[ih] net news

[Ofer Inbar]

On Wed, May 06, 2026 at 09:10:27PM -0400,
John Levine via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >History is about 10-20 years deep depending on the hierarchy.  I still
> >need to figure out how to back fill everything, the goal is to fully
> >replace Google Groups for historical research.
> 
> Netnews providers like Giganews and Easynews generally don't expire anything
> so they are likely to have 20 years of history.

Just noticed a coincidence in that 20 year number:
Reddit has mostly taken over the niche on the net that was Usenet's
before the transition to the web.  And Reddit started just about 20
years ago.  It actually launched in late 2005 but didn't have comments
until the end of 2005, so 2006 was the year it really started to be
used for discussions rather than just sharing links.

(Of course, for Usenet, the years we most care about archives of are
the 1900s not the 2000s, so a 20 year archive isn't that exciting IMO)
  -- Cos