It's a big deal if you are (or were) following multiple groups.
In the last ~10 years, a lot of the old groups have abandoned NN for
web forums ... some due to spam in unmoderated groups, but it seems to
me mostly that the change has been driven by pandering to youngsters
who won't be caught dead using a simple text based service (except, of
course, for SMS which they can't live without).
Where once you could monitor many groups with just a news reader OR an
email client, now you need both because many mailing lists are no
longer on NNTP and many newsgroups no longer support email access. And
then you have to monitor a plethora of web forums to follow the groups
that have gone over entirely to those platforms.
So where you once had one program that handled all your news needs,
now you need 2 or 3 different programs (NN reader, web browser, maybe
separate email client). Keeping your own archives of interesting
discussions - if you even /can/ keep archives (web forums) - has
become much more difficult and time consuming, and you have to look in
multiple places to find things.
[Yes, I use Thunderbird for email and I know it has NNTP also ... but
it can't share/sync its NN folders across multiple machines. I don't
know of any program that does BOTH email and NNTP that /can/ sync
everything across machines. Walking around with a USB drive is a
non-starter.]
Change for the sake of change is not a win. I don't mind Discourse so
much because it has mailing list support, but I am bothered by the
principle.
YMMV,
George