gosh, that's a lot of work - good on them!

I've been out of the Usenet scene for ages, does it still require multiple providers and/or indexers to be viable?

Can’t remember my setup. I think I have 2 providers and 1 indexer. Haven’t had much issue finding things. It’s actually my primary source for most things. Easier than torrents.

What services do you use? I’ve been wanting to try it

This is weird. I tried Eweka like a year ago, when starting out with usenet and testing different providers / indexers. I'm not sure whether I was able to download even a single file - almost everything was failing due to missing articles. I ended up staying with Frugal Usenet where the missing articles were much less of a problem during my tests. What could be the reason considering the data here shows Eweka is just amazing?

Viable is a broad term.

I use a single provider and multiple indexers, and it is an objectively better experience when compared to torrents. Very fast downloads and I almost always find what I am looking for. For old or esoteric stuff, I rely on Internet Archive or YouTube.

I do hit an infrequent failed attempt but that is due to me relying on a single provider/backbone.

Long and short, usenet is viable and convenient for me than torrents and paid streaming and gaming subscriptions.

This is just a guess, but all Usenet providers get copyright requests. Some are slow at deleting and some are fast Eweka is probably fsst which is why a lot was missing. For very old files it doesn't matter since most don't get copyright requests for them.

Yeah Usenet is cheaper than netflix and much better than torrents for a lot of content.

Ah, I see, thanks for the explanation!

IIRC, my setup came from Dr. Frankenstein’s self hosting blog. I have accounts a newshosting, nzbgeek, & nzbplanet.

For every selected segment, the test used the NNTP ARTICLE command to request the actual article body, rather than relying only on STAT or HEAD, which can report metadata even when the body is gone.

Fuck the providers who do this. This is a disruptive behaviour. The author should name and shame and the community shouldn't use those servers.