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0 pointsgorbachev2y ago0 comments

There was more to it.

1. The clients were kind of a pain for anyone but comp.sci nerds

2. It was butt ugly. Web forums killed it, because you could make them pretty

3. Not only spam, but the troll bots just destroyed everything. I can't remember why exactly this started happening, but there were a dedicated pool of assholes spamming Usenet groups they didn't like with garbage or vile crap posing as regular contributors of the groups. When you searched for posts by someone, the first 100 pages were from these troll bots

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bawolff2y ago· 2 in thread

> The clients were kind of a pain for anyone but comp.sci nerds

News clients were built into most email clients and were pretty user friendly. I dont think you needed to be a nerd to use it. Web forums were also pretty ugly in the late 90s.

throwaway847t2y ago

I agree. Windows 9x included Outlook Express which had a built in news reader in addition to mail. If you could setup your mail you could also setup the news reader.

I think most of the ISPs that I used either had a setup program that configured it automatically along with mail/dns, or provided clear instructions on how to set it up manually.

I may be in the minority, but I actually liked Outlook Express.

dredmorbius2y ago

Netscape Navigator, the GNOME Pan newsreader, KDE's KNode newsreader, Forte Agent for MS Windows, and of course Emacs's Gnus, along with compatibility tools for a bunch of email clients (mutt, Sylpheed, Alpine, etc.).

Most ISPs had some sort of bundled software package which included a rudimentary Usenet client as well.

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