I never spent any time there, but it warms my heart to hear that alt.callahans is still alive.
My impression of Usenet's death is closely related to your "hard to use" summary: it required people to install and configure a separate client, in an era when many forums were becoming available through the web browser folks already had. (Standalone email clients are far less popular today than they used to be, too. But Usenet didn't remain essential until web interfaces became usable the way that email did.)
My impression of Usenet's death is closely related to your "hard to use" summary: it required people to install and configure a separate client, in an era when many forums were becoming available through the web browser folks already had. (Standalone email clients are far less popular today than they used to be, too. But Usenet didn't remain essential until web interfaces became usable the way that email did.)