Nntpit: Minimalist Reddit-to-NNTP gateway
github.com
github.com
1. Is mapping subreddits to the global namespaces a good idea? If I were to read NNTP news from multiple sources, wouldn't it be better to have a reddit.* hierarchy alongside the alt.* etc hierarchies? (I assume there's a way to use multiple NNTP servers at once; maybe by hosting my own NNTP server that pulls from multiple servers.)
2. Are slrn and tin the state of the art in TUI clients? Surely someone has a recent promising hobby client?
alias slrnreddit='NNTPSERVER="news://localhost:8119" slrn -f ~/.jnewsrc-reddit -i ~/.slrnrc-reddit'
EDIT: the subscribed groups need to exist on all the servers, though. Otherwise slrn drops missing ones.
Nice work and well done.
Moderation and up/downvoting as a way to filter content.
It took quite a bit of effort for volunteers to propagate cancel messages against all the spammers that started appearing at a certain point in time in Usenet's history, and a bunch of infrastructure to ensure that malicious control messages were dealt with as well:
Scoring (mentioned in the link above) is, exactly, distributed up/downvoting.
To get from there to distributed moderation you just need a way of publishing your votes and something like the PGP Web Of Trust. If people I upvote a lot upvoted it, show it to me. There is lots of interesting crypto work on anonymous verifiable voting that would be relevant here.
If you're worried about an echo chamber, add random noise. If you think people won't do that, well, if they want to make echo chambers for themselves you can't stop that either. Offer them a way out and the smart people will take it; then you can use their upvotes. IMHO most of the echo-chamber problems we have right now with social media are due to the fact that zero control (or even comprehension) over the algorithm is offered to the end user. Give the people knobs and they will play with them.
"Just".
IMO the only way to create a community that will challenge people’s perspectives is to specifically create a community aimed at diverse thought as its main goal. HN is kind of that because the main topic is “things that hackers find interesting”. It’s a singular community with no knobs and yet it provides more diverse points of view than any given subreddit.
Filtering content is an absolute necessity. If you want to make a diverse general-use service, you need another layer to filter out shock images, unwanted nudity, actually illegal child and 'revenge' porn, and the constant barrage of insults that prominent minority users will be subjected to.
Moderation adds value.
NNTPSERVER="news://localhost:8119" slrn -f ~/.jnewsrc-reddit --create -i ~/.slrnrc-reddit
set auto_mark_article_as_read 0
set sorting_method 9
set use_slrnpull 1
set wrap_flags 7
set wrap_method 2Someone should resurrect nntpfs.
I guess this site breaks the internet and doesn’t follow the standards the we created for browsers to know what’s www and what’s not.
Some similar sites have it.
On doing a slrnpull:
02/02/2021 16:26:27 Fetching articles for programming.
02/02/2021 16:26:27 ***Error selecting group programming.
Code = 411: No such newsgroup
Still: on running
LANG=C NNTPSERVER="localhost:8119" slrnpull -d reddit
A personal annoyance of mine was all the people who archived everything and never deleted it - there is a phd thesis for someone, how to expire information from a decentralized system. I managed to get Google to remove most of my early Usenet musings (Google groups started off as an nntp archive and for a while they would delete stuff if you asked nicely) and the rest “aged out” as people lost interest in running archives, or their computers crashed, or they switched jobs and nobody else wanted to maintain them after they left. It took roughly three decades but I can’t find a single post of mine anymore.
Without the power to reach into other people's computers or enforce a to-the-display cryptosystem you can't do this. And even then information can leak out.
It's the very opposite of decentralisation to give control over a piece of information to a single agent, even if that is the person who originally created it.
Last time I tried jumping on to a few newsgroups it was like walking into an abandoned city. The last posts on once active groups are years old, not counting the random spammer.
By the way, I think it's absolutely amazing that one can access the same discussion over several protocols (NNTP, email mailing list, and often HTTP) without losing any functionality.
By using HTTP I lose a lot of features! I can't filter (both for removal as well as for highlighting) as I need (i.e.ignore some flame war threads or highlight messages to me), I can't work offline (while there are less situation where that is needed, but can still be useful when loading on the side and then having low latency while looking through messages) etc.
However mail and nntp never really got the spam problem solved and development of "nice" clients basically stalled last 15 or so years.
SynchroNet today has crazy multiprotocol support.
comp.unix.shell Unix utils, awk, shell scripting.
comp.lang.c C programming help
comp.lang.c.moderated Ditto, but with less nuts
alt.os.linux.slackware Slackware users.
rec.arts.int-fiction (text adventure game creating)
rec.games.int-fiction (text adventure game announces/discussions)
rec.games.roguelike.nethack Nethack (and Slashem by extension).
I live rtv, but having NNTP integration it's more amazing.
BTW, gopher proxy to reddit: gopher://gopherddit.com
And "National cash advance".
Somebody should tell him that his website appears to have been compromised by very low-end spammerz.
$ curl -s http://www.slrn.org | egrep Payday\|National
Davis has returned to develop slrn again <a href="http://fastonlinepayday.com/">Fast Online Payday Loans</a> and after much work has
subscribe both slrn-admin and slrn-user <a href="National-cash-advance.html"> National cash advance</a>. For questions about slrn thatarchive.today sees it too:
Not by default, sadly.