O'Reilly Network: I Remember USENET
O'Reilly Network: I Remember USENET [Dec. 21, 2001]: Interesting history by Brad Templeton of USENET. It's interesting to me that USENET has fallen into such disfavor in this mailing-list and web-board driven age, since its supposedly low signal-to-noise ratio just goes to point out the real democratic nature of USENET: anybody could play, and did, and sometimes said dumb shit. For some people this is a drawback, but these are also the kind of people who refer to Slashdot as a "cesspool" and see the snotty, elitist WELL as the ne plus ultra of online discourse. Sorry, but democracy is messy; set your thresholds high and improve your filtering skills. You can answer any technical question you have using a combined web and newsgroups search at Google, and often it's the newsgroup that has the answer.