This is both for the sake of a general squirrel things away document,
and arguably research for a book. I'm not talking step by step 'how do
I do the thing' and more a case of 'how many hoops need to be jumped
through to get to a point where you can have users registered to your whatever.subheading.sub-subheading news server.

'But why not just reddit?'

Well the fun thing about news servers is how little they demand infrastructure-wise. Fine one could argue 'why not just make a lemmy
instance?' and that would be fair.

See to me the arguments that usenet was somehow far more civil and
technical than modern reddit just... rings hollow, because while I
wasn't THERE there for Usenet, I only missed it by a vanishing short
time and I've been in hundreds of groups, forums, clubs, etc etc and
people are just people. Good. bad. Selfish. Jerks. Helpful. Whoever.

I just like the idea of newsgroups and 'oh hey you can read the content
even when you're offline'

Which is an alien concept to people now. Well. Concepts. Having offline
access, and there BEING an offline.

--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> writes:

This is both for the sake of a general squirrel things away document,
and arguably research for a book. I'm not talking step by step 'how do
I do the thing' and more a case of 'how many hoops need to be jumped
through to get to a point where you can have users registered to your whatever.subheading.sub-subheading news server.

'But why not just reddit?'

Well the fun thing about news servers is how little they demand infrastructure-wise. Fine one could argue 'why not just make a lemmy instance?' and that would be fair.

See to me the arguments that usenet was somehow far more civil and
technical than modern reddit just... rings hollow, because while I
wasn't THERE there for Usenet, I only missed it by a vanishing short
time and I've been in hundreds of groups, forums, clubs, etc etc and
people are just people. Good. bad. Selfish. Jerks. Helpful. Whoever.

I just like the idea of newsgroups and 'oh hey you can read the content
even when you're offline'

Which is an alien concept to people now. Well. Concepts. Having offline access, and there BEING an offline.

Trolling was pretty much invented on Usenet. But yes, reading trolls
offline (and/or killfiling them away in your chosen client) is an
excellent usecase for a good news reader.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

Well, considering Yeti Killfiled me for snapping at him for providing
unhelpful 'helpful' advice?

Back to the main point.

This is mostly a case of me working on an urban fantasy thing and 'OK
as it turns out older technology/software concepts that didn't assume
people were online all the time actually fits with what I want to end
up doing for the 'fantasy' side of the urban thing. So usenet fits the
use case better than 'oh hey just spin up a lemmy instance, lol.'

Which got me wondering 'OK how hard is it to actually set a newsgroup
server up?'

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 18:04:48 +0000
"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> wrote:

Trolling was pretty much invented on Usenet. But yes, reading trolls
offline (and/or killfiling them away in your chosen client) is an
excellent usecase for a good news reader.

--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

Well, considering Yeti Killfiled me

BS.

I'm perfectly able to not reply without needing the help of a killfile.
--
3. Hitchhiker 1: (25) "The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there
is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad.
You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later."
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 18:04:48 +0000
"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> wrote:

Trolling was pretty much invented on Usenet. But yes, reading trolls
offline (and/or killfiling them away in your chosen client) is an
excellent usecase for a good news reader.

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> writes:

Well, considering Yeti Killfiled me for snapping at him for providing unhelpful 'helpful' advice?

Back to the main point.

This is mostly a case of me working on an urban fantasy thing and 'OK
as it turns out older technology/software concepts that didn't assume
people were online all the time actually fits with what I want to end
up doing for the 'fantasy' side of the urban thing. So usenet fits the
use case better than 'oh hey just spin up a lemmy instance, lol.'

Which got me wondering 'OK how hard is it to actually set a newsgroup
server up?'

I cannot help much. But I can say that you can learn by searching how to
use the "inn" software.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 22:06:19 +0000
keyboardan <keyboardan@tilde.club> wrote:

I cannot help much. But I can say that you can learn by searching how
to use the "inn" software.

Ah. Well I had hoped folk here and about would be able to add to what
just reading about the thing is giving me.

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 21:32:29 +0042
yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

I'm perfectly able to not reply without needing the help of a
killfile.

Duly Noted.

--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> writes:

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

Well, considering Yeti Killfiled me

BS.

I'm perfectly able to not reply without needing the help of a killfile.

This exchange is ironically perfect clasic usenet. The system works!
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 23:00:04 +0000
"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> wrote:

This exchange is ironically perfect clasic usenet. The system works!

So it seems. :)

This is the kind of thing best experienced rather than simply reading
about. Yes yes there have always been arguments. But each community and
medium has their own rhythm of things.


--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> writes:

This is both for the sake of a general squirrel things away document,
and arguably research for a book. I'm not talking step by step 'how do
I do the thing' and more a case of 'how many hoops need to be jumped
through to get to a point where you can have users registered to your whatever.subheading.sub-subheading news server.

You could get a lot of help on this on USENET's news.admin.peering.
Lots of USENET admins there. I only hear of one software: INN2. (For
UNIX, I mean.) In fact, I'd love to know if there are other software for hosting USENET NNTP servers.

Well the fun thing about news servers is how little they demand infrastructure-wise. Fine one could argue 'why not just make a lemmy instance?' and that would be fair.

That's right---they're very light. Except, of course, on the USENET.
But USENET today is smaller than it used to be, so I don't think it
takes gigantic infrastructure. In fact, I find it funny that people
used to study methods of keeping up with the growth of USENET, but it
turns out it shrunk.

See to me the arguments that usenet was somehow far more civil and
technical than modern reddit just... rings hollow, because while I
wasn't THERE there for Usenet, I only missed it by a vanishing short
time and I've been in hundreds of groups, forums, clubs, etc etc and
people are just people. Good. bad. Selfish. Jerks. Helpful. Whoever.

I just like the idea of newsgroups and 'oh hey you can read the content
even when you're offline'

Which is an alien concept to people now. Well. Concepts. Having offline access, and there BEING an offline.

Well said. Everyone is usually online, but the offline experience is
still very important because of speed. I think most serious USENET
readers actually use some kind of proxy to help their readers interact
locally. For example, leafnode.

I actually just use Eternal September directly, but I might set up
leafnode, say, to download my groups of interest. Or perhaps some other
news server. No time to look into that right now. But it's in the
list of tasks.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> writes:

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

Well, considering Yeti Killfiled me

BS.

I'm perfectly able to not reply without needing the help of a killfile.

Lol. :)
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> writes:

This is both for the sake of a general squirrel things away document,
and arguably research for a book. I'm not talking step by step 'how do
I do the thing' and more a case of 'how many hoops need to be jumped
through to get to a point where you can have users registered to your
whatever.subheading.sub-subheading news server.

You could get a lot of help on this on USENET's news.admin.peering.
Lots of USENET admins there. I only hear of one software: INN2. (For
UNIX, I mean.) In fact, I'd love to know if there are other software for hosting USENET NNTP servers.

Yes, "inn2" is in most respects the last surviving general NNTP
server. There are also implementations embedded in, e.g., the Synchronet
BBS software and other funny places.

Well the fun thing about news servers is how little they demand
infrastructure-wise. Fine one could argue 'why not just make a lemmy
instance?' and that would be fair.

That's right---they're very light. Except, of course, on the USENET.
But USENET today is smaller than it used to be, so I don't think it
takes gigantic infrastructure. In fact, I find it funny that people
used to study methods of keeping up with the growth of USENET, but it
turns out it shrunk.

One way to keep things smaller is to only peer plain-text groups and
articles. The huge bulk of traffic is file sharing. I have a 50 GiB
block of data on one of the paid servers and anticipate never using it
up if I stick to text groups.

See to me the arguments that usenet was somehow far more civil and
technical than modern reddit just... rings hollow, because while I
wasn't THERE there for Usenet, I only missed it by a vanishing short
time and I've been in hundreds of groups, forums, clubs, etc etc and
people are just people. Good. bad. Selfish. Jerks. Helpful. Whoever.

I just like the idea of newsgroups and 'oh hey you can read the content
even when you're offline'

Which is an alien concept to people now. Well. Concepts. Having offline
access, and there BEING an offline.

Well said. Everyone is usually online, but the offline experience is
still very important because of speed. I think most serious USENET
readers actually use some kind of proxy to help their readers interact locally. For example, leafnode.

Some readers integrate the proxy functionality into the reader itself,
cf. Gnus's "Agent" which I use, or the "slrnpull" helper program of
slrn. The "fdm" mail delivery agent can also be used this way.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

[...]

Well said. Everyone is usually online, but the offline experience is
still very important because of speed. I think most serious USENET
readers actually use some kind of proxy to help their readers interact
locally. For example, leafnode.

Some readers integrate the proxy functionality into the reader itself,
cf. Gnus's "Agent" which I use, or the "slrnpull" helper program of
slrn. The "fdm" mail delivery agent can also be used this way.

I haven't yet learned how to use the Agent properly. I'm technically
using it, but I'm online 100% of the time. I think what would be easier
for me is to run a localhost server that Gnus connects to.

I do use fdm, though. And, yes, I remember it said it could download my
NNTP choice of articles. I wondered how that would integrate with Gnus.
Gnus is what I like to use. I should probably stick to Gnus, but I
don't enjoy waiting for Gnus to download anything. If fdm can download
my mail and my NNTP choice of groups and archive them locally for Gnus
to just read---that's perfect. I will look into it.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

[...]

Well said. Everyone is usually online, but the offline experience is
still very important because of speed. I think most serious USENET
readers actually use some kind of proxy to help their readers interact
locally. For example, leafnode.

Some readers integrate the proxy functionality into the reader itself,
cf. Gnus's "Agent" which I use, or the "slrnpull" helper program of
slrn. The "fdm" mail delivery agent can also be used this way.

I haven't yet learned how to use the Agent properly. I'm technically
using it, but I'm online 100% of the time. I think what would be easier
for me is to run a localhost server that Gnus connects to.

I do use fdm, though. And, yes, I remember it said it could download my
NNTP choice of articles. I wondered how that would integrate with Gnus.
Gnus is what I like to use. I should probably stick to Gnus, but I
don't enjoy waiting for Gnus to download anything. If fdm can download
my mail and my NNTP choice of groups and archive them locally for Gnus
to just read---that's perfect. I will look into it.

I am in the same situation as you. If you figure out how fdm can
download nntp and made it integrate with Gnus, please do share. I, at
least, would find this useful.

Cheers.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

keyboardan <keyboardan@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

[...]

[...]

Some readers integrate the proxy functionality into the reader itself,
cf. Gnus's "Agent" which I use, or the "slrnpull" helper program of
slrn. The "fdm" mail delivery agent can also be used this way.

I haven't yet learned how to use the Agent properly. I'm technically
using it, but I'm online 100% of the time. I think what would be easier
for me is to run a localhost server that Gnus connects to.

I do use fdm, though. And, yes, I remember it said it could download my
NNTP choice of articles. I wondered how that would integrate with Gnus.
Gnus is what I like to use. I should probably stick to Gnus, but I
don't enjoy waiting for Gnus to download anything. If fdm can download
my mail and my NNTP choice of groups and archive them locally for Gnus
to just read---that's perfect. I will look into it.

I am in the same situation as you. If you figure out how fdm can
download nntp and made it integrate with Gnus, please do share. I, at
least, would find this useful.

Cheers.

Re Gnus Agent: I have a little Eshell alias to run the fetcher as a
separate Emacs process, then I read and reply in `gnus-unplugged'. Here
is the alias:

alias fetch 'emacs --fg-daemon=gnus-sync --eval="(let ((gnus-expert-user t)) (gnus-agent-batch) (gnus-group-exit) (kill-emacs))" && notmuch new'

Re FDM: I think the flow would be you pick your groups via the fdm configuration and then read using the `nnspool' method of Gnus (which is designed for local disk spools of the one-message-per-file type).
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

keyboardan <keyboardan@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

[...]

Well said. Everyone is usually online, but the offline experience is
still very important because of speed. I think most serious USENET
readers actually use some kind of proxy to help their readers interact >>>> locally. For example, leafnode.

Some readers integrate the proxy functionality into the reader itself,
cf. Gnus's "Agent" which I use, or the "slrnpull" helper program of
slrn. The "fdm" mail delivery agent can also be used this way.

I haven't yet learned how to use the Agent properly. I'm technically
using it, but I'm online 100% of the time. I think what would be easier
for me is to run a localhost server that Gnus connects to.

I do use fdm, though. And, yes, I remember it said it could download my
NNTP choice of articles. I wondered how that would integrate with Gnus.
Gnus is what I like to use. I should probably stick to Gnus, but I
don't enjoy waiting for Gnus to download anything. If fdm can download
my mail and my NNTP choice of groups and archive them locally for Gnus
to just read---that's perfect. I will look into it.

I am in the same situation as you. If you figure out how fdm can
download nntp and made it integrate with Gnus, please do share. I, at
least, would find this useful.

I'm not going in this direction. I installed leafnode for my offline
use. However, here's how I guess Gnus works. Take a look at messages
you've sent. You'll find headers such as

--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
X-From-Line: nobody Sat Mar 29 13:52:37 2025
From: Myself <me@home.org>
Newsgroups: tilde.clube
Subject: some subject
References: <87ldsossu2.fsf@home.org>
X-Draft-From: ("nntp+tilde.club:tilde.meta" 167)
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2025 13:52:36 -0300
Message-ID: <875xjrrd7v.fsf@home.org>
Lines: 13
Xref: b.local sent.2025-03:226
X-Gnus-Article-Number: 226 Sat, 29 Mar 2025 13:52:37 -0300 --8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---

You see that x-draft-from? I believe that's where Gnus discovers where
to post. So I'm thinking that if you download with fdm and then add
these headers yourself, you would be telling Gnus where to post when you
C-c C-c.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> writes:

keyboardan <keyboardan@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

"W. Greenhouse" <wgreenhouse@tilde.club> writes:

Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> writes:

[...]

[...]

Some readers integrate the proxy functionality into the reader itself, >>>> cf. Gnus's "Agent" which I use, or the "slrnpull" helper program of
slrn. The "fdm" mail delivery agent can also be used this way.

I haven't yet learned how to use the Agent properly. I'm technically
using it, but I'm online 100% of the time. I think what would be easier >>> for me is to run a localhost server that Gnus connects to.

I do use fdm, though. And, yes, I remember it said it could download my >>> NNTP choice of articles. I wondered how that would integrate with Gnus. >>> Gnus is what I like to use. I should probably stick to Gnus, but I
don't enjoy waiting for Gnus to download anything. If fdm can download
my mail and my NNTP choice of groups and archive them locally for Gnus
to just read---that's perfect. I will look into it.

I am in the same situation as you. If you figure out how fdm can
download nntp and made it integrate with Gnus, please do share. I, at
least, would find this useful.

Cheers.

Re Gnus Agent: I have a little Eshell alias to run the fetcher as a
separate Emacs process, then I read and reply in `gnus-unplugged'. Here
is the alias:

alias fetch 'emacs --fg-daemon=gnus-sync --eval="(let
((gnus-expert-user t)) (gnus-agent-batch) (gnus-group-exit)
(kill-emacs))" && notmuch new'

Re FDM: I think the flow would be you pick your groups via the fdm configuration and then read using the `nnspool' method of Gnus (which is designed for local disk spools of the one-message-per-file type).

That's good info. I wonder if nnspool could also tell Gnus where to
post when we send the post out.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2