That's one way to look at it.

I don't remember it quite that fondly.

I also remember the missing replies, broken threads, spam you couldn't really do much about, endless flamewars about top-quoting vs bottom-quoting, etc.

Plus the pace was just glacial - it could take hours for some posters posts to appear.

Maybe is was better in the REALLY old days - a bit of quick, non-exhaustive google groups searching shows my first usenet posts in June of 1997.