John Kuthe wrote:

I think one major reason RBP has lost favor in the past 10-15 years is
the advent and tremendous popularity of the WWW. Not naming any
websites in particular, but people love websites, because they offer a
much richer mix of media than simple ASCII text, which Usenet is
limited to. Plain and simple.

Agreed.

It's almost a wonder Usenet still exists! I mean, horses and buggy's
barely exist anymore, and such is the way with yesteryear's
technologies, of which Usenet is these days, yano?

If properly used (which generally it is not) Usenet can still function
as the populist Consumer Reports of the 'net. Consumer Reports may be
non-profit and all that, but sometimes one wonders why they make the
particular buying decisions that they do. Most other product comparison
magazines or websites are heavily biased by advertising.

Whereas if you know that a particular Usenet poster is reliable, you can
trust their recommendations, modulo forgeries.

The major media conglomerates probably don't want Usenet to continue.
AOL, a division of Time-Warner, was the first to kill Usenet service
for their subscribers. It's terrible when citizens talk among themselves,
rather than listening to propaganda on TV.