Usenet personality

>I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do.

This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The network's design has several flaws, most importantly no way for any central authority to completely delete posts (admins in moderated groups can only approve posts), since back in the late 1970s Usenet's designers expected that everyone with the werewithal to participate online would meet a minimum standard of behavior. Usenet has always had a spam problem, but as usage of the network declined as the rest of the Internet grew, spam's relative proportion of the overall traffic grew.

That said, there are server- and client-side anti-spam tools of varying effectiveness. A related but bigger problem for Usenet is people with actual mental illness (kstrauser mentioned one); think "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". Usenet is such a niche network nowadays that there has to be meaningful motivation to participate, and if the motivation is not a sincere interest in the subject it's, in my experience, going to be people with very troubled personal lives which their online behavior reflects. Again, as overall traffic declined, their relative contribution and visibility grew. This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet.

[1] I am talking about traditional non-binary Usenet here

> he gained international notoriety for his claims that [...] mass and time are equivalent. (With regard to the second claim, it was suggested on the "sci.astro.amateur" newsgroup that his demise be observed with a gram of silence.)

I'm sorry, this was probably annoying to all involved, but also so hilarious. Not least of which picturing a detective, who joined the force thinking he was going to solve murders and maybe even get a lead on D.B. Cooper sighing as he posted on a message board.

I kinda miss that style of poster and understand it cannot come back. But if the world is big and diverse then I prefer that that kind of people can exist.

Why wasn't Henry Spencer listed as a Usenet personality (the good kind)?

I feel bad about one in particular. Don't get me wrong: he was incredibly annoying and liked to jump into nearly every single thread and turn it into some persecution complex thing. I was unkind to him, as were many others.

Looking back, it seems obvious to me that he had some mental issues and was battling demons the rest of us didn't see. I wish younger me had the wisdom to just killfile him and pretend he didn't exist. Whatever his problems, I'm sure I didn't make the world any nicer by yelling at him.

Sorry, man. I'd have handled that differently now.

There's a lesson here somewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Cabal

Scott Nudds was a guy who trolled comp.lang.c and a few other programming newsgroups. He was noted for his phrases "Unix and C are dying, this is a good thing." and "C pushers will do anything to defend their sick religion. I, on the other hand, prefer honesty." For a while, the usual reference to "making demons fly out of your nose" (a humorously valid potential response by the compiler when it encounters undefined behavior) was often replaced with "making Scott Nudds fly out of your nose".

Wherever you are now, Scott Nudds, you are remembered. A hero and vanguard to the Rust Evangelism Strike Force—because C really is dying now, and that's probably a good thing.

SsZERO is another, whom I've mentioned before, but his appeal was more limited:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42218587