The answer is Reddit, IMO. I just have never had the time to figure out
how to set up a (new) Reddit, because r/television absolutely sucks. You >want to set up a kind of smallish general television Reddit (call it
r/RATV or something...) and let everyone here know about it.
What would be different, of course, is that it would have moderator(s). >That's a double-edged sword, of course. But I think with Reddit's model, >it's unavoidable.
It was a fine anti-bot method before LLMs. Bots were much dumber then.
It's also supposed to be an anti-bozo measure. Bozos often blow through >accounts quickly.
It's not that hard for a human being to earn karma by participating in
open subs. I just checked my Reddit karma for the first time in ages,
and it stands at 164,982. I have never engaged in any karma farming.
That happened all by itself, by participating naturally over time.
I prefer Usenet because I believe voting is toxic, but I don't believe >Reddit is exclusionary. It's easy to get started, and the biggest subs
are free-for-alls with no requirements.
I think a lot of whether you use Usenet has to do with how long you've
been doing home computing in general.
Back in the early '90s in my pre-internet days I used local BBS's which
was the only way to interact with the outside world (this was done on
my Mac with an app called ZTerm; there were probably several of them
for the PC). One of the BBS's had a gateway to Usenet which is how I
first discovered it.
A server doesn't have to carry all the hierarchies. If I set one up, I'd >probably only do the text groups. I'm okay with binaries if I have tons
of storage, but if I don't, the user network itself can still be
carried.
On Mon, 18 May 2026 14:40:21 -0400, The True Melissa ><thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
It was a fine anti-bot method before LLMs. Bots were much dumber then. >>It's also supposed to be an anti-bozo measure. Bozos often blow through >>accounts quickly.
LLMs? That's a new acronym to me and thankfully we've seen few bozos
in the last 3-5 years...
It's not that hard for a human being to earn karma by participating in >>open subs. I just checked my Reddit karma for the first time in ages,
and it stands at 164,982. I have never engaged in any karma farming.
That happened all by itself, by participating naturally over time.
I prefer Usenet because I believe voting is toxic, but I don't believe >>Reddit is exclusionary. It's easy to get started, and the biggest subs
are free-for-alls with no requirements.
On Sun, 24 May 2026 10:10:30 -0700, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
wrote:
On Mon, 18 May 2026 14:40:21 -0400, The True Melissa
<thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
It was a fine anti-bot method before LLMs. Bots were much dumber then.
It's also supposed to be an anti-bozo measure. Bozos often blow through
accounts quickly.
LLMs? That's a new acronym to me and thankfully we've seen few bozos
in the last 3-5 years...
Large language model. Think the current craze for chatbots.
It's not that hard for a human being to earn karma by participating in
open subs. I just checked my Reddit karma for the first time in ages,
and it stands at 164,982. I have never engaged in any karma farming.
That happened all by itself, by participating naturally over time.
I prefer Usenet because I believe voting is toxic, but I don't believe
Reddit is exclusionary. It's easy to get started, and the biggest subs
are free-for-alls with no requirements.
On Sun, 3 May 2026 06:41:54 -0400, The True Melissa <thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
A server doesn't have to carry all the hierarchies. If I set one up, I'd
probably only do the text groups. I'm okay with binaries if I have tons
of storage, but if I don't, the user network itself can still be
carried.
True - though I've been using EasyNews for years and would probably be
SOL if it ever went down - while they're primarily about binaries they
also do text so when my ISP took down their Usenet service I redid my
Agent links to EasyNews. (Text newsgroups of course take a tiny
fraction of the disk space binaries do)
LLMs? That's a new acronym to me and thankfully we've seen few bozos
in the last 3-5 years...
Large language model. Think the current craze for chatbots.
The excuse most ISPs used to drop their free Usenet services years ago
was because of the piracy problems ... but that was complete nonsense, >otherwise they would have simply kept the text-based newsgroups. They
really just wanted to save money and no longer offer Usenet as a free
extra. Similarly with ISPs dropping of free email services and website >hosting.
On Mon, 25 May 2026 10:39:09 +1200, Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
wrote:
The excuse most ISPs used to drop their free Usenet services years ago
was because of the piracy problems ... but that was complete nonsense,
otherwise they would have simply kept the text-based newsgroups. They
really just wanted to save money and no longer offer Usenet as a free
extra. Similarly with ISPs dropping of free email services and website
hosting.
You'd be stunned at the number of people that think "The Net" is
entirely about social media sites. I use Google all the time (and did
on one post this morning) to verify peoples' names (including how
they're spelled), check basic facts I think I know (and usually do but sometimes by checking prevent looking completely silly) and checking
things like my local public library.
Idiots like that annoy me and that includes my provincial political
party that had a leadership campaign where the voting was totally done online and that their software was set up specifically for cell phones
(they wanted a copy of your drivers' licence or provincial ID) - it
took me 7 tries to get 'verified' using my webcam - and after each
failed attempt I told them what I thought of their system. Fortunately
that campaign is now over and the results announced last night.
| Sysop: | Tetrazocine |
|---|---|
| Location: | Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
| Users: | 14 |
| Nodes: | 8 (0 / 8) |
| Uptime: | 177:16:54 |
| Calls: | 218 |
| Files: | 21,503 |
| Messages: | 81,809 |