Let me suggest a few things.
The human-nets digest on the arpanet
human-nets and sf-lovers were both equally important.
The uucp program
The A-news system (Bellovin, Truscott)
"NET." newsgroups.
The January 1980 Usenix conference when Duke invited sites to join Usenet.
Early help from Bell Labs site "research" as the first cross-country link.
Publicity spurs growth of the net (Horton)
The first newsgroups
"fa" groups
"net." groups
i.e. the renaming of NET to be net
The mistake of net.general
Creation of first nontechnical newsgroups: net.jokes and net.rumor
Creating groups by typo or whim - net.joke, net.bizarre, net.flame, net.gdead
net.wobegon and others
Net goes international (Canada) (Spencer, Templeton)
The B news software (Horton, Glickman)
Pathalias software (Honeyman)
(I think pathalias came later, and was written by Bellovin.)
Decvax and Bill Shannon's contribution
The first used car ad probably belongs in here somewhere.
Imminent death of net predicted
Chain letters over the net.
AT&T's contribution (allegra, ihnp4 etc.)
Widespread net growth and international growth
Forged article critical of Unix (1981)
K News (proposal)
Domain style naming (Postel et al)
The net.jokes.q creation and deletion
Formation of the "Backbone"
net.women.only experiment
Arpa mailing lists merge with usenet groups.
Subgroups to divert traffic:
net.startrek, net.abortion, source code discussion
Imminent death of net predicted
Hoaxes etc. (kremvax)
The re-emergence of mailing lists
The UUCP Project (Horton et al)
net.columbia and naming debates
The emergence of voting for creating newsgroups
Notesfiles (?)
Notesfiles were around before Netnews at U of I - they belong after "uucp prog"
RN & Kill files (Wall)
News batching and compression
Checkgroups messages (Spafford)
THe problems with the old releases of B news
Line Eater Bug
Moderated newsgroups
mod.announce
mod.newprod and commercial information on the net
netnews software implemented on VM (IBM Mainframes)
Stargate (Weinstein)
NSA Baiting in messages
Imminent death of net predicted
Big Net personal fights
some result in lawsuit threats (Mark Ethan Smith)
some result in people being bounced temporarily from the net (Maroney)
some result in people being removed permanently.
The great renaming (Horton)
Actually, Rick Adams was the prime force behind this.
The merging of moderated groups into the hierarchy.
The decline in propagation for groups outside of "comp" and "news"
Creation of rec.humor.funny (first ultra-moderated non-mailing-list) (Templeton)
Battle over the expiry dates on rec.mag.otherrealms. (Von Rospach)
The attempt to form comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac. (Webber)
Monthly postings, newuser group, commonly asked questions.
Imminent death of net predicted
The misnaming of soc.culture.china -> 30 day voting time.
Attempt to remove talk.bizarre from the net for the "VOLUME,VOLUME,VOLUME" game.
"jj@portal" (Rob Noha) begs for money on the net.
General problems with Portal, and the issue of pay-for-access net sites.
Attempts to form groups for drugs and sex.
Creation of the "alt" hierarchy.
UUCP project and .US domain. (Gilmore, Horton)
Arbitron news statistics (Reid)
Imminent death of net predicted
Telebit releases the Trailblazer.
UUNET arrives (Adams) (Seismo fades)
Internet & TCP/IP begins to pervade the net. The backbone begins to fade.
NNTP causes news to propagate too fast.
PC-Pursuit
Reliable links to Europe
Crazy creation of groups in the alt hierarchy. (Weiner)
alt.gourmand kepr rather than being renamed. (Reid)
AT&T decides not to forward mail.
"biz" and "inet" hierarchies. "Gnu" hierarcy.
Imminent death of net predicted
comp.sys.next violates voting rules
AT&T complains about source code on Killer, shuts it off temporarily(?)
comp.binaries.ibm.pc goes to 8 megs/month, gets moderated in first
(and only) moderator election. (Dhesi)
The forming of comp.society.women (proposed as comp.women) (Roberts)
Oct/88 Internet Worm (perhipheral to usenet)
Nov/88 The battle over rec.humor.funny (Templeton, Richmond)
C News (Spencer, Collyer)
NN (actually started earlier)
B News 3.0 (Raymond)
alt.fusion, sci.physics.fusion
More rec.humor.funny -- Jokebook, Expansion to GEnie, Denninger's vote
Aquaria alt, rec, sci (sci.skeptic?)
Battles about naming, Australian voting etc.
shareware on usenet
flow mapping
bitnet merging into USENET, more newsreaders etc.
more moderator copyright (telecom, sci.med.aids)
June 89/ClariNet
In Moderation Network
More forgery
alt.sex, alt.sex.bondage and "Cindy's Torment" -- cutoff at U of T, etc.
AlterNet, NYSERNET/PSI, NSFNet, FARRnet
Confiscation of USENET sites involved with phrack.
EUNet and its policies (pay for feed, limit feed, not all groups)
rec.arts.erotica
Alt explosion more alt bannings, rise of alt.sex
trial newsgroups
USENET over 10 megs/month
Surely you mean over 10 megs/day. It's about 12.5 now.
BIFF and further use of forgery
Alt.sex becomes #1 read USENET group
comp.unix.sco -- debate over corporations and the net (yet again)
June 90/"Internet Porno Ring"/Houston Chronicle
General comment: the volume of Netnews (in MB/day) has doubled every year
since Usenet was started, and it shows no signs of letting up.
Mark
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16