Usenet – Let's Return to Public Spaces
I'm too young to have been a part of Usenet, but it seems to me that there's no good way to recreate the space described in the article without keeping most people out. My understanding is that the "Golden Age" of Usenet was possible mainly because only the people with the proper resources, knowledge, interest, and opportunity could even get to it in the first place. When you select a group of people from the general population with those traits and assets, of course you'll end up with a group that's more or less self-policing; the population will be small and largely homogeneous. It's hard to have conflict when your neighbors are almost identical to you, at least on a large scale.<p>In my estimation, the larger and broader a group is, the more it'll approximate human culture and interaction as a whole. It shouldn't be a surprise when the negative parts of those things (e.g. war, strife, hatred) emerge, just as much as the positive things (peace, fellowship, love).