On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 12:18:59AM +0100, Mark Rousell wrote:
I have at no stage advocated a "generic architecture of NNTP transit servers".
I have at no stage advocated any NNTP servers being "open to arbitrary groups",
other than those created by group owners.
[snip long list of other things you haven't said]
You're right; the problem is that you haven't said much at all of any
substance, so I find myself trying to guess how the vague things you do
say could possibly map to anything in the real world. I'll stop doing
that.
Fine, so you prefer web UIs, if I understand you correctly.
No, I hate them. But I'm a realist and I understand why things are
evolving the way they are.
So the "broad client support" in question would be a web browser and that
basically includes everything. Welcome to the 21st century!
Except that web browsers accessing web forums in the 21st Century don't do
everything. They can't. Other tools do some things better. That's rather the
point. There are other tools that bring other capabilities to the table. For
example, some of these tools are the NNTP and SMTP and IMAP protocols
FWIW, I think SMTP (and IMAP) is on its way out as well. I expect that
in 20 years HTTP will still be going strong but SMTP will be a legacy
protocol with dwindling recognition (the way NNTP is today). The
theories about the superiority of NNTP and SMTP and IMAP are less
compelling than the reality that the class of protocols designed for the
internet of the 1980s are too susceptible to abuse for use on the modern
internet. If SMTP does have a strong presence in 20 years it will
probably be in a form that isn't interoperable with a 2018 SMTP
implementation. (Which is not entirely impossible; unlike NNTP, SMTP
isn't too moribund to evolve. I think it's just unlikely to evolve
enough.)
Most people currently under the age of 20 probably won't notice that it's gone.
