On Jun 13, 12:46 pm, "James Silverton" >
wrote:
> I note that a number of posters here have Verizon.net addresses like me.
>
> You might like to know, according to a message I have just received,
> that Verizon intends to
> discontinue the alt.* groups on its news server on June 24. In addition,
> the useful ba.food group that was discussed here recently will also go.
>
> --
>
> James Silverton
> Potomac, Maryland
>
> E-mail, with obvious alterations:
> not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

Back when most people used dialup connections, nearly all major isps
of dialup services offered Usenet groups as one of their extras to
attract customers. However, even the dialup isps starting dropping
Usenet many years ago. These included MSN and AOL, among many others.
Reasons I have heard include excessive bandwidth usage, not so
important on broadband today. However the isps were sick and tired of
all of the extra work and trouble Usenet brought them. They would get
flooded with complaints and comments that took a lot of the time of
their staff. Some would ban addresses of known mass spammers, etc. but
this had little effect in the long run. There was little that would
help in the long term and the isps got blame from their customers for
much that was beyond their control. Many isps apparently decided that
any benefits they received by including Usenet were far less than the
problems Usenet was causing them.

I would be more than willing to have everyone drop Usenet. It is a
relic from a much earlier times. It is now easy to set up a PHPBB or
other BB, blog etc, by nearly anyone who has a full-service web site
than now costs very little. I could set up a PHPBB on each of my 2
domains with a few key clicks and selections on the control panel for
the domains. You can use just about any format you wish. It is easy to
ban posters, require approval of posts before they appear, remove
posts and on and on, if so desired. There is no need for forcing
viewers to set up elaborate spam filters etc such as on the now
archaic Usenet system.

If you don't want to bother with some newsreader server, Google Groups
works well enough for many. If you want very elaborate filters, etc,
then a few of the newsreader providers with elaborate extras may
better meet your needs.