Forum Moderators: open
There's Usenet and there are web forums.
Usenet is great because you can keep track of all your threads everywhere in one place, with one interface, and only have to use one login.
Web forums are great because they are much more flexible and customizable than Usenet, they are easier to maintain and modertate, and most importantly they are real-time, unlike Usenet's long propogation times.
So wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to combine the good parts of both approaches?
If there were an XML-based standard simliar to RSS or Atom but for web forums, we could keep all the niceties of traditional web forums, but also make them MUCH easier to participate in. I personally would be ecstatic if I could just load up an aggregator and view/post in all my web forums. Then I could see all my thread update notifications in one place, and wouldn't have to deal with a zillion logins, slow load times, and a different interface for every site.
I'm just finding out about rss and news aggragators myself, can I assume usenet is a news aggragater? Why would it not then have the ability to check on request versus having some program server check? Seems odd...bandwidth issues I'd imagine but I'm sure there are plenty of arguements either way...
