Free news-server for discussion?

Lucas S. A. Castro

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Jun 2, 2016, 2:25:03 AM6/2/16

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Hello, folk of Usenet.

I have ever dreamed of joining this magnific network. After downloading Pan, however, and trying some free "Usenet" servers, I am pretty frustrated: I have not found a server which fully implements the RFCs for free, for most proposals are about downloading binaries (which are not the objective of this system). XSUsenet, for example, does not respect cancel and rmvgroup messages, nor it accepts posting.

What I am looking for is to use the true Usenet, for discussions and knowledge, according to the specifications and authorities of the Big 8 (alt.* is not truly necessary); I have no problem if the message retention is only one month, provided I am able to enjoy all the functionality. Then, I ask you, here from these goddamned Google Groups: by which means (even if extremely complex) may I access properly at least the last month of the Usenet and answer it, just like paying members do?

As I do not know how to crosspost from Google Groups, I may have to post it some more times.

Respectfully,
Lucas S. A. Castro, from Brazil.

Whiskers

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Jun 2, 2016, 7:25:03 PM6/2/16

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Welcome to usenet :))

The newsgroup for discussing free news-servers is alt.free.newsservers
but sadly the signal to noise ratio there is very poor these days.

'Eternal-September' is widely used and is free, and seems to work very
well. See <http://www.eternal-september.org/>.

'Albasani' is also free and has a good reputation; see
<http://albasani.net/>.

'Datemas' costs 5 Euros a year <http://news.datemas.de/> and works very
well.

'Individual' costs 10 Euros a year <http://individual.net/> and is
probably the best of the text-only news servers.

Some ISPs still include a news-server as part of their normal service.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

Lucas S. A. Castro

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Jun 3, 2016, 6:10:03 PM6/3/16

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On Thu, 02 Jun 2016 23:25:01 +0000, Whiskers wrote:
> Welcome to usenet :))
>
> The newsgroup for discussing free news-servers is alt.free.newsservers
> but sadly the signal to noise ratio there is very poor these days.
>
> 'Eternal-September' is widely used and is free, and seems to work very
> well. See <http://www.eternal-september.org/>.
>
> 'Albasani' is also free and has a good reputation; see
> <http://albasani.net/>.
>
> 'Datemas' costs 5 Euros a year <http://news.datemas.de/> and works very
> well.
>
> 'Individual' costs 10 Euros a year <http://individual.net/> and is
> probably the best of the text-only news servers.
>
> Some ISPs still include a news-server as part of their normal service.

Thank you very much: eternal-september.org works wonderfully well. I can
consider myself part of the Usenet here-to-fore.

Lucas S. A. Castro

Kathy Morgan

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Jun 3, 2016, 6:10:03 PM6/3/16

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Lucas S. A. Castro <lucasseba...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What I am looking for is to use the true Usenet, for discussions and
> knowledge, according to the specifications and authorities of the Big 8
> (alt.* is not truly necessary); I have no problem if the message
> retention is only one month, provided I am able to enjoy all the
> functionality.

Your message has extremely long lines. If your news client
(GoogleGropes?) does not automatically break them into shorter lines,
you should do it manually yourself. Put carriage return/line feeds
after about every 72 characters. I had to rewrap your paragraph above
and add quote marks to the new lines.

Whiskers has posted some excellent suggestions. I have accounts on both
Albasani and Individual.net, and my experience is that Albasani's
retention is much longer than Individual's.

You mentioned wanting to be able to issue cancel messages and rmgroup
messages; because of massive abuse of those types of message, most
servers will not accept them.

--
Kathy

Kathy Morgan

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Jun 6, 2016, 12:25:03 AM6/6/16

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Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:

> Lucas S. A. Castro <lucasseba...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What I am looking for is to use the true Usenet, for discussions and
> > knowledge, according to the specifications and authorities of the Big 8
> > (alt.* is not truly necessary); I have no problem if the message
> > retention is only one month, provided I am able to enjoy all the
> > functionality.
>

> Your message has extremely long lines. (snip)

I should have waited to comment; your post with Pan looks very nice.

--
Kathy

Whiskers

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Jun 6, 2016, 7:00:03 PM6/6/16

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Perhaps Pan automatically wraps long lines to fit your 'window' whereas
MacSoup doesn't?

Slrn can wrap long lines to the window, but has to be given a manual
command to do it. Slrn has no text editor of its own but the one I use
with it (Vim) can wrap long lines and automatically add the necessary
email/usenet > quotes at the start of lines of quoted text if necessary,
so that when I remember I can format my replies neatly regardless of the
line length in the article I'm replying to.

Google Groups does produce annoyingly unformatted paragraphs unless the
user deliberately inserts a 'return' manually at sane points. Their
user interface seems to hide this defect.

Kathy Morgan

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Jun 7, 2016, 12:10:03 AM6/7/16

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Whiskers <catwh...@operamail.com> wrote:

> On 2016-06-06, Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> > Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Your message has extremely long lines. (snip)
> >
> > I should have waited to comment; your post with Pan looks very nice.
>
> Perhaps Pan automatically wraps long lines to fit your 'window' whereas
> MacSoup doesn't?

MacSoup wraps the messages in the window, but when doing a followup, it
leaves the line long--but then refuses to post the followup until the
quoted long line is fixed. There's a manual command to do that, but it
doesn't properly fix the quote level, so I need to manually insert "> "
at the beginning of each rewrapped line.

> Slrn can wrap long lines to the window, but has to be given a manual
> command to do it. Slrn has no text editor of its own but the one I use
> with it (Vim) can wrap long lines and automatically add the necessary
> email/usenet > quotes at the start of lines of quoted text if necessary,
> so that when I remember I can format my replies neatly regardless of the
> line length in the article I'm replying to.
>
> Google Groups does produce annoyingly unformatted paragraphs unless the
> user deliberately inserts a 'return' manually at sane points. Their
> user interface seems to hide this defect.

Heh! Google Groups' user interface hides many defects, so this one does
not surprise me.

--
Kathy