gemini://gemini.bunburya.eu/gemlog/posts/2022-01-12-newsgroup-mirror.gmi

As some of you may know, a Gemini-related Usenet newsgroup was recently set up as a place to discuss the Gemini protocol in addition to the mailing list (I believe the intention was that they would be bridged). The group was discussed on the mailing list prior to its establishment, and opinions was divided on whether such a group was necessary or beneficial when the mailing list already existed.

Whatever the merits of Usenet generally, the establishment of the group proved timely, as not long after that the mailing list (formerly hosted at orbitalfox.eu) went down due to hardware issues, and at this point it is not clear if or when it is coming back. So the newsgroup is currently the main place (other than IRC) where the protocol can be discussed, although discussion there is still rather light.

As a weekend project for myself I wrote a script to fetch the contents of the newsgroup and store them as gemtext files on my capsule, so that you can follow the discussions there from Geminispace if you are not subscribed directly:

The intention is that it will sync once or twice a day (the current level of discussion doesn't merit any more frequency than that). I may look to improve it in future (eg, through improved sorting of messages and/or a "new messages" page).

Hopefully some of you find it helpful. I nevertheless suggest that you subscribe to the newsgroup directly, if you want to participate in discussions. Jason Evans has published a couple of tutorials on how to get started with Usenet:

I myself am new to the protocol and I've found it interesting to explore a "new" (to me, but actually pretty old by internet standards) technology. I hope the newsgroup thrives; however, because it does have an inherently higher barrier to entry than a mailing list, for the sake of attracting new people to the protocol and ultimately growing the Geminispace I do think it is beneficial to also have a mailing list people can follow (preferably bridged with the newsgroup in some way so as to avoid splitting or duplicating discussions).

Gemini newsgroup mirror