>items, but the first two to be added were the "Frequently asked
>questions" by Jerry Schwarz and Chuq's "Netiquette" article. You
>might try to find them and ask the dates.
A note on the Netiquette document. It was one of the earliest (and if you
ask me a very successful) experiments in groupware. It was a document by
consensus with about 30 people throwing email around and working up various
pieces. I'm not sure I was as much writer as coordinator, although the final
draft was worked up by me.
I find it amusing that it is now six+ years old and is still relevant after
all the changes to USENET with only minor revisiion. I know of three
attempts to 'update' the thing since that time, either by people or groups.
In all cases, we ended up using the original. That is, IMHO, damn fine
writing (and a great example of what this net CAN be when it pulls together
instead of fighting...)
>>> (BT) Hoaxes etc. (kremvax)
>Ask Piet @ eunet.eu.net about this one. He was the author. 1987?
>Chuq did the April Fools forgery of me warning about forgeries --
>still one of my favorites.
That's also one of my favorites. I have a copy -- I can reuse it EVERY year
and it's still funny.
I was also the person who posted the official notice of the termination of
the Annual April Fools Day contest for Greg Woods in 89 (cancelled for lack
or anything worth parodying -- itself an editorial comment). And the person
who posted the "First International Conference on Secure Information" for
Dennis Ritchie in 1988 (the *first* reference to my private organization,
Fictional Reality...). And the person who posted the notice for Mark Horton
about the "failure of the great renaming" (this was just after the Great
renaming was finished, and Mark announced that the Backbone had decided the
Great Renaming was a failure and we were going to go and name everything
*back*. That one probably had the highest return of "You're kidding!"
messages from folks who both believed and refused to believe...).
I am not, for the record, the idiot who posted the "James Tiptree" hoax in
SF-lovers. That was Brad Templeton, and probably needs to be noted, since it
travelled well beyond the net into various areas of fandom *and* got back to
the heirs of the estate and both pissed them off royally and made them
miserable. A commentary on how we can hose out lives of folks far removed
from computers if we aren't careful.
One quick note on the Great Renaming. It actually started up about 18 months
early when I brought up the idea. I fought and argued it for about a year
before finally giving up in disgust (this was my second Grand Retirement,
the first being, if I remember properly, after the net.wobegon wars). It sat
for a few months while people chewed on it and then Rick and Spaf brought it
back to life, cleaned it up a lot and got people to buy off on it. (this is
not an untypical situation on USENET: someone comes up with an idea, because
it's different it gets ripped to shreds, then later someone else revives (or
indepenedently thinks it up) and since it's no longer new and different has
a chance of implementing it. There was a while when it really frustrated the
hell out of me. Now I realize it's a matter of helping the net assimilate
concepts so they can deal with it -- so I tend to throw out lots of ideas to
the winds (or did, now that I'm in my final Grand Retirement. This time for
sure) and maybe someone will take it up or maybe not. Things definitely work
better when the group mind chews it up and spits out a consensus opinion
than when one person tries to do it alone, something I wish I'd understood
long ago...)
>>> (BT) The re-emergence of mailing lists
>The mailing lists never went away, really.
True. At some point (and I really don't remember why) I started the usenet
list of mailing lists. Later on, during one of my many retirements I handed
it over to Spaf. (someone in c.s.mac recently called me the "Frank Sinatra
of USENET" -- not inappropriately. I'd rather be the Robert Silverberg of
USENET, but what the heck).
>(it net.motss in this list somewhere as a milestone?)
You know, in the current environment of alt.sex.graphics.very.explicit,
doesn't our paranoia over the name of net.motss seem just a bit silly and
anachronistic? (just as an aside).
>>> (BT) The problems with the old releases of B news
>Continued at least into 1989 when I would get error messages when
>creating new moderated groups.
There are still problems here. One is trying to convert a moderated group to
an unmoderated one (which as far as I know I'm the only person to have done
so with comp.text.desktop). It's a great way to get inundated by thousands
of mail messages at the old moderators mailbox, since lots of machines
ignore it. An interesting form of sabotage for USENET (hope you don't mind
me mentioning it) might be to simply send out newgroups turning every group
moderated some day. I'm not sure whether the net would ever completely
straighten it out. Anyone for Grand Renaming II?
>The idea for the top level hierarchies I believe came from Mel
>Pleasant at the Usenix meeting. I remember we decided the names of
>all the hierarchies at that time except for misc or rec, which Rick
>added later.
I think the one added later was talk. Talk was the only top-level domain
added specifically to allow admins to not carry groups -- the pariah groups.
This was done (if I remember correctly) because it was a lot easier than
simply trying to make them go away.
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16