On 3/25/2021 8:33 AM, Boron Elgar wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2021 23:12:44 -0700 (PDT), dsi1
> > wrote:
>
>>>> Usenet just ain't usenet anymore. Back in the old days, the posters were mostly from military, educational, scientific, research, institutions. They used the facilities available through their institutions and therefor, were in fact, representing their organizations. My guess is that any bad behavior was easily squelched by being held responsible for your words. These days, all those right and proper people and replaced by the socially, morally, and mentally, inept. Back in the old days, bad behavior would be going off topic. That's the breaks.
>>>>
>>>> https://groups.google.com/g/rec.food...m/XKTmFKanfKYJ
>>> I guess you can blame AOL for that.
>
> They came into it later
>>
>> Steve Case carved out his place in history by democratising/popularizing Usenet. That was probably not a good thing to do. That's like shooting a mocking bird. I don't think that's such a big deal since the Original Posters have moved on to their own outlets of professional interchange. These days, Usenet is just a reflection of our dysfunctional/disenfranchised/disgruntled society. That's the breaks.
>
> I used Compuserve in the late 80s -

I used Compuserve for a year in the early 80s.
Not much to it. Just some information pages and they charged extra for
the better info pages. No email then either.

You had to be careful what you looked at and even what time of the day
you used it. If not, you got a very large monthly bill depending on your
use.

I dropped it after one year and just used local things. A couple of BBS
and two colleges nearby. The best use of that first modem was being
able to do my computer class homework at home vs going into the computer
lab each week.

Skip many years to about 1995 when I got my first PC and internet access
and the newsgroups.