this out, newsgroups have the intimicay of email, 
yet the ability to reach more than one addressee.  The later people came, 
the less likely they saw the newsgroups, so they saw only webpages, that 
tend to have an isolation from the readers.  ANd with webpages, even if 
there is a place for comments, the space is not communal/cooperative like 
the newsgroups, so the commenter is always secondary to the page owner, 
even if they can say something more significant than the owner of that 
page.

When I was trying to convince one local group to get online, someone there 
said "but it's technical" and while I don't think I voiced it, my reacion 
was "no, it's social".

What really happened is the masses waited till it was all dumbed down, not 
seeing a value to the online world until it wsa so simple it cost them 
nothing to get online. Yet, that transition to online made people better. 
SO they missed the early days.

There is an endless soapbox, but for many, no audience.  So people can do 
podcasts and video things, "I'm just not that comfortable with the written 
word", yet think of the bandwidth (I did, I had dialup until 2 years ago), 
and suddenly it's like watching the evening news, we have to wait for them 
to get to the point, while the written word, we can skim.  And 
realistically, we haven't given the soapbox to new people, we've given it 
to the people who traditionally had a soapbox in some form.  I was just 
some guy 17 years ago when I'd post to the local newsgroup about various 
things happening, in essence "blogging" before blogging existed, but I 
didn't need a badge to do that.  Now, people feel like they have to set up 
a "newspaper" in order for their words to have some value, but these are 
the same people who'd join the student newspaper or get a job at a radio 
station, or whatever.  It's not giving someone who is homeless the 
soapbox, and Billy Frank can die and the only place you'd know about it is 
if you were reading Indian news sources.  It's not a brave new world where 
indians get a more central place (we had that 20 years ago when on the 
BBSs and the local newsgroup there was someone who lived on the nearby 
reservation), they get their own space, and are still as invisible as they 
ever were.

    Michael

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#4721

RS Wood wrote:

>It points out early newsreaders were unthreaded
It's actually threading that is the biggest advantage usenet has over other  
mediums. As I put in a blog post [1]:

>One major difference is that on blogs messages are typically shown in a  
>chronological list, but on usenet they are shown in a threaded tree-view. So  
>on blogs thread drift is intrusive because you read every message, but  
>usenet clients let you collapse or ignore sub-threads. While topic drift is  
>a problem on blogs it's a feature on usenet. This is the main reason threads  
>are longer on usenet - its not unusual for threads to reach 500+ messages  
>(the longest are typically 1000+).
>
>This changes the quality of the discussion: involved, detailed debates are  
>common and, while flame wars occur, they are easier to ignore; leading to a  
>more civilised and slower debate.
>There are a few web forums that do allow highly nested threads and let you  
>collapse them - namely Slashdot, Reddit, and Hackernews - and these are  
>among the most popular on the web.
Ironically the web has few threads, and usenetters will eventually cease  
"musing, venturing, throwing".



[1] http://squte.com/whats-wrong-with-blogs
-- 
tdk

Take back your Internet! http://squte.com/Webertarian-Manifesto
View this thread at http://squte.com/usenet/usenet-origins-social-exchange-internet?src=u#comment-38386

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