Because it's a cultural artifact, of its time. It's history. And some people would like to be able to read it, or do other things with it.
Personally I'd like to be able to link to my own posts from that time, for when people asked me what I used to do. But I can't find them any more.
These groups are mostly not code. They are conversations, design discussions, ideological discussions, jokes, that sort of thing.
Like what we have now in social media, except back then there was pretty much only Usenet, and it had a very different feel than the current social networks.
They are where things ideas like the smiley, and free and open source software, and utopian ideas of internet culture were developed. All the early internet memes. And of course all the knowledge people shared.
Conducted in public at the time and thought to be archived for the long term.
Wonder what people will think in a hundred years when they read that everyone believed the universe was made up almost entirely of invisible and intangible matter? It'll be some future generation's flat earth joke.
Personally I'd like to be able to link to my own posts from that time, for when people asked me what I used to do. But I can't find them any more.
These groups are mostly not code. They are conversations, design discussions, ideological discussions, jokes, that sort of thing.
Like what we have now in social media, except back then there was pretty much only Usenet, and it had a very different feel than the current social networks.
They are where things ideas like the smiley, and free and open source software, and utopian ideas of internet culture were developed. All the early internet memes. And of course all the knowledge people shared.
Conducted in public at the time and thought to be archived for the long term.