Basically, when the Usenet first started out, it truly was without
form, central control, and overall direction. It grew for a very long
time without much guidance. As people connected to the net, they did
so in an ad hoc manner, without any central registration.
However, it became apparent as time went on that some knd of structure
would need to be imposed on namespaces -- both names of sites and
names of groups. Various people stepped in to do this voluntarily,
and several different approaches were tried (the UUCP mapping project,
trial.* newsgroups, alt.* groups, my list, the backbone 'cabal', etc).
Some of these methods succeeded, some did not. Some evolved.
Today, we have a structure without explicit central control or
guidance. There are several de-facto points of control, however. One
of these is the group creation process and the person (or committee)
behind news.announce.newusers. Another is Erik Fair managing the inet
groups. Another is Brad Templeton runing clarinet. There is also me
with my regular postings, uunet carrying everything, and the people
managing some of the other alternate hierarchies.
In philosophy, the Usenet is still unstructured and without central
guidance. In fact, we have developed consensual guideposts and
"leaders of the nonce," all of which help guide the progression of the
net.
The changeover has been mostly gradual, but can be traced back to the
earlier days of the Usenet.
It is not clear that a full awareness of the nature of the Usenet is
required either to participate in it or to guide it. This is true of
many human endeavors -- sometimes we just have a little vision and a
set of principles, and collectively we progress.
--spaf
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16