NewsNet
A new USENET
USENET has been plagued by problems for many years. Much of the functionality of USENET has fallen into a state of such disorder that servers simply refuse to implement basic functionality like cancel and supersede messages. Spam, off topic posts, and vandalism are problems that users have to deal with every single day.
I've decided to spend a bit of time and write an upwardly compatible replacement for the the NNTP servers of today. The basic idea would be to support everything that NNTP supports now, allowing legacy clients to use the new server, but to provide enhancements that limit the ability of spammers and vandals to use the network. This will be accomplished through the use of authentication and community moderation built into the protocol.
My goal is to have a server up and running that only carries one set of newsgroups, the comp.lang.java hierarchy, within the next few months. I will also write a client to operate with this server that supports the community moderation aspect of the new protocol a few months later. I'm hoping to get some of the comp.lang.java.programmer readers to start using my new server shortly thereafter. I'll need to figure out exactly how to handle propagating articles to and from the new servers without breaking anything on the old servers. For text messages, I don't think this will be too difficult.
Any suggestions on requirements, or on the best ways to improve the USENET protocol would be greatly appreciated. My current plan is to allow messages to either be plain text (for anonymous posts) or S/MIME for signed posts.