I have the same response, more or less. Loved usenet, and miss it, but don't know it would actually compare well to reddit or even other forum software. I think the amount of traffic in usenet was smaller, the groups were smaller, and far less nasty actors.

I think worshipping Usenet is just a simple case of rose-tinted glasses. Like people telling how awesome old OSs and applications were in the 90s ;)