[sigg3]

In my unqualified opinion the usability of e.g. phpBB forums (discussing through the browser) was much better than calling up a local BBS on telnet. Multilevel prompt menus in telnet can be quite maze-like.

Web crawlers indexed online forums too, so you could find the content right away through the same search engine instead of having to search the BBS discussions for hours or post a request on the local BBS and wait (days) for replies. Your technically illiterate aunt could browse the search results for posts containing the recipes she wanted from a number of disparate forums, and choose to read anonymously (and print out) or login and contribute. All you need is an email address.

This accessibility and semi-transparency created a major shift in where you go for content, effectively forcing the tech literate to follow suit as well. It fits in the general trend of democratizing the internet, and IMO was a good thing for tech. (I blame the monetizing and large commercial entities for the current state of fragmentation.)

I still login to a local BBS about once a year to say hello. Although I have a shell account now so I don't need to telnet over the net. It's still very alternative and hacker friendly.

[chongli]

It feels silly to say this since it sounds like you’ve been using Usenet since the dawn of time, but you can get GUI-based news readers that fetch articles from your Usenet over the internet, no dialing up or using Telnet required.

Properly configured, these news readers feel just like email clients, with threading and signatures and all that. Yes, the configuration part is some work but you only have to do it once and then you’re set up for all of Usenet. With forums you have to find and create an account separately for each one.

[axus]

I think they were talking about BBS interface vs. forums, and you're talking about Usenet (the actual topic of the article).

[chongli]

Usenet could (and still can) be operated via telnet using the NNTP protocol [1]. The whole protocol is ASCII-based, just like HTTP, and works via simple text commands. The most common way to access Usenet back in the day was over dialup.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc977

[throwaway847t]

Sure, but the most common way to access Usenet/NNTP servers was through graphical GUI software or "TUI" for those that preferred terminals. Most people didn't write NNTP commands directly, although I did that because I wanted to learn the protocols (same with POP/SMTP/HTTP that are surprisingly easy to get started with)

NNTP worked great with dialup. You could connect and download all the new content since the last time you were online and catch-up offline without blocking the phone line. The clients were designed to work both in both online and offline mode