Summer's over. I am eager to get back to this project, and to the
research that is behind my own interest in the history of the net.
One item I acquired during my brief foray looking for documents
about the net was a list of major events on usenet. The list,
appended below, was provided by Brad Templeton (who is on this list)
and he has agreed to let me release it to the list. I thought that
it might be a good way to open up a new round of discussion about
the het's history.
I include Brad's original comments here and ask the same question.
If there's something missing or out of order in the list, let's talk
about it. Once we have a pretty complete list then we can try to
fill in descriptions of those events. At that point we should have
a pretty good collective history archive that people can use as a
base for more detailed research.
Thanks,
bj
-->From looking!brad@watmath.waterloo.edu Mon Jun 25 18:47 PDT 1990 Subject: Re: Usenet history
Here's a list of topics for a history of the net. Not all these are in the right order. I haven't included everything here. If you know an event that's not super-specific to a group, and you think was of prominent importance to the structure of the net, MAIL that to me.
The human-nets digest on the arpanet The uucp program The A-news system (Bellovin, Truscott) The first newsgroups "fa" groups "net." groups The mistake of net.general 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) Decvax and Bill Shannon's contribution 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 net.columbia and naming debates The emergence of voting for creating newsgroups Notesfiles (?) 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) 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 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 This only touches some groups. Other groups all have their histories of battles, common questions, hoaxes, problem users and attempts to split the group. Groups that probably deserve a section are: sf-lovers (with drwho and startrek) women men sources (of various sorts) binaries (of various sorts) unix groups music.misc politics, philosophy and religion .. and many others .. news.*
Plus chapters on: Groups that never made it UUPC, Xenix and the arrival of small machines Acroynyms, Culture and smileys Usenix and USENET
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16