I disagree that existing NNTP clients are clunky. If anything, I find existing web forum software clunky. SSC is my go-to example because it's where I ended up in the diaspora fallout

I completely agree that comments on SSC and other blogs are incredibly annoying. I would participate far more in those comment threads if they used something like LW/reddit. I would happily pay money to make it so, but there's no cause I can donate to that would replace all Wordpress blogs in the world with reddit, or even with something halfway decent like Disqus.

I also think pre-Web discussion systems did some things better than LW/reddit. My own experience is with 90s email, not usenet, but I think they were fairly similar. On the other hand, there are important innovations like editing, voting, and moderation, which classic email and usenet lack. So just going back to one of those systems isn't a solution in itself. And while user features should be located at the client when possible, these particular features can't work unless all clients communicate about them, at which point they become protocol extensions - and everyone is forced or at least strongly encouraged to use on the few clients that support your community's favorite extensions, removing much of the value of a client-neutral protocol.