[tptacek]

What we have today is drastically, unquestionably better that what Usenet offered. The very fact that we're conversing in real time in a coherent thread where everyone sees the same messages is a basic task Usenet was not fit to provide.

[cmacleod4]

In the early days Usenet propagation was slow and haphazard because the communication links available were very limited. Nowadays I can post a message on one Usenet server and it appears on other servers in a few seconds. So coherent real-time conversations are no problem.

On the other hand, with a long-running discussion, HN, Reddit, etc. still have no way to see what messages are new since you last looked at a thread, something which Usenet clients have always done and still do now.

[tptacek]

Usenet is a system so bad that "posting a message on a Usenet server and having it appear on other servers in a few seconds" sounds like an achievement. And: both those other systems have reliable ways to see all the new messages on a thread, unlike Usenet, which couldn't even guarantee that you'd see all the messages, let alone in order.

I was a Usenet systems engineer (regional ISP operator, INN hacker) during the heyday of Usenet, and a dedicated user in that time as well. These rose-tinted views of how well Usenet worked don't fly for me at all. Reddit is actively, materially, multifariously better than Usenet, and Reddit is not the state of the art.

[Hizonner]

> Nowadays I can post a message on one Usenet server and it appears on other servers in a few seconds.

To be fair, that's probably because it's now a lot more centralized than it was intended to be.