</me adopts old man post>
This was usenet, young man. If I recall correctly, I set up the group alt.autos.alfa-romeo in 1999. I was working for ClaraNET at the time, and newsgroup creation was interestingly arcane.
Forum software was very very poor at the time, and before AOL created the September that never ended, using a dedicated news reader had (and frankly still would have) *huge* advantages in high traffic, complex discussion.
a.a.a-r was never high traffic, but it made us happy. uk.rec.motorcycles was another group I was involved in. That was the highest traffic, non binary newsgroup for a long old time. It was known as the fount of all wisdom, and used to be the top hit if you googled that phrase.
But all things must pass. September started and never stopped. People stared thinking that Internet Explorer was somehow the internet and wanted everything through a browser. So we sacrificed functionality for convenience.
I follow the knowledge, and you know my views and the debt I feel I owe to SportsMaserati. I do hope that the SportsAlfa crowd can do the same here
C