&gt; new discussion formats that have largely supplanted Usenet.<p>I still wish that message boards&#x2F;forums had a standard format and protocol, like email does, so that we could use any OS-native client apps to access them, like we do for email.<p>Apparently Usenet was too limited to support modern &quot;necessities&quot; like avatars, profiles, stickies, votes and polls, but surely they could be worked in as extensions or even an entirely new standard?