I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here. The majority of newsgroups - such as the fabled alt.fan.furry - a) existed before web-based forums (indeed, most before the Web itself), and b) were by default non-moderated, beyond what filtering you or your news server provider did - typically your ISP. (Corporate newsgroups could be an exception, and there's multi-part FAQs about cancel messages, but nonetheless...)
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here. The majority of newsgroups - such as the fabled alt.fan.furry - a) existed before web-based forums (indeed, most before the Web itself), and b) were by default non-moderated, beyond what filtering you or your news server provider did - typically your ISP. (Corporate newsgroups could be an exception, and there's multi-part FAQs about cancel messages, but nonetheless...)