Usenet was arguably more centralised, limited, and vastly smaller in scale that Reddit. (I know whereof I speak: I was there.)
I've been trying to come up with some metrics for the size of "traditional" Usenet -- Big 8 hierarchy, say, early 1990s. Gene "spaff" Spafford thought that 50k - 500k users was probably in the right ballpark.
Note that to gain access you needed to be student or faculty at a research university, or work for one of a handful of tech companies (and almost certainly within their engineering divisions), or for a government agency with access. Very limited independent options existed.
The Usenet Cabal who managed things, such as they were managed, was about the same size as Reddit's technical staff, if that.
And the system proved highly vulnerable not only to spam and crap, but to users not acculturated into the system itself, and behavior protocols. The Eternal September was a thing for a reason.
I've been trying to come up with some metrics for the size of "traditional" Usenet -- Big 8 hierarchy, say, early 1990s. Gene "spaff" Spafford thought that 50k - 500k users was probably in the right ballpark.
Note that to gain access you needed to be student or faculty at a research university, or work for one of a handful of tech companies (and almost certainly within their engineering divisions), or for a government agency with access. Very limited independent options existed.
The Usenet Cabal who managed things, such as they were managed, was about the same size as Reddit's technical staff, if that.
And the system proved highly vulnerable not only to spam and crap, but to users not acculturated into the system itself, and behavior protocols. The Eternal September was a thing for a reason.