Peter, I was also a user of Newsgroups in the late 80's and with dial up connection and some of the large groups around, it was a lot more difficult than it is with forums like this. There was also very little moderation and regulation, so it was almost a case of anything goes on some of the groups..
Those were the days, eh? Dialling up on a 1200 baud modem, I used to spend a lot of time on comp.databases which was very civilised, but you're right, some of the flamewars especially on the alt groups were pretty spectacular.
