Most web discussion boards are just GUI on top of a message store, and the reading/posting pieces of NNTP are a stable, standardized API for interacting with just such a message store. If every VBulletin instance also exposed an NNTP interface to its message content, I think it would be a huge step forward for discussion-board usability. (Well, once the NNTP-client world woke back up again. Are there even any actively-developed NNTP clients left that aren't focused on guzzling pirated media from the .binaries. groups?)
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Agreed re: community size and Usenet's inability to scale to it (see: http://www.studio-nibble.com/lazlo/images/wiredquote.jpg). My lament is strictly about the tools used to interact with that community.
Most web discussion boards are just GUI on top of a message store, and the reading/posting pieces of NNTP are a stable, standardized API for interacting with just such a message store. If every VBulletin instance also exposed an NNTP interface to its message content, I think it would be a huge step forward for discussion-board usability. (Well, once the NNTP-client world woke back up again. Are there even any actively-developed NNTP clients left that aren't focused on guzzling pirated media from the .binaries. groups?)