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Joe Bernstein

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Jan 19, 2002, 10:42:17 PM1/19/02
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This post is the first in a thread devoted to the history of some
Usenet newsgroups. I will post thirteen more posts in this thread
this weekend, most of which are summaries of results to date for the
years 1980 to 1986 and for the hierarchies NET.*, net.*, fa.*, and
mod.*. In the future, I hope to post such preliminary posts for the
remaining years to date, and for the Big 8 hierarchies, if possible
also to this thread. This post is primarily meant to ensure that
people who want to select or kill the entire thread can easily do so.

Unfortunately, this is the *fourth* copy of this post that I've
posted now, and at least one of the previous three copies seems
to have propagated. I'm sorry; I tried to cancel each as quickly
as I could.[1] At any rate, as I noted in a followup to one of the
others, this post - the one that mentions the others up front -
is the one I will in fact attach the next thirteen posts to.

Anyway. Having to post this post, I can also say something about
sources, methods, sources, and the resulting website.

SOURCES

The first three stages of this project deal chronologically with
1980-86, 1987-93, and 1994-2002, more or less. So do the second
three. The difference is that the first three are a "rough draft",
based on an extremely restricted set of evidence, while the second
three, if I ever manage to do them, will be based on a much richer
body of sources. You can get a hint of the difference by contrasting
the 1980-81 year summary, or the fa.* hierarchy summary, in this
thread, with the other year or hierarchy summaries.

The restricted set of evidence for this and the next two stages
consists primarily of normative lists of newsgroups. Since early
1983, these lists have taken two major forms: Lists of Active
Newsgroups, and Checkgroups Messages. For the period covered by this
stage, the List of Active Newsgroups is *much* more informative than
the Checkgroups Message, and I've preferred it wherever possible.
There is a rough line of descent and precursors to the List of Active
Newsgroups going back to December, 1981; I've considered some
"list-like" materials that are earlier (and am posting most of these
in this thread, the only source materials I'm so posting). The List
of Active Newsgroups spawned an additional List of Moderators in late
1984, and because neither it nor the Checkgroups Message at that time
indicated whether a group was moderated, I've incorporated the Lists
of Moderators into my dataset for this stage. (This in turn makes it
possible to track who moderated which groups, so I'll probably keep it
up for stages two and three.)

METHODS

I've used these materials, most of which I've gotten from Google's
archives (exceptions are noted where relevant), as follows. I've
downloaded the so-called "original format" version of each post, and
then used the "Concatenate Files" feature of BBEdit Lite 4.6 for
Macintosh to consolidate the posts into quarterly packages (Lists of
Active Newsgroups, or failing these, Checkgroups Messages in one
package, Lists of Moderators in the other, for each quarter). I
mention this because "Concatenate Files" is not perfectly reliable; I
believe the only damage it's done to the files in question here is to
insert a space at the beginnings of the second and subsequent posts,
but I could be wrong. Anyway, I've then read through each list,
noting every group it lists in a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel 5.0a
for Macintosh, using a set of symbols vaguely reminiscent of active
files in INN: y for an unmoderated group and m for a moderated one;
an additional g for a gatewayed group; brackets for any unusual
circumstances (for example, [m] could mean the group is in the List of
Moderators but not the List of Active Newsgroups, or it could,
contrariwise, mean that it's in both but has no moderator); asterisk
for any definite change (this added only when beginning the
summaries). While noting each list I've been unable to *see* the
previous one (which is why the asterisks are later), but of course
I've been able to *remember* how it went to some extent.

The spreadsheets, in turn, are my principal sources for the year and
hierarchy summaries, although I did the year summaries first, and used
them as additional tools (in a minor way) in doing the hierarchy
summaries. In doing the year and especially the hierarchy summaries,
I also dug around to varying degrees (usually in Google's archives);
I've usually provided full details about other posts that contributed
information only when those posts are relevant to several groups.

The possibilities of human error, with these methods, are significant.
Feel free to check my work, on the group of your choice, or if you're
a diff wizard, on the whole lot. Almost everything's at Google, and
everything's at my website (see below on that), so you certainly *can*
check, and I'd appreciate knowing about any mistakes.

SOURCES

Most of my sources are these posts, detailed in the year summaries to
follow. (I've used a bunch of 1987 lists in the mod.* and net.*
summaries, but haven't yet written a 1987 year summary; the raw lists,
however, are available at the website. It's worth mentioning that two
of the 1987 Lists of Active Newsgroups I've used, for March 16 and
April 1, have last-modified lines pointing to Jeff Forys, who is
otherwise almost invisible in Google's archives.) I have, however,
especially (but not only) in the historical rather than rawly
chronological parts of the summaries, relied considerably on other
works, which I'd like to mention here because I know I didn't
consistently mention them in the posts that follow.

The most important previous historical works on Usenet for my purposes
were those by Ronda Hauben and Lee Bumgarner. Hauben's main relevant
work is chapter 10 of the "e-book" by her and Michael Hauben titled
<Netizens>. This chapter discusses the early history of Usenet, and
manages to mention surprisingly many of the most interesting bits of
information available when Hauben wrote. An appendix also provides
independent evidence as to Google's handling of the early archive
material from the University of Toronto, Google's main if not only
source for the years covered here. The most recent version, dating to
either October 15, 1995 or June 12, 1996, is available on the Web as
plain text at <http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x10>. (The book's
main home page is at <http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/>, which
is the recommended page to link to since lower filenames might
hypothetically change.)

Lee Bumgarner's relevant work is his "Great Renaming FAQ". As best I
can tell, while he used previous writings to some extent, Bumgarner
mainly wrote on the basis of comments from the people who were
involved (originally a thread from comp.society.folklore; later, also
comments sent to him and correspondence that resulted). I've used the
FAQ very little in composing the actual posts in this thread, and I've
corrected at least one mistake in it, but my understanding of the
later part of the period, the part Hauben doesn't cover much, derives
at root from Bumgarner's account. He did, to my knowledge, two main
drafts. The first is the widely disseminated draft available, at its
prettiest, at <http://www.vrx.net/usenet/history/rename.html>. The
second is at the author's website, at
<http://www.mindspring.com/~bumgarls/netstuff.htm>, among other
places. I normally mean the second draft where I refer to the FAQ
(explicitly or not) in the posts that follow; I refer to "both
versions" at least once.

Speaking of vrx.net, then. I know of three major archives of
materials related to Usenet's history.

First: The most important archive is that compiled by Bruce Jones,
whose own ostensible subject was an "ethnography" of Usenet, but who
wound up doing tons of necessary work on history. He connected Google
with the Toronto archives (after making the first year or so of those
archives available himself for a long time; this is the "A-News
Archive" I mention in some of these posts). He also organised a
mailing list of many of the important early Usenet players, the
Usenet.Hist mailing list, which lasted from 1990 to 1997, and which is
both Hauben's and my own most important non-Usenet source. See
<http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Usenet.Hist/Nethist/> for this
list's HTMLised archives. For other materials Jones used to make
available, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Second: Henry Edward Hardy, author of a fairly elementary historical
account of the nets (an important source for Bumgarner, but often
unreliable), has archived lots of material, some of which derives from
Bruce Jones, some of which doesn't. (In particular, he provides the
first few years of the Usenet.Hist mailing list archive in plain text
form, and he has digested the single biggest thread, comments on Brad
Templeton's rough list of Usenet historical events, into a single
object.) See <http://www.ocean.ic.net/library/comp/usenet/>. Hardy's
own history is at <http://www.ocean.ic.net/library/hhardy/nethist.html>.

Third: Two significant excerpts from the Usenet.Hist archives seem to
be the rest of what <http://www.vrx.net/usenet/history/> offers,
besides the Great Renaming FAQ draft 1.

Although I've used very few printed sources so far, I should mention
some. Most important, while I've had relatively little reason to cite
it directly, Janet Abbate's <Inventing the Internet> (Cambridge, MA
and London: The MIT Press, c 1999) has been invaluable in filling in
stuff I might've learnt years ago but didn't. Abbate is a serious
historian whose approach is sort of socio-technological; that is, she
discusses the technology of networks, but largely in relation to what
the relevant people (individually and collectively) were trying to do,
wanted to do, or wound up doing by accident. The book is short and
reasonably readable, and I recommend it enthusiastically.

Second, <The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems
Worldwide> by John S. Quarterman (Digital Press, c 1990). This is an
exhaustive account of networks of all kinds existing as of date of
writing or prior to that date, which makes it in principle a *most*
desirable book. But I've caught Quarterman in at least one definite
error (see the NET.* post, sv NET.test) concerning Usenet - although
he was a Usenet moderator in the early days, as his website boasts
(see the mod.* post, sv mod.std.unix) - and I'm not confident in what
he says about ARPAnet either, so ... ? But at the very least, his
bibliography shows promise of being invaluable when I get to doing
more thorough work; the bibliography related to Usenet is in pp.
272-275.

A citation for the third printed source I should mention is one thing
I did, anyway, get from Quarterman. When I first went looking in 1997
for lists of newsgroups, in order to do this project, I found one in a
magazine, whose source I didn't note. It's in one of my spreadsheets
as the "SF server", May 1983, but not in the summary posts, because
the list is a list of active newsgroups at a server which turned out
to be carrying only a small proportion of the official groups (along
with a bunch of typo groups). Anyway, I strongly suspect the source
is cited by Quarterman: "USENET: A Bulletin Board for UNIX Users" by
Sandra L. Emerson, in <BYTE>, vol. 8, no. 10, October 1983, pp.
219-236.

This brings me to excluded lists. As far as I know, two lists of
newsgroups were posted to Usenet in the years covered in the following
posts, which I didn't use here just as I didn't use (in my summaries)
the San Francisco server's list. The first dates to June 6, 1983, and
was posted by someone at a Bell Telephones site with a complaint about
the number of typo groups; the second dates to March 5, 1984, and was
posted by Henry Spencer, being the actual active file at that date for
the University of Toronto's utzoo site, the source for the A-News and
Google archives. I'm planning to use lists like these for the second
set of stages of the research, in which I try to move beyond the
"official" lists, but for this stage, the official lists are as much
as I can handle. Both of these excluded lists (unlike the one Sandra
Emerson printed) are available at my website, and not bundled into the
quarterly packages.

WEBSITE AND A THANK YOU

Oh, yes, my website.

<http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/>

or if your device of choice does DNS lookups wrong (it's not a
personal criticism; some of mine do too)

<http://stanley.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/>

offers the spreadsheets (in comma-separated value form), the quarterly
packages, and some of the other posts referred to below, as well as
copies of the summary posts themselves, among other things.

Finally, the reason I could bring this project even this far in
2001-2002, which I couldn't in 1997, is that Google has taken the
trouble to put the Toronto and other archives up for public use at
last. I think this move is unlikely to bring them significant profit,
and predecessors consistently failed even to attempt it. At best,
they get some publicity and goodwill from it; hence the frequent
references by name in these posts, and hence my heartfelt thanks.

May all this be some use. I've taken some trouble (putting it
mildly![1]) to be able to post this to Usenet, and not just dump it on
my website, so I mean it when I say that I welcome contributions,
comments, and criticisms.

Joe Bernstein

[1] For the terminally curious. No, I can't really tell the world why
I had to cancel the first three posts without making their cancellation
futile, but I *can* tell you that they were my first three attempts to
post using a newsreader I installed today *and* a news server I first
posted from today. I *did* try using misc.test.moderated, but that
group seems to be dead. These posts would be coming from Google, had I
not gotten impatient with the new newsreader and switched to YA-NW for
an unrelated post, halfway through. As things are, I can only pray I'm
not missing something *else*...

--
Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com
http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 10:59:44 PM1/19/02
to
Lists of newsgroups were first posted, as best I can determine, in
late 1981, roughly two years after Usenet began.

There is much evidence that these lists were intended to be in some
sense "official" from an early date. I see little sign that the
posters merely wanted to inform Usenet users of the range of groups
available; rather, each of them explicitly advocated listing as a
means of centralising authority over newsgroup creation and carriage.
Both the informational and the authoritative roles of the lists appear
to have met with approval early on - not unanimous approval, but still
plenty of it - as you will find if you do searches on their authors'
names in appropriate groups.

This post begins a series in which I summarise such information
available from these lists, and from certain allied posts, as
contributes toward a chronology of Usenet newsgroups.

At this time, I intend to confine my overall chronological work to the
Usenet hierarchies often seen as "official", and covered by these
lists - in chronological order, NET.* (1979-c. 1981); net.* (the c.
1981-1987 version); fa.* (from 1981 to 1985); mod.* (the 1984-1987
version); talk.*; misc.*, sci.*, soc.*; comp.*, news.*, rec.*; and
humanities.*. (I don't yet know whether these lists also covered the
trial.* hierarchy, which will determine whether I attempt to.) This
doesn't mean I intend to confine this project to "official" groups,
that is, groups in these lists, but the lists are in fact my starting
point. As it happens, there are lists of newsgroups in some other
hierarchies from later years, but at this time I don't intend to
pursue this project into other hierarchies. (For three reasons.
First, I doubt there's adequate archival support for this sort of
research on other hierarchies - this holds particularly for
non-English-language hierarchies. This is my main reason for not
attempting most other hierarchies. Second, in some hierarchies, most
obviously alt.*, newsgroup lists are intrinsically less trustworthy
anyway. Third, generalising from the second reason, it strikes me as
inherently wrong-headed, missing the point, to try to enumerate alt.*
groups systematically, although the history of specific alt.* groups
or sub-hierarchies does interest me.)

At *this* time, in any event, I'm confining my results posting mostly
to what can be learnt from the lists of newsgroups, and their two main
offspring, checkgroups messages and lists of moderators. At a later
date, I intend to add evidence from other sources (notably control
messages, first or oldest surviving posts, and FAQs) to produce more
rounded chronological pictures. But my record for follow-through on
net-related projects is fairly poor, so I wanted to start presenting
the first-stage results now, rather than wait for more "final" ones.

The summaries I'm posting here take two forms. In this post and
others, I proceed chronologically, list by list. In a separate set of
posts in the same thread, I proceed hierarchically, group by group.
This approach is focused on net-wide events such as the removal of
entire hierarchies; the other approach is focused on group-specific
issues. (In particular, if you don't know what some of the groups
listed below were about, *please* find them in the appropriate
hierarchy summary, rather than post to ask. I *do* include newsgroup
descriptions for each group in the hierarchy summaries.)

This initial series of postings covers the years 1980 to 1986, and the


hierarchies NET.*, net.*, fa.*, and mod.*.

My second series of chronological postings, which I may not be able to
post in the same thread, will cover 1987 to 1993 or 1994 (the years of
the "Big 7"). I'm not yet sure whether I'll offer incomplete
hierarchy summaries for the Big 7 in the second series. I have some
reason to think that the second series will work from considerably
smaller data sets than this first series, but am not yet persuaded
that this is true, so I have no estimate as yet for when the second
series of postings will appear.

My third series of chronological postings, which will definitely
coincide with a set of hierarchy summaries as well, will cover the Big
8 years 1994 to 2002. However, I know of no lists of newsgroups for
1997, early 1998, late 2000, or 2001, so the third series will offer
considerably worse granularity than the first two. I *may* have a
paper copy of a list from around August 1997, which I used in
producing the "List of Inactive Newsgroups", but do know for certain
that I erased the copy I had kept on computer. The list I have for
January 2nd, 2002 is a list I made myself. If anyone else has
homemade lists from these dark periods, please let me know.

Joe Bernstein


List of Newsgroups Distributed in 1980

An A-News distribution plausibly claimed as that provided at the
Delaware Usenix of the summer of 1980 is available online, and
includes various files dated June 5, 1980 or thereabouts. One of
those files names a set of newsgroups. This could simply be a minimal
auto-subscribe list, so to speak, but I have various reasons for
thinking it is actually complete.

Added: NET.general, NET.v7bugs, NET.news.

These groups were evidently renamed to, respectively, net.general,
net.v7bugs, and net.news at some time between November 11, 1980 and
May 11, 1981.

For a much more detailed discussion with full evidence, please see the
followup post with Subject line "Early lists of newsgroups".

Summary: 3 NET.* groups.


Lists of Newsgroups Made or Posted in 1981

MARK HORTON

"network name change is in effect"
May 12, 1981
net.general
Google Message-ID: anews.Aucbvax.1340
(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

This is the announcement of the creation of the fa.* hierarchy. Note
that the groups in the hierarchy had already existed as NET.* groups;
this post merely announces their renaming. I'm not entirely clear on
the matter, but it's my impression from available evidence that at the
time of this post Mark Horton was still involved in the gatewaying of
the relevant groups from the ArpaNet; thus, I'm inclined to take this
post as truly representing the creation of the hierarchy. Note that
there is archived discussion (search on "fa" or "renaming") from the
preceding day, concerning this (at that time not yet executed)
renaming.

It is not, by intent, primarily a list of newsgroups, but since it
does include a list of the relevant groups, it can be used as such.
It covers, however, the fa.* hierarchy only. Since this is the first
list, all groups listed are here shown as "Added".

I haven't found any comparable post listing the groups renamed from
NET.* to net.*, unfortunately; my guess would be that this renaming
occurred before the archives begin, but I'd be pleased to find
otherwise. (It's sheer luck that we have this post, itself one of the
oldest in the archive.) Contradicting my guess, the list of
newsgroups in the old A-News Archive showed all hierarchies in capital
letters (i.e., FA.apollo, NET.applic); but this strikes me as probably
an anachronistic usage, since this post seems to assert that no FA.*
hierarchy ever actually existed. The original headers which could
settle the matter are not now available via Google, of course.

Added: fa.arpa-bboard, fa.info-cpm, fa.sf-lovers, fa.human-nets,
fa.info-terms, fa.info-micro, fa.arms-d, fa.energy, fa.unix-wizards,
fa.teletext, fa.home-sat.

Assumed still available: net.general, net.v7bugs, net.news.

Summary: From 0 to 11 fa.* groups, from 3 to [3] net.* groups, from 3
to 14 in all.


INFORMATION LOST

Two different respected Usenet participants posted, in 1995 and 1996,
a list of newsgroups existing in 1981, their copies of which they
traced to Steve Summit. See please

Joel Furr
"Early USENET"
April 28, 1995
comp.society.folklore
Message-ID: 3nq619$f...@shell1.best.com

which provides the date November 29, 1981, and

David Wright
"Re: What's a Cabal? (was Re: Can you mailbomb email spammers?)"
November 21, 1996
news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.groups
Message-ID: 572o9t...@bhars12c.bnr.co.uk

(Only the former is included in the relevant quarterly file at my
website.)

Although David Wright provides details on how the list got to him,
neither he nor Joel Furr provides further details on the list itself,
and no original Usenet posting of this list is archived at Google (or
elsewhere, to my knowledge). I have, therefore, no evidence as to who
compiled it or on what basis, nor where it was made available or with
what claims to authority. It could be simply a list of groups carried
at a single server (although most such lists in the early 1980s
included groups outside net.* and fa.*, such as "general" or "junk",
and this one doesn't). I can assert that it omits groups which
certainly existed by November 29, 1981 (such as net.periphs and
net.4bsd-bugs), but includes a group created November 13, 1981
(net.applic). I can also assert that it's minimally consistent with
the development of the official namespace, by which I mean that groups
on this list, that aren't on the next one, are groups that were in
fact renamed in between. It's worth noting that in the fall of 1981
there were a number of group creations that led to namespace debate -
net.chess, net.columbia, net.scuba, the sub-hierarchies net.bugs.*,
net.rec.* and net.sport.*, etc.; this is a plausible time for the idea
of listing newsgroups to gather steam, and not all such lists need
have been (or were) in any sense complete.

Added: fa.poli-sci, fa.telecom, fa.space, fa.tcp-ip, fa.unix-cpm,
fa.works, net.applic, net.columbia, net.eunice, net.games,
net.ham-radio, net.2bsd-bugs, net.vwrabbit.

Removed: fa.home-sat.

Summary: From 11 to 16 fa.* groups, from [3] to 10 net.* groups, from
14 to 26 in all.


MARK HORTON

The next post, which appears to be the oldest surviving Usenet post
with the primary purpose of listing newsgroups, is archived oddly in
Google; it's attached to another post. It's unclear to me whether the
archived post actually includes this post by original intention, or
Google simply screwed up, but I lean towards the latter. Anyway, here
are the real data:

"list of usenet newsgroups"
December 16, 1981
net.general
Google Message-ID: anews.Acbosgd.304
(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

Here is how I found it in the archive, however:

"infect: another funny manual page"
December 16, 1981
net.jokes
Google Message-ID: anews.Aeagle.169
(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

Regardless, there are several lines of evidence that this is a genuine
post by Mark Horton, not an extremely clever parody by the nameless
(and not visibly clever!) poster to net.jokes. Direct evidence: a
post definitely by Mark Horton a week later extensively quotes this
post (see below). Indirect evidence: other posts of his at this time
refer to the same degree of authority a post like this implies he
thought he had.

(Sigh. I'm using "authority" technically here, to indicate the
ability to get people to listen to you and do what you say in the
absence of force, in contrast to "power" - it's an anthropological
distinction, if you must know. His own phrase strikes me as apt:
"people seem to listen to me", from one or another of some rmgroup
flamewars sometime in 1982.)

This post does not appear to be textually ancestral to any later
lists, although it's pretty much incredible to me that the later
list-posters would not have read and indeed kept it. It's the only
list for a long time to come in which groups have no more than one
line of description (with exceptions for ARPAnet addresses for fa.*
groups). But the descriptions are extremely terse - they begin
halfway across the screen, much further than descriptions in later
lists. This is done partly to enable a hierarchical structure - all
net.* groups other than net.all are indented once, and third-level
groups are indented twice. (Third-level groups were a concept Mark
Horton had implemented for the first time a few days earlier, as best
I can tell.)

The list of groups is, again, conservative, though much less so than
the previous list; among the previously existing groups omitted are
quite a number which would appear on lists in the coming year, and so
were presumably not renegade groups in any way.

Added: all, fa.all, fa.digest-p, fa.editor-p, fa.info-vax,
fa.printers, general, net.all, net.auto.all, net.auto.vw,
net.aviation, net.bugs.all, net.bugs.2bsd, net.bugs.4bsd, net.bugs.u3,
net.bugs.v7, net.chess, net.cycle, net.games.rogue, net.jokes,
net.news.b, net.periphs, net.rec.all, net.rec.ski, net.rec.scuba,
net.rumor, net.sport.all, net.sport.baseball, net.sport.football,
net.sport.hockey, net.test, net.ucds.

Removed: fa.teletext, net.2bsd-bugs, net.v7bugs, net.vwrabbit.

Summary: From 16 to 20 fa.* groups, from 10 to 32 net.* groups, from
0 to 2 miscellaneous, from 11 to 54 in all. But note that the *.all
convention is not respected in later lists; of the relevant groups,
fa.all and net.all appear to be bogus (as do "all" and "general"),
while net.bugs.all, net.rec.all, and net.sport.all survived as
net.bugs, net.rec, and net.sport respectively. So I think there are
50 real groups in this list.


"proposed USENET policies"
December 23, 1981
net.news
Google Message-ID: anews.Acbosgd.794
(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

This is not, at core, a newsgroup list, but a proposal, probably the
oldest archived proposal, for a Great Renaming. Interestingly, it
provoked a thread in which all three major group creation systems the
"official" groups have experienced were proposed: Wm Leler put
forward the ad-hoc system of the early years, Mark Horton in this
message put forward something similar to the Backbone Cabal centred
system that followed, and Steve Bellovin proposed a system essentially
similar to the way the Big 8 now operate.

Anyway, since it *is* a proposal for a Great Renaming, it isn't
exactly foolproof evidence of the *existing* names of groups, but it
isn't far off, because the proposal was extremely simple, and because
Mark Horton used his previous post as the skeleton for it. On the
presumption that I've correctly identified the groups referred to,
here are the changes:

Added: net.jokes.q, net.movies, net.music. (It may be worth
mentioning that net.jokes.q was controversial - it appears to have
been meant for dirty jokes, or some such - and Mark Horton's actual
description line for it was "We drop this newsgroup" ! It did not, in
fact, appear on any subsequent lists. But net.music, about which he
was also sceptical, did make it.)

Removed: all, fa.all, general, net.all.

Summary: From 20 to 19 fa.* groups, from 32 to 34 net.* groups, from
2 to 0 miscellaneous, 53 total (none of them apparently bogus).


I know of no other newsgroup lists from 1981. Obviously, I'd like to.


--
Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com

http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:03:38 PM1/19/02
to
This is the pointer to alt.fan.dejanews that I told y'all I'd post.

As it turns out, I screwed up and posted four copies of the first post
related to the chronology. The one you want to select or kill on the
basis of, if you go to news.groups and care about this thread either
way, is the one this post follows up to (and that's why it's cross-
posted; apologies to news.groups readers...).

The contents of the thread are adequately detailed in previous posts of
mine to afd, so no more here.

Joe Bernstein

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:07:19 PM1/19/02
to

others, I proceed hierarchically, group by group. In a separate set
of posts in the same thread, I proceed chronologically, list by list.
This approach is focused on group-specific issues; the other approach


is focused on net-wide events such as the removal of entire

hierarchies. (In particular, if you want details about the newsgroup
lists referred to, *please* find them in the appropriate annual
summary, rather than post to ask. I *do* include several headers for
each list in those summaries.)

This initial series of postings covers the hierarchies NET.*, net.*,
fa.*, and mod.*, and the years 1980 to 1986.

My second series of chronological postings, which I may not be able to
post in the same thread, will cover 1987 to 1993 or 1994 (the years of
the "Big 7"). I'm not yet sure whether I'll offer incomplete
hierarchy summaries for the Big 7 in the second series. I have some
reason to think that the second series will work from considerably
smaller data sets than this first series, but am not yet persuaded
that this is true, so I have no estimate as yet for when the second
series of postings will appear.

My third series of chronological postings, which will definitely
coincide with a set of hierarchy summaries as well, will cover the Big
8 years 1994 to 2002. However, I know of no lists of newsgroups for
1997, early 1998, late 2000, or 2001, so the third series will offer
considerably worse granularity than the first two. I *may* have a
paper copy of a list from around August 1997, which I used in
producing the "List of Inactive Newsgroups", but do know for certain
that I erased the copy I had kept on computer. The list I have for
January 2nd, 2002 is a list I made myself. If anyone else has
homemade lists from these dark periods, please let me know.

Joe Bernstein


THE NET.* HIERARCHY

Usenet was originally invented as a more general communications medium
than it has since become, and early newsgroup lists include such
"groups" as to_duke (for e-mails, I think, from the listing server to
Duke University's self-named Usenet computer). It appears that NET.*
for net-wide groups was an integral part of this design from an early
date; the capital letters in NET.*, in fact, were in the early
software meant to show that the group was intended for wide
propagation, as opposed to the other "groups" I mentioned. But it's
entirely possible that something like "general", "test", or "to_duke"
was sooner implemented, or earlier posted to.

NET.general is attested as having existed by April 26, 1980, and is
generally believed to be the first newsgroup in the *modern* sense of
"newsgroup". Only three other NET.* groups are well-attested. Two of
these, NET.news and NET.v7bugs, both have first surviving posts from
mid-May, 1980, and this coincidence suggests to me that perhaps that
was when newsgroups for particular topics were invented.

There is a surviving post, presumably in the Google archives but not
yet found, that was present in the A-News Archives, under the heading
FA.unix-wizards, and dated April 7, 1981. I unfortunately did not
note this post's actual newsgroup - "FA.unix-wizards" should never
have been a real group name, from what I know, but it would be nice to
be sure. I *presume*, however, that the group was named
NET.unix-wizards, because on May 12, 1981, Mark Horton announced that
he had renamed the newsgroups containing gated mailing lists,
including "unix-wizards", from NET.* to fa.*.

There definitely were other NET.* groups; the first attestation of the
fa.* groups is Mark Horton's announcement that they had been renamed
from NET.*, May 12, 1981. There is a surviving post, also presently
inaccessible, dated January 21, 1981, to either NET.micro or
net.micro, depending on when the non-gated groups were renamed. But
none of these groups is attested by more than one piece of evidence.

Mark Horton is credited with spearheading the "lowercasing" of Usenet,
a credit made credible by the fact that it was Horton who announced
the lowercasing of fa.*. I am not, however, confident about this.

Most of the groups listed below are attested as NET.* groups *ONLY* by
Mark Horton's announcement, and so for further information on them
(and their importance to Usenet's early growth) you should see the
fa.* post.


GROUP BY GROUP

The majority of the following groups are ancestral to fa.* groups,
which is to say that they were based on gatewayed ARPAnet mailing
lists. This may or may not reflect the actual ratio of ARPAnet
gateways to non-gatewayed groups in the NET.* hierarchy. The November
29, 1981 list of newsgroups, the oldest one after the A-News
distribution of June 5, 1980, shows fa.* (the gatewayed groups) in a
clear majority, but omits several net.* (non-gatewayed) groups that
were established already by the time the archives now available at
Google became at all comprehensive (May 11, 1981). Nor have I yet
found any documentation of the renaming of groups from NET.* to net.*.
Finally, all subsequent newsgroups lists until Adam Buchsbaum's first
(November 21, 1982) strike me as demonstrably far from complete;
hence, in my opinion, any newsgroup that was on that list and whose
creation date is unknown is *potentially* old enough to have been a
NET.* group. In reality, the number of NET.* groups renamed into
net.* was probably not anywhere near so large; the question is how to
find out which net.* groups are really that old.

NET.arms-d
Renamed to fa.arms-d on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.arpa-bboard
Renamed to fa.arpa-bboard on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.energy
Renamed to fa.energy on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.general
This was undoubtedly the first NET.* newsgroup, and the earliest
post surviving that I know of is dated April 26, 1980 (see the
Usenet.Hist archive). The latest post surviving which was
definitely made under this newsgroup name is dated November 11,
1980 (see the Usenet.Hist archive).
NET.general was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News
distribution of around June 5, 1980.
Renamed to net.general at an undetermined date.

NET.home-sat
Renamed to fa.home-sat on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.human-nets
Renamed to fa.human-nets on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.info-cpm
Renamed to fa.info-cpm on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.info-micro
Renamed to fa.info-micro on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.info-terms
Renamed to fa.info-terms on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.micro
The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to NET.micro dated January
21, 1981, and announcing the group's creation. The A-News
Archive's ascription of posts to groups was inexact, and I didn't
note details, so can't attest to whether the group was really
named NET.micro or rather net.micro at that time; there is some
sign in the existing Google archives that the lowercasing of NET.*
was later than this, however.
The post in question has not yet been found in the Google archives,
although it's probably in there somewhere. As part of its header
conversion process, however, Google converted NET.* newsgroup
names to lower case, so the Google copy will not be evidence as to
when the lowercasing happened. (Compare the Google copy of the
November 11, 1980 post to NET.general with that in the Usenet.Hist
mailing list archive.)
Presumably renamed to net.micro at an undetermined date.

NET.news
The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to NET.news dated May 16,
1980, which may or may not have referred to the group's recent
creation. See NET.micro for further discussion; this post, like
the earliest post to NET.micro, has not yet been found.
NET.news was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News
distribution of around June 5, 1980.
It is otherwise unattested before its renaming to net.news, as far
as I know.
Several sources supply a list of the three earliest newsgroups which
doesn't include NET.news; see NET.test, below, on this. In a
nutshell, though, I'm pretty sure they're wrong.
Renamed to net.news at an undetermined date.

NET.sf-lovers
Renamed to fa.sf-lovers on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.teletext
Renamed to fa.teletext on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Otherwise unattested.

NET.test
The only attestation I know of for NET.test comes from a list of the
three earliest newsgroups which I've found, so far, in John
Quarterman's <The Matrix>, first edition, Digital Press, 1990, p.
244; in Tim Geller's article on the conflicts sparked by AOL's
arrival on Usenet, published in August 1995 in <The Net> magazine
but which I saw, without the magazine's edits, on his website, at
<http://www.tgeller.com/writing/past-writing/aol.shtml>; and,
credited to Tim Geller, in Lee Bumgarner's Great Renaming FAQ
(both major versions).
The newsgroup list contained in the A-News distribution of around
June 5, 1980 strikes me as categorical proof that the list
apparently traceable to Quarterman is wrong. There was, in the
June 5, 1980 distribution, a "test" newsgroup, which may be a
source for the mistake.
The oldest post to "NET.test" (more likely net.test, by date alone)
in the A-News Archive was dated July 10, 1981.
If NET.test ever existed, presumably it was renamed to net.test at
an undetermined date.

NET.unix-wizards
The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to FA.unix-wizards dated
April 7, 1981. See NET.micro for further discussion; this post,
like the earliest post to NET.micro, has not yet been found. The
name "FA.unix-wizards" was, as far as I know, never the name of an
actual newsgroup; while I didn't note for sure the newsgroup name
given in the post, I'd now bet that it was NET.unix-wizards.
Renamed to fa.unix-wizards on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.

NET.v7bugs
The earliest surviving posts to NET.v7bugs are a spate of posts by
Mark Horton dated May 18, 1980. At least some of these survive in
Google - see my post, Message-ID
<dbc8daca.02010...@posting.google.com>, for where to
find them - and in fact posts earlier than May 11, 1981, form
about a third of the posts Google ascribes to net.v7bugs. Google
did not retain the upper-case hierarchy name, however.
There is another post from Mark Horton, dated May 27, 1980,
explicitly to NET.v7bugs, in the Usenet.Hist archive.
NET.v7bugs was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News
distribution of around June 5, 1980.
The latest post explicitly to NET.v7bugs in the Usenet.Hist archive
is dated August 13, 1980, and is from Tom Truscott.
Renamed to net.v7bugs at an undetermined date.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:12:27 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's chronological posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the year 1981.

1982 saw the foundation of the series of lists of newsgroups that
would eventually become the core of the Big 8 newsgroup creation
process. Also, the "official" lists became much, much longer. There
is, unfortunately, an eight month gap between lists, during which this
expansion takes place; it will take further research to find out how
much of the expansion was the result of an actual increase in the
number of groups, and how much was due to changed attitudes on the
part of list-posters.

Joe Bernstein

Lists of Newsgroups Posted in 1982

CURT STEPHENS

"grouplist"
January 26, 1982
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: anews.Aazure.430
(The header was converted from A-News style by Google. There is
another copy of this post, from the same ultimate source in the
Toronto archives, as represented in the former Oldnews website, which
is part of an appendix to a chapter by Ronda Hauben; see on the Web
<http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x10>. That copy's header may or
may not be complete, but does confirm the newsgroup, subject line, and
date, and includes no Message-ID.)

This list was posted not long after Curt Stephens proposed the
creation of net.newsgroup for the purpose of posting such lists. This
is my main, but not my only, evidence for ascribing to him the
emphasis on groups' "official"ness which I think the list-posters have
had in common.

I have no reason to think the description lines he provided were
written by anyone other than him; they are not textual descendants of
Mark Horton's from December 1981. The list is formatted very
differently from modern lists - numerous multi-line descriptions;
formatting bars between each newsgroup row and between the columns.
But Curt Stephens was the only list-poster for years to follow the
modern practice of putting all newsgroup names at the left margin.

His lists are significantly longer than Mark Horton's; this reflects
not only rapid group creation in the winter of 1981-82 (although that
certainly was happening) but also a more inclusive approach.

Added: fa.teletext, net.games.frp, net.games.trivia, net.lan,
net.lsi, net.misc, net.news.directory, net.news.group, net.news.map,
net.news.newsite, net.news (a duplicative listing, not the original
net.news), net.oa, net.rec.bridge, net.records, net.sources,
net.taxes, net.travel, net.unix-wizards.

Removed: fa.printers, fa.unix-wizards, net.bugs.u3, net.jokes.q.

The list notes fa.human-nets as being moderated, but that was hardly
the only "moderated" fa.* group at this time, so I don't distinguish
it from other groups in my summary on this basis. Similarly, gateways
are noted for net.chess and net.unix-wizards, but with no indication
whether these are the only gatewayed net.* groups. (From various
Google searches I formed the impression that there were three such,
actually, and that the gateways lasted throughout 1982; the third was
net.micro.)

Summary: From 19 to 18 fa.* groups, from 34 to 49 net.* groups (one
duplicative), 67 (or 66) total.


"List of Newsgroups"
February 3, 1982
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: anews.Aazure.483


(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

Nearly all description lines are now only one line long.

Added: net.cooks, net.space.

fa.human-nets is no longer described as moderated, and net.chess is no
longer described as gatewayed, but these are merely changes in the
wording of description lines (probably to shorten them); they don't
represent changes in the actual groups.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups, from 49 to 51 net.* groups (one
duplicative), 69 (or 68) total.


"List of Newspgroups" [sic]
March 9, 1982
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: anews.Aazure.614


(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

There are no longer dividing lines between newsgroups, thankfully,
though they're still there between the columns. All description lines
are now only one line long.

Added: net.dcom, net.wines.

Removed: net.chess.

I don't understand the removal of net.chess at all. It's worth
mentioning that chess, specifically computer chess, is one of the
common interests that drew together several of the people who would
invent Usenet; it nevertheless didn't get its own newsgroup until
November 1981, but I find it purely bizarre that three months later
someone would suggest removing it. However, it *is* true that people
in net.news.* were periodically complaining that net.chess either
duplicated, or should be a subgroup of, net.games, throughout the life
of net.chess, and this could be Curt Stephens's way of indicating
agreement.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups, from 51 to 52 net.* groups (one
duplicative), 70 (or 69) total.


ANONYMOUS
("From cbosg!harpo!npois!eiss!ladm" in the original e-mail version,
"From: ARPAVAX:Usenet" in the posted version.)

This poster's anonymity is why I can't attribute to him or her the
intent of "official"ness that I do attribute to Curt Stephens and Adam
Buchsbaum. But the post shows signs of being part of a netnews
distribution in origin; that strongly implies that it has the same
intent (in this case, that everyone who used the software distributed
would start from the same list of groups).

"misc/newsinfo"
April 20, 1982
net.sources
Google Message-ID: anews.Aucbarpa.1182


(The header was converted from A-News style by Google.)

The above is how you'll find this post in Google, but it seems fairly
clear that the true source is an e-mail or some such thing, dated
March 19, 1982.

This list is clearly based on those by Curt Stephens. However, the
format is again improved (newsgroups are no longer double spaced) and
also worsened (multi-line descriptions are common again). Gateway
information is again provided, the last time for years.

Added: net.cse, net.followup, net.math, net.micro, net.rec.boat,
net.rec.skydive, net.sf-lovers.

Removed: net.news (the duplicate copy).

Additional information: Claims that fa.human-nets, fa.sf-lovers, and
fa.telecom are available "PRINTED ONLY", and fa.space "ALSO PRINTED";
that fa.poli-sci and fa.tcp-ip are "TURNED OFF"; and that
net.sf-lovers, net.space, and net.unix-wizards are gatewayed. The
"PRINTED" references, and the allegation that two groups that would
live a long time were "TURNED OFF", suggest that this is a
location-specific list, but this conflicts with a number of other
indications that it's part of a software release; I'm confused. One
plausible explanation would be that it was in fact part of a software
release, but a software release by a company or school, designed to
get all computers at that institution running the same news software
(and list of newsgroups). In that case, given the material's emphasis
on BTL locations and newsgroups, AT&T is the most obvious possible
source.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups, from 52 to 58 net.* groups, 76
total.


CURT STEPHENS

"grouplist"
November 20, 1982
net.general
Google Message-ID: bnews.azure.1484
(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

This post only precedes Adam Buchsbaum's first one by a day; I find it
implausible that Adam Buchsbaum's first post took only a day's work,
so I think rather that both were posted in response to some request or
need that was in the air, so to speak, and that I haven't yet found in
the archives.

Curt Stephens explicitly says that this list is quite outdated, and
invites corrections. Yet it stands in anomalous contrast to the March
19 list. All the new creations in the March 19 list are absent from
this one, which would imply that this one was earlier, a simple
replica of Curt Stephens's previous (March 9) list. That, however, is
not true; there are three new groups on here, too, *none* of which are
on the March 19 list. And most strikingly of all, the new creations
on *both* lists uniformly survived into Adam Buchsbaum's lists. It's
as though the author of the anonymous list had utterly different
criteria for judging new groups from those Curt Stephens himself used,
but took as his or her basis the March 9 list *by* Curt Stephens.

Added: net.games.emp, net.invest, net.news (the duplicative copy),
net.physics.

Removed: net.cse, net.followup, net.math, net.micro, net.rec.boat,
net.rec.skydive, net.sf-lovers.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups, from 58 to 55 net.* groups (one
duplicative), 73 (or 72) total.


ADAM BUCHSBAUM

"List of USENET Newsgroups"
November 21, 1982
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: bnews.alice.1179
(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

I think this post is the beginning of the Big 8's newsgroup creation
governance system. Already by the end of 1982, Adam Buchsbaum's lists
of newsgroups were being accepted by other site administrators as
official. They would eventually become the "List of Active
Newsgroups" which Gene Spafford would inherit in mid-1984 and which
continued to be posted until the end of 1996. As best I can tell,
Gene Spafford's authority in the newsgroup creation system, from 1984
to his retirement, derived very largely from his work editing this
list; he certainly seems to have considered it his most important
work, to judge by his farewell message.

The newsgroup descriptions show no evidence of relationship to Curt
Stephens's descriptions; I presume, but do not know, that they were
all written by Adam Buchsbaum. I haven't yet researched at what date
newsgroup lines became part of what people voted on, but since they
would change repeatedly over the next few years, I'm betting that they
weren't up for vote before 1987, anyway. Despite the changes, the
descriptions in this list are in fact the direct ancestors of the
newsgroup lines of today.

This initial list is formatted rather differently from the lists we're
used to today. It's hard to see this any way *but* teleologically;
Adam Buchsbaum started with (and stuck with) a format, which Gene
Spafford changed piece by piece between September 1984 and May 1987
into the format we now know. So here's a list of differences: All
"subgroups" (third-level groups) are indented, and their newsgroup
lines read typically "Subgroup for ..." (essentially assuming that
you'll already have read the parent group's newsgroup line). There
are consistently two or more tabs between newsgroup names and
descriptions, so that subgroups' names and descriptions begin in
different columns from second-level groups' names and descriptions.
Descriptions are sometimes multiple lines in length. Moderation is
not flagged (but then, at that time, it didn't exist, except in the
sense that many fa.* groups were moderated); when it appears, it'll be
flagged differently from how we're used to seeing it flagged now (and
that is, in fact, why the eventual Lists of Moderators became part of
this step of my project). Hierarchies are listed in a set order,
net.* then fa.* (and later mod.* at the end), rather than
alphabetically.

Speaking of alphabetical order, although all of this succession of
newsgroup lists are clearly intended to be alphabetical within
hierarchies, errors in alphabetisation are not merely present, but
*common*, and often persist for multiple lists. As of mid-1987, this
remained true, although the Great Renaming significantly improved
matters. I'm bringing this up not to insult the listers but to
emphasise that these lists appear to have been, from the beginning to
at least 1987, human-created rather than automatically updated. (I
retain some of the errors in alphabetisation in my own lists in these
posts; this is both caused by, and representative of, the fact that my
work has been mostly manual as well. I did not do this work by using
diff.)

This is the first list known to me for (give or take something) eight
months, and predictably offers major changes; I suspect, but do not
know, that it's also based on significantly better research, or
significantly more liberal attitudes, than the previous lists.
Anyway, the list of official groups here grows considerably.

Added: fa.bitgraph, fa.info-vlsi, fa.railroad, net.adm.site,
net.arch, net.audio, net.bugs.uucp, net.chess (again), net.cms,
net.cse (again), net.flame, net.followup (again), net.games.dip,
net.games.pacman, net.games.pbm, net.games.video, net.info-micro,
net.info-terms, net.jobs, net.jokes.d, net.lang, net.lang.ada,
net.lang.apl, net.lang.c, net.lang.lisp, net.lang.pascal, net.mail,
net.math (again), net.micro (again), net.micro.432, net.micro.68k,
net.micro.atari, net.micro.pc, net.micro.zx, net.news.config,
net.nlang, net.notes, net.poems, net.politics, net.railroad,
net.rec.birds, net.rec.boat (again), net.rec.caves, net.rec.coins,
net.rec.photo, net.rec.skydive (again), net.research, net.sf-lovers
(again), net.singles, net.social, net.startrek, net.suicide,
net.trivia, net.tv, net.tv.sctv, net.usenix, net.usoft, net.usoft.s,
net.video, net.wanted, net.wobegon, net.works.

Removed: fa.unix-cpm, net.news (the duplicative copy).

Summary: From 18 to 20 fa.* groups, from 55 to 113 net.* groups, 133
total.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
December 5, 1982
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: bnews.alice.1250
(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

And here we find a set of rmgroups which Adam Buchsbaum had initiated
work on roughly at the same time as he started posting lists!

Added: net.bugs.usg, net.lang.prolog, net.lang.st80.

Removed: fa.info-micro, fa.railroad, fa.works, net.auto.vw, net.cms,
net.games.dip, net.info-micro, net.info-terms, net.news.directory,
net.oa, net.research, net.trivia, net.tv.sctv, net.wines.
Ambiguously removed: fa.space. (The newsgroup name is not listed,
but a line from its description survives in the right place. Probably
an editing error intended to represent complete removal.)

Two of the removed net.* groups would return in the next list.

Summary: From 20 to 16 (or 17) fa.* groups, from 113 to 105 net.*
groups, 121 (or 122) total.


This is the last newsgroup list known to me posted in 1982.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:24:26 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's hierarchical posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the NET.* hierarchy.

Joe Bernstein


THE net.* HIERARCHY

--Rise--

In early Usenet software, according to later reminiscences in the
Usenet.Hist mailing list archives, capitalisation in a hierarchy's
name meant that that hierarchy was intended as a broadcast one. By
1981, this distinction had already become unnecessary, and at some
time between November 11, 1980 and May 12, 1981 (I lean strongly
toward the latter end of this period), Mark Horton, already an
influential figure on Usenet, is said to have orchestrated the
renaming of the NET.* groups. An announcement by Horton on May 12,
1981 details the renaming of those groups gatewayed from ARPAnet, into
the new fa.* hierarchy. I have not yet found any comparable record of
the creation of the net.* hierarchy, although discussions from around
May 12, 1981, imply that this creation was either recent or still in
the future at that date. (The Usenet.Hist archive does contain a
small archive of 1980 posts, included in my posting of early newsgroup
lists in this thread, which shows that as of November 11, 1980,
NET.general still was thus named.)

With the clear distinction between the fa.* groups, some of which were
more or less heavily moderated, and the net.* groups, the scene was
set. net.* became the main battleground over what Usenet's anarchy
would mean. As a result, net.*'s story is largely told in the annual
summaries which form the other branch of this thread. But briefly:

The list of original net.* newsgroups appears likely to have been
moderately small, but in the autumn of 1981, significant numbers of
"non-technical" newsgroups began to appear - net.aviation, net.chess,
net.columbia (space shuttle discussion), net.cycle (motorcycles),
net.ham-radio, net.movies, net.music, the entire net.sport.*
sub-hierarchy (which was, along with net.bugs.*, the first
sub-hierarchy). Some old-timers despaired of what Usenet was coming
to - I'm fairly certain that the first quasi-official newsgroup lists
were in part containment measures against this wave - but gradually,
the notion that any reasonably interesting topic could have its own
newsgroup took hold, and net.* rocketed from 32 groups on the first
such list known (December, 1981) to 170 groups less than three years
later.

net.* is the Usenet I remember from 1985, the Usenet in which
newsgroups could be created by typos (although you were widely
ridiculed if you did such a thing) and in which sober, respectable
newsgroups like net.bugs.2bsd shared the network with frivolities like
net.games.frp (the only one in which posts of mine are archived, as it
happens) and rowdyhouses like net.flame or net.bizarre. Let me be
clear: I treasure the memory of finding the early netiquette
documents, and even of being netcopped by one of the Founding Fathers
when I did something stupid; I valued these evidences of anarchy as a
functioning way of doing things. But I also treasure the posts I
printed out from net.flame, I also valued these evidences of anarchy
as a *different* way of doing things; and had I known that a few
months later those Founding Fathers would be removing the group, I
would never have maintained the same view of Usenet anarchy
thereafter.

--Fall--

I left one creation of autumn 1981 out of the above list:
net.suicide. Which brings us to the issue of good taste. net.suicide
actually arrived shortly *after* net.jokes.q, which however proved
ephemeral; but soon thereafter, net.flame was to begin its reign as
one of Usenet's busiest groups. Not everyone approved of the
developing state of affairs, to put it mildly. In 1982 the
disapproval resulted in, inter alia, Jerry Schwarz's document
ancestral to the major netiquette and FAQ posts; but it wasn't until
1983 that serious experiments in moderation had begun.

By late 1984, moderation - at that time confined to mod.* and
net.announce.* - was evidently working well enough that the powers of
the day felt comfortable creating large number of mod.* groups.

Powers? Yes. From Usenet's early days the concept of a "backbone",
consisting of sites willing to pay the telephone charges of
transmitting Usenet across long distances, was already in existence.
There is some dispute in the Usenet.Hist archives over who organised
what, but I'm inclined to believe Mark Horton's claim to have
originated the backbone concept both in maps of Usenet and, more
importantly, as a mailing list for admins. Horton reported having
handed both ideas over to Gene Spafford when Spafford expressed an
interest, and given that Spafford's farewell message includes at least
one false claim to have originated something someone else had actually
started, I think it likely that he also forgot having inherited the
mailing list.

At any rate, Spafford inherited the other thing mentioned - the List
of Active Newsgroups - in August 1984. The mod.* hierarchy came of
age just two months later, and from then until the Great Renaming, the
official growth of the unmoderated net.* hierarchy slowed to a crawl,
from 170 groups on October 1, 1984 to 182 groups on July 15, 1985 (the
numerical peak), and then actually *down* to 181 groups on September
16, 1986 (the first list to include the last net.* group to be
created, net.music.makers, and the last list to include the groups
that became talk.*). I strongly suspect that the abrupt slowdown of
net.*'s growth, and Spafford's assuming responsibility for listing
groups, were both connected to Spafford's role in organising backbone
administrators (although he himself was never such an administrator).

In 1985, significant numbers of groups were removed from the official
lists, and while many of these were probably simply dead, controversy
erupted over others. Spafford defended the removal of net.bizarre as
an improperly created group; I haven't yet researched what
justification was given for the removal of, for example, net.flame.
The only one of the well-known bad taste groups to survive until the
Great Renaming was, in fact, the oldest, net.suicide, which retained
articulate defenders until the end (and, I'd guess, was also probably
lower traffic); it would then be folded into misc.misc, a de facto
removal. These removals got a lot more press than others, but in
fact, numerous net.* groups were axed in 1985. (Note that since the
overall number didn't change much, the implication is that numerous
net.* groups *were* still being created.)

The unmoderated Usenet would flourish again, but that story is no
longer the story of net.*. Even getting rid of the high-traffic
"junk" groups didn't make the backbone admins happy, and the one who
sent Usenet to Europe finally forced the Great Renaming as a way of
distinguishing groups by merit: comp.* and news.* deserved, in this
view, the best propagation, then misc.* and sci.*, then rec.*, then
soc.*, and least of all talk.*. In a few months, from August or
September to December of 1986, first talk.*, then misc.*, news.*, and
soc.*, then comp.* and sci.*, and finally rec.*, were created, and in
their wake, the corresponding net.* groups died. The last surviving
net.* groups were in the net.sources.* hierarchy, because their
survival as moderated groups was under consideration, and so their
removal awaited the sorting out of mod.* in the spring of 1987.

--Afterlife--

Like mod.*, net.* died a true death in the Great Renaming; and like
mod.*, net.* was revived (as a name, anyway) in a bit of nostalgic
hubris ten years later. By then, the glory days of Usenet's anarchy
were the "good old days", and the complaints of the backbone
administrators long forgotten; but the new net.*, although technically
unmoderated, was closer in spirit to the moderation concept, just as
the new mod.*, although technically moderated, would have been closer
in spirit to the old unmoderated groups.

net.* these days is an imperfectly closed hierarchy, each of whose
sub-hierarchies is loosely run by a "czar" with authority to create
newsgroups and cancel posts; the whole is meant to be protected from
spam and other Usenet crimes by the network's closure. But that
closure was never perfect; many never saw the point of moving, while
others didn't have the opportunity; and anecdotal reports indicate
that net.* has largely died down. I have normally not had access to
the hierarchy, however, and don't know for sure.

The hierarchy's official web site has been <http://www.usenet2.org/>.


GROUP BY GROUP

Note: Description lines are reformatted as necessary, but the text in
them is exactly what the original list has. In a few cases, the
assembled descriptions differ markedly (net.ucds is the most extreme
case), although I don't see any such flat-out contradictions as there
are in fa.*. In order to ensure that this set of posts gets done at
all, I'm having to limit the research I do. So in this post I make no
attempt to arbitrate which description is right, but simply include
the first and last line for each group. (In the numerous cases where
the first and last lines are identical, I include only the first.)
However, I can't resist pointing out that many description lines as of
the Great Renaming are *much* more concerned with laws and regulations
than the same groups' original description lines, and urging you, in
general, to pay some attention to the description lines as indications
of the approaches of their several writers.

Again to avoid delaying the initial series of posts, I'm also not
consistently including in this post information about who proposed
these groups, who created them, when those things happened, or whether
there were mailing list gateways. Such information is obviously high
on my list of things to include in the later version of the
chronology. When the other things that I'm trying to do make it
possible for me to ascertain such things relatively easily, I've
thrown that information in, but that doesn't mean the information is
available only for those newsgroups where I've provided it.

The fact that I have creation dates for some groups in 1981 and 1982
results not from my research methods at this time, but from one of the
things I did in 1997 when I first encountered the A-News Archive.
Some other groups' creations are documented in the Google archives but
not yet noted in this post; some groups' creations are not documented
anywhere I know of.

And I can, anyway, answer one question now. To the best of my
knowledge, from more than one source, there were no FAQ documents
specific to particular newsgroups until after the end of this net.*
hierarchy. I will, of course, be interested in any evidence to the
contrary.


net.all
Listed on December 16, 1981 only.
Description line (12/16/1981): All usenet-wide news groups
The 12/16/1981 list was written by Mark Horton, who as late as the
1983 RFC 850 was using "all" as a sort of equivalent of "*". In
this context, "net.all" probably meant "The net.* hierarchy".
Since net.all did not appear in Mark Horton's related December 23
"list", I'm inclined to think it wasn't meant to be seen as a
group in the December 16 list.
However, the archives do preserve a post creating a net.all
newsgroup, dated July 14, 1981. There was some debate in 1981
considering the desirability of a newsgroup so named, with
consensus against it.

net.2bsd-bugs
Created July 10, 1981.
Listed on November 29, 1981 only.
Since the November 29, 1981 list contained no description lines,
none survive for this newsgroup.
Renamed to net.bugs.2bsd on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.

net.abortion
Listed March 15, 1984 to September 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/15/1984): Abortion: moral, ethical, and
legal implications.
Description line (9/16/1986): All sorts of discussions on
abortion.
Renamed to talk.abortion.

net.adm.site
Listed November 21, 1982 to September 15, 1984 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Automatic maintenance of the
USENET directory. Currently not used.
Description line (9/15/1984): Automatic maintenance of the USENET
directory -- currently experimental.

net.ai
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/23/1983): Artificial intelligence.
Description line (11/1/1986): Artificial intelligence
discussions.
Renamed to comp.ai.

net.analog
Listed April 2, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/2/1983): Analog design developments, ideas,
and components.
Renamed to sci.electronics.

net.announce
Listed June 15, 1983 to July 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/15/1983): General announcements of interest
to all -- moderated.
Moderated by Mark Horton.
Description line (7/1/1986): Moderated, general announcements of
interest to all.
Renamed to mod.announce.
Notes: This was the first moderated group in the "official"
hierarchies, and quite probably the first one in Usenet at all,
disregarding the fact that some of the mailing lists from which
fa.* was gated were moderated as mailing lists (but not as
newsgroups). It was later renamed from mod.announce to
news.announce.important, under which name it still survives;
although no post has been approved for it since 1996, the
moderator told me by e-mail dated January XX, 2002 that she is
still rejecting posts on a post by post basis. It is still
moderated by the same person, now named Mary Ann Horton, who is
thus, by a sizable margin, the longest-serving Usenet moderator
(to add to the long collection of distinctions which this set of
posts documents for M. Horton).

net.announce.newusers
Listed March 1, 1984 to July 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/1/1984): Subgroup for new users. Monthy
postings, etc.
Moderated by Mark Horton, March 1 to October 1, 1984; Gene
Spafford, October 15, 1984 to July 1, 1986.
Description line (7/1/1986): Moderated, explanatory postings for
new users.
Renamed to mod.announce.newusers.

net.announce.arpa-internet
Renamed from fa.arpa-bboard circa October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to December 15, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Announcements from the Arpa world
Moderated by Glenn Burke.

net.applic
Created November 13, 1981.
Listed November 29, 1981 to December 15, 1983 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Applicative programming languages
Description line (12/15/1983): Applicative language and related
architecture.

net.arch
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Computer architecture.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to comp.arch.

net.astro
Listed December 1, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1983): Astronomy.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group, but
with an asterisk to indicate that the status of the gateway was
uncertain.
Description line (10/16/1986): Astronomy discussions and
information.
Renamed to sci.astro (representing a merger with
net.astro.expert).

net.astro.expert
Listed December 1, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1983): Subgroup for experts in astronomy.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (10/16/1986): Discussion by experts in
astronomy.
Renamed to sci.astro (representing a merger with sci.astro).

net.audio
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on audio.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): High fidelity audio.
Renamed to rec.audio.

net.auto
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.auto.all) to December 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Car owner discussions/queries
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): Automobiles, automotive products
and laws.
Renamed to rec.autos.

net.auto.tech
Listed October 15, 1985 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1985): Technical aspects of automobiles,
et. al.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to rec.autos.tech.

net.auto.vw
Renamed from net.vwrabbit on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 21, 1982 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Volkswagen Rabbit
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as "too
specific" and not "used much".

net.aviation
Created November 10, 1981.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Aviation topics
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): Aviation rules, means, and methods.
Renamed to rec.aviation.

net.bicycle
Listed October 15, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1983): Bicycles and related products and
laws.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): Bicycles, related products and
laws.
Renamed to rec.bicycles.

net.bio
Listed February 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (2/1/1984): Biology and related sciences.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to sci.bio.

net.bizarre
Listed August 1 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (8/1/1985): Strange postings and reports of odd
occurrences.
Notes: Gene Spafford explained this group's removal by saying that
it had not been created by accepted procedures, *and* a solid
majority of the backbone administrators had agreed not to
propagate it. It isn't clear to me how much weight to attach to
the first of these reasons, but see net.internat below. Note also
that talk.bizarre was one of the first two groups created in what
became the Big 8 hierarchies; this suggests, but does not require,
that net.bizarre had in fact meaningfully survived its loss of
"official" status.

net.books
Listed March 2, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1983): Books of all genres, shapes, and
sizes.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to rec.arts.books.

net.bugs
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.bugs.all) to November 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Bug reports on various software
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): General bug reports and fixes.
Renamed to comp.bugs.misc (representing a merger with
net.bugs.uucp and net.bugs.v7).

net.bugs.2bsd
Renamed from net.2bsd-bugs on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Berkeley pdp-11 distribution
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UNIX* version 2BSD
related bugs.
(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)
Renamed to comp.bugs.2bsd.

net.bugs.4bsd
Renamed from net.4bsd-bugs on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton. (net.4bsd-bugs is not on any newsgroup list in my data
set, which is why it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it
existed.)
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Berkeley VAX distribution
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UNIX version 4BSD
related bugs.
(And no, I don't know why UNIX here is *not* asterisked.)
Renamed to comp.bugs.4bsd.

net.bugs.u3
Listed December 16 to December 23, 1981 only.
Description line (12/16/1981): UNIX 3.0

net.bugs.usg
Listed December 5, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/5/1982): Subgroup for USG (System III, IV,
etc.) bugs.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of USG (System III, V,
etc.) bugs.
Renamed to comp.bugs.sys5.

net.bugs.uucp
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for UUCP related bugs.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UUCP related bugs.
Renamed to comp.bugs.misc (representing a merger with net.bugs and
net.bugs.v7).

net.bugs.v7
Renamed from net.v7bugs on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Version 7 bugs
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UNIX V7 related bugs.
Renamed to comp.bugs.misc (representing a merger with net.bugs and
net.bugs.uucp).

net.chess
Created November 25, 1981.
Listed December 16, 1981 to February 3, 1982, and then November 21,
1982 to August 15, 1985, during each interval without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Computer chess
Description line (8/15/1985): Chess & computer chess.
Apparently renamed to net.games.chess.
Notes: I have no explanation for its absence from three lists in
1982, but will note that a renaming to net.games.chess, or merger
with net.games, was more or less constantly being urged by various
people, from before the group's creation until its demise.

net.cms
Created April 24, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on CMS, an
IBM 370 OS.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as not
having been used "very much".

net.cog-eng
Listed September 1, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1983): Cognitive engineering.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to comp.cog-eng.

net.college
Listed April 2, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/2/1983): College, college activities, campus
life, etc.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to soc.college.

net.columbia
Created September 16, 1981 by Adam Buchsbaum.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): News about the space program
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (10/16/1986): The space shuttle and the STS
program.
Renamed to sci.space.shuttle.

net.comics
Listed April 15, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/15/1983): The funnies, old and new.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to rec.arts.comics.

net.consumers
Listed February 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (2/1/1984): Consumer interests, product reviews,
etc.
Renamed to misc.consumers.

net.consumers.house
Listed June 2, 1986 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/2/1986): Discussion about owning and
maintaining a house.
Renamed to misc.consumers.house.

net.cooks
Listed February 3, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (2/3/1982): Interest group - food, cooking,
cookbooks, and recipes.
Description line (12/1/1986): Food, cooking, cookbooks, and
recipes.
Renamed to rec.food.cooking.

net.crypt
Listed June 15, 1983 to October 16, 1986 interrupted only November
1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (6/15/1983): Different methods of data
en/decryption.
Renamed to sci.crypt.

net.cse
Listed March 19, 1982, and then November 21, 1982 to November 1,
1986 interrupted only November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (3/19/1982): Computer Science Education
Description line (11/1/1986): Computer science education.
Renamed to comp.edu.

net.cse.cai
Listed December 1 to December 15, 1983 only.
Description line (12/1/1983): Subgroup for Computer Assisted
Instruction.

net.cycle
Created on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed December 16, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): Motorcycle topics
Description line (12/1/1986): Motorcycles and related products
and laws.
Renamed to rec.motorcycles.

net.database
Listed August 15, 1985 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (8/15/1985): Database and data management issues
and theory.
Renamed to comp.databases.

net.dcom
Listed March 9, 1982 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only November
1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (3/9/1982): data communication -
modems,multiplexers,port selectors etc.
Description line (11/1/1986): Data communications hardware and
software.
Renamed to comp.dcom.modems.

net.decus
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (1/23/1983): Info and discussions on the DEC*
User's Society.
Description line (11/1/1986): DEC* Users' Society newsgroup.
(The asterisks referred to a trademark.)
Renamed to comp.org.decus.

net.emacs
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (1/23/1983): Info and discussions on the EMACS
editor.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group (and
yes, this does include the 11/1/1985 list in which the group is
not listed as active, which is the main piece of evidence, besides
common sense, that the mass erasure and double-listing represents
an editing error).
Description line (11/1/1986): EMACS editors of different flavors.
Renamed to comp.emacs.

net.eunice
Listed November 29, 1981 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): The Eunice Unix emulator for VMS
Description line (11/1/1986): The SRI Eunice system.
Renamed to comp.os.eunice.

net.flame
Created January 15, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 15, 1985 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): For flaming on any topic.

net.followup
Created February 17, 1982.
Listed March 19, 1982, and then November 21, 1982 to October 16,
1986 interrupted only November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (3/19/1982): follow-up articles to those posted
in net.general
Description line (10/16/1986): Followups to articles in
net.general.
Renamed to misc.misc (representing a merger with net.general,
net.misc, and, technically, net.suicide).

net.games
Listed November 29, 1981 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): Computer games of the /usr/games
type
Description line (12/1/1986): Games and computer games.
Renamed to rec.games.misc.

net.games.board
Listed September 1, 1985 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (9/1/1985): Discussion and hints on board games.
Renamed to rec.games.board.

net.games.chess
Listed September 1, 1985 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (9/1/1985): Chess & computer chess.
Renamed to rec.games.chess.

net.games.dip
Created April 25, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Diplomacy.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for three months.

net.games.emp
Listed "November 20, 1982" to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Note that the date of the November 20, 1982 list is unreliable:
it dates to sometime after March 9, 1982 and before the posting
date of November 20, 1982.
Description line ("11/20/1982"): Subgroup net.games - empire
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion and hints about Empire.
Renamed to rec.games.empire.

net.games.frp
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (January 26, 1982): Subgroup net.games - fantasy
role playing games
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about Fantasy Role
Playing games.
Renamed to rec.games.frp.

net.games.go
Listed January 3, 1984 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (1/3/1984): Subgroup for Go.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about Go.
Renamed to rec.games.go.

net.games.hack
Listed February 1, 1985 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (2/1/1985): Discussion, hints, etc. about the
Hack game.
Renamed to rec.games.hack.

net.games.pacman
Created February 16, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 15, 1983.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Pacman.

net.games.pbm
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Play by Mail games.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about Play by Mail
games.
Renamed to rec.games.pbm.

net.games.rogue
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): That wonderful game
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion and hints about Rogue.
Renamed to rec.games.rogue.

net.games.trivia
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Trivia contests and results.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about trivia.
Renamed to rec.games.trivia.

net.games.video
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for video games.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about video games.
Renamed to rec.games.video.

net.garden
Listed April 2, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/2/1983): Gardening, methods and results.
Renamed to rec.gardens.

net.general
Renamed from NET.general sometime between November 11, 1980 and
May 11, 1981.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Usenet news of general interest
Description line (10/16/1986): *Important*, timely announcements
of worldwide interest. (Note the description of net.misc.)
Renamed to misc.misc (representing a merger with net.followup,
net.misc, and, technically, net.suicide).
Notes: This means that misc.misc is *ancestrally* the oldest
group in the Big 8, since it's reasonably certain that NET.general
was the first net-wide newsgroup (see the posts on 1980-81 and on
the NET.* hierarchy). But talk.bizarre is the oldest Big 8 group
*under the same name*; and a purpose sometimes stated to have been
NET.general's original purpose was later served by net.announce,
mod.announce, and news.announce.important before that purpose was
effectively abandoned.

net.graphics
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/23/1983): Info and discussions on computer
graphics.
Description line (11/1/1986): Computer graphics, art, animation,
image processing, pattern recognition, and machine vision.
(This was one of the two last surviving two-line descriptions.)
Renamed to comp.graphics.

net.ham-radio
Listed November 29, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Ham radio
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (12/1/1986): Amateur Radio practices, contests,
events, rules, etc.
Renamed to rec.ham-radio.

net.ham-radio.packet
Listed August 15, 1985 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (8/15/1985): Discussion about packet radio
setups.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Renamed to rec.ham-radio.packet.

net.house
Listed May 17, 1986 only.
Description line (5/17/1986): Discussion about owning and
maintaining a house.
Apparently renamed to net.consumers.house.

net.info-micro
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info on micro computers.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as
duplicative of net.micro.

net.info-terms
Listed November 21, 1982.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info on terminals.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as
duplicative of fa.info-terms.
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): All sorts of terminals.
Renamed to comp.terminals.

net.internat
Listed November 15, 1985 to November 1, 1986, interrupted only
April 17, 1986. (This was probably not an editing error; Gene
Spafford did object to the way the group had been created. See
also net.bizarre, above.)
Description line (11/15/1985): Discussion about international
standards
Renamed to comp.std.internat.

net.invest
Listed "November 20, 1982" to October 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line ("11/20/1982"): Information and discussion about
investments.
Description line (10/16/1986): Investments and the handling of
money.
Renamed to misc.invest.

net.jobs
Created May 4, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Job announcements, requests, etc.
Renamed to misc.jobs.

net.jokes
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): The latest good joke you heard
Description line (12/1/1986): Jokes and the like. May be
somewhat offensive.
Renamed to rec.humor.

net.jokes.d
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for discussions on the
content on net.jokes.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussions on the content of
net.jokes articles
Renamed to rec.humor.d.

net.jokes.q
Listed December 23, 1981 only.
Description line (12/23/1981): We drop this newsgroup
(No, I'm not making this up.)

net.kids
Listed November 15, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/15/1983): Children, their behavior and
activities.
Renamed to misc.kids.

net.lan
Created January 13, 1982.
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Local area network interest group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Local area network hardware and
software.
Renamed to comp.dcom.lans.

net.lang
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Discussions on computer languages.
Description line (11/1/1986): Different computer languages.
Renamed to comp.lang.misc.

net.lang.ada
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for ADA.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Ada*.
(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)
Renamed to comp.lang.ada.

net.lang.apl
Created March 24, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for APL.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about APL.
Renamed to comp.lang.apl.

net.lang.c
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for C.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about C.
Renamed to comp.lang.c.

net.lang.c++
Listed February 16 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (2/16/1986): The object-oriented C++ language.
Renamed to comp.lang.c++.

net.lang.f77
Listed December 1, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1983): Subgroup for FORTRAN.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about FORTRAN.
Renamed to comp.lang.fortran.

net.lang.forth
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/23/1983): Subgroup for Forth.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group
(although this is the only such group that was gatewayed with
BITnet, not ARPAnet).
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Forth.
Renamed to comp.lang.forth.

net.lang.lisp
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for LISP.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about LISP.
Renamed to comp.lang.lisp.

net.lang.mod2
Listed October 15, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1983): Subgroup for Modula-2.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Modula-2.
Renamed to comp.lang.modula2.

net.lang.pascal
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for PASCAL.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Pascal.
Renamed to comp.lang.pascal.

net.lang.prolog
Listed December 5, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/5/1982): Subgroup for PROLOG.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about PROLOG.
Renamed to comp.lang.prolog.

net.lang.st80
Listed December 5, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/5/1982): Subgroup for Smalltalk 80.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Smalltalk 80.
Renamed to comp.lang.smalltalk.

net.legal
Listed September 1, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1983): Legalities and the ethics of law.
Renamed to misc.legal.

net.lsi
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Large Scale Integrated Circuit
discussions.
Description line (11/1/1986): Large scale integrated circuits.
Renamed to comp.lsi.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:27:48 PM1/19/02
to

net.mag
Listed April 15, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/15/1984): Magazine summaries, tables of
contents, etc.
Renamed to rec.mag.

net.mail


Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on the
proposed new mail standards.
Description line (11/1/1986): Proposed new mail/network
standards.
Renamed to comp.mail.uucp.

net.mail.headers
Listed July 16, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (7/16/1983): Subgroup for the ARPA header-people
list.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (11/1/1986): Gatewayed from the ARPA
header-people list.
Renamed to comp.mail.headers.

net.mail.msggroup
Listed July 16, 1983 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (7/16/1983): Subgroup for the ARPA MsgGroup
list.
Description line (7/15/1985): Gatewayed from the ARPA MsgGroup
list.

net.math
Created February 8, 1982.
Listed March 19, 1982 to October 16, 1986, interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".


Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.

Description line (3/19/1982): mathematical discussions (eg. what
is lim x->0 log(x)-log(x))
Description line (10/16/1986): Mathematical discussions and
puzzles.
Renamed to sci.math.

net.math.stat
Listed June 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/1/1984): Subgroup for statistics.
Description line (10/16/1986): Statistics discussion.
Renamed to sci.math.stat.

net.math.symbolic
Listed September 15, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (9/15/1984): Subgroup for symbolic algebra
discussion.
Description line (10/16/1986): Symbolic algebra discussion.
Renamed to sci.math.symbolic.

net.med
Listed January 23, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/23/1983): Info and discussions on medicine
and health.
Description line (10/16/1986): Medicine and its related products
and regulations.
Renamed to sci.med.

net.micro
Possibly created (this or its possible predecessor NET.micro)
January 21, 1981.
Listed March 19, 1982 to November 1, 1986, interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".


Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.

Description line (3/19/1982): micro-computers, see also
fa.info-micro.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (11/1/1986): Micro computers of all kinds.
Renamed to comp.sys.misc.

net.micro.16k
Listed April 2, 1983 to May 17, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/2/1983): Subgroup for 16k's.
Description line (5/17/1986): National Semiconductor 32000 series
chips
Apparently renamed to net.micro.ns32k.

net.micro.432
Listed November 21, 1982 to August 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for 432's.
Description line (8/1/1985): Discussion about Intel 432's.

net.micro.6809
Listed October 1, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/1/1983): Subgroup for 6809's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about 6809's.
Renamed to comp.sys.m6809.

net.micro.68k


Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for 68k's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about 68k's.
Renamed to comp.sys.m68k.

net.micro.apple
Listed March 2, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1983): Subgroup for Apple's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Apple micros.
Renamed to comp.sys.apple.

net.micro.amiga
Listed September 1, 1985 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1985): Talk about the new Amiga micro.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Renamed to comp.sys.amiga.

net.micro.atari
Listed November 21, 1982 to February 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Atari's.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to June 2, 1986 (yes, after its removal), listed as a gatewayed
unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (2/16/1986): Discussion about Atari micros.
Apparently split into net.micro.atari8 and net.micro.atari16.

net.micro.atari8
Apparently created from a split of net.micro.atari.
Listed March 1 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/1/1986): Discussion about 8 bit Atari micros.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from June 19 to
October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Renamed to comp.sys.atari.8bit.

net.micro.atari16
Apparently created from a split of net.micro.atari.
Listed March 1 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/1/1986): Discussion about 16 bit Atari
micros.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from June 19 to
October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Renamed to comp.sys.atari.st.

net.micro.att
Listed May 15, 1985 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (5/15/1985): Discussions about AT&T
microcomputers
Renamed to comp.sys.att.

net.micro.cbm
Listed June 15, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/15/1983): Subgroup for Commodore's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Commodore micros.
Renamed to comp.sys.cbm.

net.micro.cpm
Listed June 15, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/15/1983): Subgroup for the CP/M operating
system.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about the CP/M operating
system.
Renamed to comp.os.cpm.

net.micro.hp
Listed March 15, 1984 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/15/1984): Subgroup for Hewlett/Packard's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Hewlett/Packard's.
Renamed to comp.sys.hp.

net.micro.mac
Listed November 15, 1984 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/15/1984): Material about the Apple MacIntosh
& Lisa
Renamed to comp.sys.mac.

net.micro.ns32k
Apparently renamed from net.micro.16k.
Listed June 2 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/2/1986): National Semiconductor 32000 series
chips
Renamed to comp.sys.nsc.32k.

net.micro.pc


Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for personal computers.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about IBM personal
computers.
Renamed to comp.sys.ibm.pc.

net.micro.ti
Listed July 15, 1984 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (7/15/1984): Subgroup for Texas Instruments.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Texas Instruments.
Renamed to comp.sys.ti.

net.micro.trs-80
Listed January 15, 1984 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/15/1984): Subgroup for TRS-80's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about TRS-80's.
Renamed to comp.sys.tandy.

net.micro.zx
Listed November 21, 1982 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for zx's.
Description line (7/15/1985): Discussion about zx's.

net.misc
Listed January 26, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Miscellaneous discussions that
start in net.general but are not permanent enough for their own
newsgroup.
Description line (10/16/1986): Various discussions too
short-lived for other groups. Also items of a general nature not
important enough for net.general or mod.announce.


Renamed to misc.misc (representing a merger with net.followup,

net.general, and, technically, net.suicide).

net.misc.coke
Listed July 15 to October 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (7/15/1985): Discussion about New Coke vs.
Classic Coke. This is a temporary newsgroup.
Description line (10/1/1985): Discussion about New Coke vs.
Classic Coke.* This is a temporary newsgroup.


(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)

net.motss
Listed October 15, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1983): Issues pertaining to homosexuality.
Renamed to soc.motss.

net.movies
Created December 15, 1981.
Listed December 23, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/23/1981): Movie reviews
Description line (12/1/1986): Reviews and discussions of movies.
Renamed to rec.arts.movies.

net.movies.sw
Listed July 15, 1983 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (6/15/1983): Subgroup for the Star Wars saga(s).
Description line (7/15/1985): Discussions about the Star Wars
saga(s).

net.music
Created December 23, 1981.
Listed December 23, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/23/1981): What is this group about, anyway?
(No, I'm not making that up.)
Description line (12/1/1986): Music lovers' group.
Renamed to rec.music.misc.

net.music.classical
Listed May 1, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (5/1/1984): Subgroup for classical music.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about classical music.
Renamed to rec.music.classical.

net.music.folk
Listed December 1, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1984): Folks discussing folk music of
various sorts
Renamed to rec.music.folk.

net.music.gdead
Listed April 15, 1985 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/15/1985): A group for (Grateful) Dead-heads
Renamed to rec.music.gdead.

net.music.makers
Listed September 16 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (9/16/1986): For performers and their
discussions.
Renamed to rec.music.makers.
Note: This was the last net.* group to be created.

net.music.synth
Listed February 15, 1985 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (2/15/1985): Discussion about synthesizers &
their products
Description line (12/1/1986): Synthesizers and computer music
Renamed to rec.music.synth.

net.net-people
Listed April 15, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/15/1984): Announcements, requests, pointers,
etc. concerning people on the net.
Description line (10/16/1986): Announcements, requests, etc.
about people on the net.
Renamed to soc.net-people.

net.news
Renamed from NET.news at an undetermined date.
Listed November 29, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): News about netnews
Double-listed January 26 to March 9, and "November 20", 1982 for
reasons unknown (each listing had a different newsgroup line, but
the lines were complementary and may have been intended as a
single two-line description).
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussions of USENET itself.
Renamed to news.misc.

net.news.adm
Listed October 1, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/1/1983): Subgroup for news administrators.
Description line (11/1/1986): Comments directed to news
administrators.
Renamed to news.admin.

net.news.b


Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (12/16/1981): Version B news
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about B news software.
Renamed to news.software.b.

net.news.config


Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for posting of computer
down times and network interruptions.
Description line (11/1/1986): Postings of system down times and
interruptions.
Renamed to news.config.

net.news.directory
Created January 20, 1982.
Listed January 26 to November 21, 1982 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): to post all or part of the USENET
directory,
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for the USENET Directory.


Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having

been unused for over four months.

net.news.group


Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (1/26/1982): for discussions about proposed new
newsgroups,
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussions and lists of newsgroups
(Sound familiar, anyone?)
Renamed to news.groups.

net.news.map
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): for discussions about maps of
newsites.
Description line (12/1/1984): Postings of maps.
Apparently split into (moderated) mod.map, mod.map.news, and
mod.map.uucp.

net.news.newsite


Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (1/26/1982): to announce a new site.
Description line (11/1/1986): Postings of new site announcements.
Renamed to news.newsites.

net.news.notes
Apparently renamed from net.notes.
Listed September 1, 1985 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1985): Notesfile software from the Univ. of
Illinois.
Renamed to news.software.notes.

net.news.sa
Listed October 1, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/1/1983): Subgroup for system administrators.
Description line (11/1/1986): Comments directed to system
administrators.
Renamed to news.sysadmin.

net.news.stargate
Listed January 15, 1985 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/15/1985): Discussion about satellite
transmission of news.
Renamed to news.stargate.

net.nlang


Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Discussions on ''natural
languages''
Description line (10/16/1986): Natural languages, cultures,
heritages, etc.
Renamed to sci.lang.

net.nlang.africa
Listed May 15, 1985 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (5/15/1985): Discussions about Africa & things
African
Renamed to soc.culture.african.

net.nlang.celts
Listed December 15, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/15/1983): Subgroup for Celtics.
Description line (10/16/1986): Group about Celtics.
Renamed to soc.culture.celtic.

net.nlang.greek


Listed February 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (2/1/1984): Subgroup for Greeks.
Description line (10/16/1986): Group about Greeks.
Renamed to soc.culture.greek.

net.nlang.india
Listed February 15, 1985 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (2/15/1985): Group for discussion about India &
things Indian
Renamed to soc.culture.indian.

net.notes
Listed November 21, 1982 to August 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): For the notesfile software from
the University of Illinois.
Description line (8/15/1985): Notesfile software from the
University of Illinois.
Apparently renamed to net.news.notes.

net.oa
Created January 16, 1982.
Listed January 26 to November 21, 1982 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Office Automation/Word Processing
interest group.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on office
automation.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1981 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for over four months.

net.origins
Listed April 15, 1984 to September 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/15/1984): Evolution versus creationism (hot).


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to September 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (9/16/1986): Evolution versus creationism
(sometimes hot!).
Renamed to talk.origins.

net.periphs


Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (12/16/1981): Hardware peripherals
Description line (11/1/1986): Peripheral devices.
Renamed to comp.periphs.

net.pets


Listed April 2, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (4/2/1983): Pets, pet care, and household
animals in general.
Renamed to rec.pets.

net.philosophy
Listed March 2, 1983 to September 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1983): Philosophical discussions.
Renamed to talk.philosophy.misc.

net.physics


Listed "November 20, 1982" to October 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.

Description line ("11/20/1982"): Information and discussion of
physics.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (10/16/1986): Physical laws, properties, etc.
Renamed to sci.physics.

net.poems


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): For the posting of poems.
Renamed to rec.arts.poems.

net.politics
Listed November 21, 1982 to September 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Discussions on politics. Could
get hot.
Description line (9/16/1986): Political discussions. Could get
hot.
Renamed to talk.politics.misc (representing a merger with
net.politics.terror).

net.politics.terror
Listed May 17 to September 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (5/17/1986): Discussion about the problem of
terrorism.
Renamed to talk.politics.misc (representing a merger with
net.politics).

net.politics.theory
Listed February 1, 1985 to September 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (2/1/1985): Theory of politics and political
systems.
Renamed to talk.politics.theory.

net.puzzle
Listed October 1, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/1/1983): Puzzles, problems, and quizzes.
Renamed to rec.puzzles.

net.railroad


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info on railroads.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (12/1/1986): Real and model train fans'
newsgroup.
Renamed to rec.railroad.

net.rec
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.rec.all) to December 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Participant sports (recreation)
Description line (12/1/1986): Recreational/participant sports.
Renamed to rec.misc.

net.rec.birds
Created April 14, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for bird watching.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in bird
watching.
Renamed to rec.birds.

net.rec.boat
Listed March 19, 1982 to December 1, 1986, interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".


Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.

Description line (3/19/1982): boating (sail and motor???)
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in boating.
Renamed to rec.boats.

net.rec.bridge


Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (1/26/1982): Subgroup of net.rec - contract
bridge.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in bridge.
Renamed to rec.games.bridge.

net.rec.caves
Listed November 21, 1982 to July 15, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for caving.

net.rec.coins
Listed November 21, 1982 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for coin collecting.
Description line (7/15/1985): Hobbyists interested in coin
collecting.

net.rec.disc
Listed August 1, 1983 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (8/1/1983): Subgroup for disc activities.
Description line (7/15/1985): Hobbyists interested in disc
activities.

net.rec.nude


Listed April 15, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (4/15/1983): Subgroup for nude sunbathing.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in
naturist/nudist activities.
Renamed to rec.nude.

net.rec.photo


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for photography.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in
photography.
Renamed to rec.photo.

net.rec.scuba
Renamed from net.scuba on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton. (net.scuba is not on any newsgroup list in my data set,


which is why it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it
existed.)

Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Diving (formerly net.scuba)
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in SCUBA
diving.
Renamed to rec.scuba.

net.rec.ski
Renamed from net.ski on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark Horton.
(net.ski is not on any newsgroup list in my data set, which is why


it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it existed.)

Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Skiing (formerly net.ski)
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in skiing.
Renamed to rec.skiing.

net.rec.skydive
Listed March 19, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".


Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.

Description line (3/19/1982): (net.rec.skydive) sky diving
(The duplication of the name in the description line has to do
with the fact that early newsgroup names were required to be
unique in their first 14 characters, so some newsgroup lists,
like this one, allocated only 14 characters for listing those
names.)
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in skydiving.
Renamed to rec.skydiving.

net.rec.wood


Listed October 15, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (10/15/1983): Subgroup for woodworking.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in
woodworking.
Renamed to rec.woodworking.

net.records
Created January 20, 1982.
Listed January 26, 1982 to March 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Info and opinions about records
(and tapes ?).
Description line (3/1/1984): Records, both new and old, of all
musical varieties.

net.religion
Listed March 2, 1983 to September 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1983): Religious, ethical, and moral
implications of actions.
Renamed to talk.religion.misc.

net.religion.christian
Listed December 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1984): Debates about form and nature of
Christianity.
Description line (10/16/1986): Discussion about form and nature
of Christianity
Apparently renamed to (moderated) mod.religion.christian.
Note: The renaming may be the first instance of outright
replacement of an unmoderated group with a moderated one, but see
also net.news.map above.

net.religion.jewish
Listed March 1, 1984 to September 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/1/1984): Subgroup for Judaism.
Description line (9/16/1986): Information and discussion about
Judaism.
Renamed to soc.culture.jewish.

net.research


Listed November 21, 1982 only.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on research
and computer research.


Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for three months.

Listed April 2, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (4/2/1983): Research and computer research.
Renamed to sci.research.

net.roots
Listed November 1, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1983): Genealogical matters.
Renamed to soc.roots.

net.rumor
Listed December 16, 1981 to September 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Rumors about software, hardware,
etc.
Description line (9/16/1986): For the posting of rumors.
Renamed to talk.rumors.

net.sci
Listed July 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (7/1/1984): General purpose scientific
discussions.
Renamed to sci.misc.

net.sf-lovers
Listed March 19, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".


Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.

Description line (3/19/1982): Science Fiction Lovers - undigested
from fa.sf-lovers
In the March 19, 1982 list, listed as a gatewayed newsgroup.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (12/1/1986): Science fiction lovers' newsgroup.
Renamed to rec.arts.sf-lovers.

net.singles
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986.
Description line (11/21/1982): Newsgroup for single people, their
activities, etc.
Renamed to soc.singles.

net.social
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986.
Description line (11/21/1982): Like net.singles, but for
everyone.
Renamed to soc.misc.

net.sources
Listed January 26, 1982 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): A place for sources and the
distribution of material in large volume. More for software
distribution that for general info.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to April 1, 1987, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (4/1/1987): For the posting of software packages
& documentation.
Renamed to (moderated) comp.sources.misc.
Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

net.sources.bugs
Listed October 1, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (10/1/1984): For bug fixes and features
discussion pertaining to items in net.sources
Renamed to comp.sources.bugs.
Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

net.sources.d
Listed March 16 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (3/16/1986): For followup discussion on
net.sources postings.
Description line (11/1/1986): For any discussion on net.sources
postings.
Renamed to comp.sources.d.

net.sources.games
Listed February 15, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Renamed to (moderated) comp.sources.games.
Description line (2/15/1985): Postings of recreational software
Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

net.sources.mac
Listed February 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Renamed to (moderated) comp.sources.mac.
Description line (2/1/1985): Software for the Apple MacIntosh
Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

net.space
Listed February 3, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (2/3/1982): Space programs and research,
gatewayed to fa.space
In the March 19, 1982 list, listed as a gatewayed group.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (10/16/1986): Space, space programs, space
related research, etc.
Renamed to sci.space.

net.sport
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.sport.all) to December 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): All spectator sports mailing lists
Description line (12/1/1986): Spectator sports.
Renamed to rec.sport.misc.

net.sport.baseball


Created on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark Horton.

Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (12/16/1981): Baseball
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about baseball.
Renamed to rec.sport.baseball.

net.sport.football


Created on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark Horton.

Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (12/16/1981): Football
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about football.
Renamed to rec.sport.football.

net.sport.hockey


Created on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark Horton.

Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (12/16/1981): Hockey
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about hockey.
Renamed to rec.sport.hockey.

net.sport.hoops
Listed November 15, 1983 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/15/1983): Subgroup for basketball.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about basketball.
Renamed to rec.sport.basketball.

net.startrek


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on Star Trek.
Description line (12/1/1986): Star Trek, the TV show and the
movies.
Renamed to rec.arts.startrek.

net.std
Listed June 15, 1983 to August 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (6/15/1983): All sorts of standards.
Description line (8/1/1985): All sorts of standards (e.g., ANSI,
IEEE).

net.suicide
Created December 8, 1981.


Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on suicide.
Description line (10/16/1986): Suicide, laws, ethics, and its
causes and effects (!).
Renamed to misc.misc (technically, representing a merger with
net.followup, net.general, and net.misc; realistically,
representing the removal of the group).
Notes: This is effectively the first example of removing a group
by renaming it to misc.misc. One could say the same of the other
three groups, I suppose, but both net.followup and net.misc had
been created in what amounted to (failed) splits of net.general,
so I don't see their re-merger as a meaningful example of group
removal; in contrast, net.suicide had led an entirely independent
existence until this point.

net.taxes
Listed January 26, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Tax advice and queries.
Description line (10/16/1986): Tax laws and advice.
Renamed to misc.taxes.

net.test
Possibly renamed from NET.test at an undetermined date (see the
NET.* post for more on this matter).
Listed December 16, 1981 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Test messages, not interesting.
Description line (10/16/1986): For testing of network software.
Very boring.
Renamed to misc.test.

net.text
Listed July 16, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (7/16/1983): Text processing.
Renamed to comp.text.

net.theater
Listed December 1, 1984 to August 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1984): For performers and audiences of the
theater.

net.travel


Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (1/26/1982): Requests, suggestions, and opinions
about traveling
Description line (12/1/1986): Traveling all over the world.
Renamed to rec.travel.

net.trivia


Listed November 21, 1982 only.

Description line (11/21/1982): Trivia questions and answers.


Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as

duplicative of net.games.trivia.

net.tv


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on the boob
tube.
Description line (12/1/1986): The boob tube, its history, and
past and current shows.
Renamed to rec.arts.tv.

net.tv.da
Listed December 1, 1983 to March 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1983): Subgroup for "The Day After."

net.tv.drwho
Listed January 3, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/3/1984): Subgroup for Dr. Who.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about Dr. Who.
Renamed to rec.arts.drwho.

net.tv.sctv


Listed November 21, 1982 only.

Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for SCTV.


Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having

been unused for over four months and "much too specific".

net.tv.soaps
Listed May 15, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (5/15/1984): Subgroup for soap operas.
Description line (12/1/1986): Postings about soap operas.
Renamed to rec.arts.tv.soaps.

net.ucds
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 15, 1983 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): VLSI draw software system.
Description line (12/15/1983): The UNIX circuit design system.

net.unix
Listed September 15, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (9/15/1983): UNIX neophytes group.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Renamed to comp.unix.questions.

net.unix-wizards
Renamed from fa.unix-wizards, probably by Andrew Knutsen,
beginning about December 24, 1981.


Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (1/26/1982): ARPANET mailing list for UNIX
Wizards. Anything and everything relating to UNIX is discussed
here. This list is gatewayed to the ARPANET mailing list but
appears like a regular newsgroup to USENET.
In the lists dated March 19 and "November 20", 1982, listed as a
gatewayed newsgroup.


In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985

to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussions, bug reports, and fixes
on and for UNIX. Not for the weak of heart.


(This was one of the two last surviving two-line descriptions.)

Renamed to comp.unix.wizards.

net.usenix


Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on the USENIX
Association.
Description line (11/1/1986): USENIX Association events and
announcements.
Renamed to comp.org.usenix.

net.usoft
Listed November 21, 1982 to August 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on general
software packages.
Description line (8/1/1985): Universal (public domain) software
packages.

net.usoft.s
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 15, 1983 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for the S Statistical
Package.

net.v7bugs
Renamed from NET.v7bugs at an undetermined date.
Listed November 29, 1981 only.


Since the November 29, 1981 list contained no description lines,
none survive for this newsgroup.

Renamed to net.bugs.v7 on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.

net.veg
Listed January 3, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/3/1984): Vegitarians.
Description line (12/1/1986): Vegetarians.
Renamed to rec.food.veg.

net.video


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on video and
video components.
Description line (12/1/1986): Video and video components.
Renamed to rec.video.

net.vvs
Listed March 2, 1983 to October 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1983): The Vortex Video System for
digitized video images.

net.vwrabbit
Listed November 29, 1981 only.


Since the November 29, 1981 list contained no description lines,
none survive for this newsgroup.

Renamed to net.auto.vw on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.

net.wanted


Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Requests for things that are
needed, e.g. device drivers, pointers to people, etc.
Description line (10/16/1986): Requests for things that are
needed.
Renamed to misc.wanted.

net.wanted.sources
Listed October 1, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/1/1984): Requests for software, termcap
entries, etc.
Renamed to comp.sources.wanted.

net.wines
Created February 27, 1982.
Listed March 9, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only December
5, 1982.
Description line (3/9/1982): Info and reccomendations about wines
and alcoholic beverages.


Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having

been unused for a month and a half and "MAYBE too specific".
Obviously, this rmgroup didn't take, but I don't have details
yet.
Description line (12/1/1986): Wines and spirits.
Renamed to rec.food.drink.

net.wobegon


Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.

Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on that radio
show.
Description line (12/1/1986): "A Prairie Home Companion" radio
show discussion.
Renamed to rec.arts.wobegon.

net.women
Listed January 23, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/23/1983): Info and discussions for both sexes
on women's rights, discrimination, etc.
Description line (10/16/1986): Women's rights, discrimination,
etc.
Renamed to soc.women.

net.women.only
Listed September 1, 1983 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1983): For women only.
Description line (7/15/1985): Postings by women only (read by
all).

net.works
Created April 6, 1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 to June 19, 1986 without interruption.


Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on

workstations.
Description line (6/19/1986): Assorted workstations.

net.works.apollo
Listed March 1, 1984 to February 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (3/1/1984): Subgroup for Apollo's.
Description line (2/15/1985): Discussion about Apollo
workstations.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:30:04 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's hierarchical posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the NET.* hierarchy.

This post is closest to the final form, of the posts in this
preliminary version of the chronology. I got carried away.

Joe Bernstein


THE fa.* HIERARCHY

--Rise--

The name "fa" stands for "from ARPAnet". ARPAnet was a network
created in 1969 and operated, from 1975 to 1990, by the Defense
Communications Agency of the Department of Defense of the United
States of America. It is generally considered the most important
single ancestor of the Internet (which itself seems to have begun in
1975). Mailing lists on ARPAnet began in 1975, and quickly became one
of the ARPAnet's most popular features.

Before May 18, 1980, the University of California at Berkeley's
"ucbvax" computer had joined Usenet. Berkeley already had an ARPAnet
connection on different machines, and at some point, according to
Ronda Hauben, Mark Horton, Eric Allman and Eric Schmidt, Berkeley
graduate students, began "gatewaying" ARPAnet mailing lists from those
machines via ucbvax into Usenet. I don't know at what point these
mailing lists were turned into separate newsgroups (it could have been
at the beginning, whenever that was, or could equally easily have been
in March 1981, for all I can tell); at any rate, NET.unix-wizards
probably existed by April 7, 1981. The fa.* hierarchy arose from Mark
Horton's renaming of these newsgroups out of NET.*, on or near May 12,
1981.

The ARPAnet mailing lists were crucial to the growth of Usenet,
according to reminiscences by Steve Bellovin, one of Usenet's
founders. This is because they were much-desired content. Lots of
people knew about the ARPAnet lists - I actually read about them in a
book while still a child, prior to the birth of Usenet! - but since
ARPAnet was a military project, however undisciplined, access to it
was restricted. The Usenet gateways offered those without ARPAnet
access the opportunity to read, and perhaps to post to, these lists,
and this in turn provided the core content that induced system
administrators to join Usenet. This effect was important to making
Usenet big enough to produce much-desired content of its own; Steve
Bellovin's phrase was "critical mass".

As a fairly obvious consequence, fa.* groups were sometimes among the
busiest and most interesting of the early Usenet groups, although in
several cases such busy and interesting groups wound up being renamed
into net.*, once gateways were sufficiently worked out.

--Fall--

The Usenet-ARPAnet links suffered from three major difficulties.

First, the ARPAnet lists themselves could be unstable. Some lists
were human-moderated, and in the absence of a moderator, the list
didn't function. Lists were sometimes scrutinised for military
usefulness - at one point, the SF-LOVERS list, a quite obviously
irrelevant one, was apparently saved by the argument that it provided
practice in the management of large mailing lists!

Second, the gateways could be unstable. If the person who gated a
particular list left the institution on whose computer the gateway
lived, the gateway might shut down. Also, some ARPAnet participants
disapproved of the gateways, and an offensive posting from a Usenet
participant, or a decision by a list moderator, might result in a
gateway being shut down. The main gateways remained at Berkeley
throughout the official life of the hierarchy, and Berkeley had an
institutional investment in Unix that generated considerable
dedication to Usenet (the most prominent Unix communication network),
but there were gateways elsewhere that had less support.

Third, and most relevant to the fate of the hierarchy as a whole, the
arrangements for posting left a lot to be desired. The distributed
nature of Usenet, and the limitations of then-current software, meant
that posts were normally *not* automatically forwarded back to the
list moderator or address across the gateway. As a general rule,
therefore, to post to an fa.* group and reach the ARPAnet readers as
well, you had to e-mail the article to the moderator or list address.
In those days, e-mailing people on different networks could be a
challenge. Since Usenet software provided no way to require posters
to e-mail, sometimes people would post normally instead, resulting in
content that the ARPAnet side of the group didn't see. And this in
turn promoted additional conflict between the participants from the
two networks.

There were other reasons to try to implement moderation as a Usenet
mechanism, and in 1983 experimental groups - net.announce and mod.ber
- were created. Finally in October 1984 the mod.* hierarchy opened
for serious business. Usenet moderation implemented e-mail to
moderators as a requirement of posting, and Gene Spafford began to
post lists of moderators with extensive information on how to e-mail
the moderators. Moreover, already by the fall of 1985, news software
existed that not only enforced the e-mail requirement, but enabled it,
keeping moderators' addresses stored and mailing posts to them
automatically. This of course became increasingly easy as more and
more Usenet sites obtained direct access to the Internet. All in all,
mod.* groups could not suffer the sort of split discussion that fa.*
groups could.

Although groups came and went, the hierarchy remained stable at
sixteen to nineteen official groups from late 1981 to early 1985.
Then Gene Spafford rmgrouped five groups that had been devoid of
traffic for seven or more months. And in mid-1985, the ucbvax
news-admin, Erik Fair, who then signed his posts "guardian of the
gateway", began pushing to rename the remaining fa.* groups into mod.*
so as to take advantage of Usenet moderation. The renaming was
accomplished around October 21 of that year, extinguishing the
official fa.* hierarchy. There followed considerable complaints into
November: about the new names; about the fact that not all of the
fa.* groups had in fact been moderated as mailing lists (the gateway
operator for fa.laser-lovers suddenly found himself made a moderator,
without his consent!); about wrong addresses and bad propagation; and
about the fact that the action was taken without much effort to gather
consensus on Usenet.

Five fa.* groups based on unmoderated mailing lists - fa.arpa-bboard,
fa.info-vax, fa.info-vlsi, fa.laser-lovers, and fa.tcp-ip - were
nevertheless renamed into moderated newsgroups -
net.announce.arpa-internet, mod.computers.vax, mod.vlsi,
mod.computers.laser-printers, and mod.protocols.tcp-ip respectively.
Of these, only mod.computers.laser-printers remained a moderated group
(comp.laser-printers) after the Great Renaming; and that group has now
been dead for over a decade.

Additional references on this renaming, beyond those mentioned in the
set of annual summaries:

Erik Fair
"proposed new structure for `fa' groups"
October 3, 1985
net.news.group
Message-ID: 10...@ucbvax.ARPA

Gene Spafford
""fa" to "mod" group conversion started"
October 21, 1985
net.announce
Message-ID: 16...@gatech.CSNET

--Afterlife--

That ends the official story, the story told, among other things, in
the following list of official fa.* newsgroups. However, it's worth
noting that fa.* has turned out to be a much more durable concept.

This fact can be traced in the Google archives, but little more can be
learnt there, and Cameron Laird's list of newsgroup archives offers no
fa.* group archives as alternatives to Google. Here's what I can
offer. Already in 1981 newsgroups existed that never made it onto
official lists - fa.apollo, fa.dungeon, and fa.test all have postings
preserved at Google, for example. But the main source for Google's
archives of the 1980s is the University of Toronto's archives, and by
the time fa.* was officially shut down, Toronto had become a
"backbone" site, invested in the official list. One can find in the
archives posts about the continued life of fa.* groups, but not posts
from the groups themselves. The exception to this rule is that posts
which went to official net.*, mod.*, or Big 7 groups but also, via
cross-posting, to fa.* groups, might be archived; and a tiny
scattering of such posts does survive. This scattering consists, on
average, of tolerably clueful posts (albeit heavy on the
cross-posting, which is a predictable result of the fact that only
cross-posts were archived). There's no reason to think the posters
were inventing the fa.* groups they posted to, but some of these, such
as fa.prolog, had never been official: someone, somewhere, was still
creating fa.* groups. This archival pattern of cross-posts only
continues, with increasing percentages of alpha-spams but with
consistent presence of plausible never-official groups, straight
through to 1997, a year whose main archival source is the considerably
more liberal DejaNews. By this time the single most-often
cross-posted-to fa.* group was fa.cisco. The archives abruptly
present one day's worth of posts from several fa.* groups in July
1997, and then, just as abruptly, beginning on November 16, 1997,
there are apparently full archives of an increasing number of fa.*
groups, beginning with fa.cisco, and with no hint whatever that the
groups had just been started.

My interpretation of these facts is that the basic idea of gatewaying
remained prevalent, and, as witness the complaints in November 1985,
not everyone saw the "official" abolition of the fa.* hierarchy as a
particularly good reason to stop using it. It's worth noting that
already by the end of 1986, news software existed that allowed
full-blown moderation of groups outside mod.* and *.announce; there
was then no longer any reason *not* to use an fa.* name, and the name
scheme was anyway established and known. So I would expect that the
existing groups are the work of random individuals doing gateways, not
especially coordinated, and that there is probably therefore no one
place where records of the hierarchy might have been kept. (The
substantial fa.linux.* hierarchy would seem to be at least one
probably-organised exception.)

There certainly is no hint of an existing fa.* hierarchy
administration in Simon Lyall's config.ctl file (which recommends
deleting any fa.* groups); there is only a scattering of control
messages at the ftp.isc.org archive, none of them matching the more
successful of the current groups.

Given these formidable obstacles, I have no reason to think I'll be
able to tell the post-1985 story of the fa.* groups in my
chronological work - one reason I do chronology is that I'm not enough
of a people person to do real history by going around and talking to
people and so forth. But I do wish to record here that the story does
exist.


GROUP BY GROUP

Note: Description lines are reformatted as necessary, but the text in

them is exactly what the original list has. In some cases, the
assembled descriptions flatly contradict each other (fa.laser-lovers
is the most extreme case). In order to ensure that this set of posts


gets done at all, I'm having to limit the research I do. So in this
post I make no attempt to arbitrate which description is right, but

simply include the first and last line for each group. (In the rare


cases where the first and last lines are identical, I include only the
first.)

Again to avoid delaying the initial series of posts, I'm also not
consistently including in this post which mailing lists these groups
derived from, or who gatewayed them and where. That information is


obviously high on my list of things to include in the later version of
the chronology.


fa.all


Listed on December 16, 1981 only.

Description line (12/16/1981): Forwarded Arpanet mailing lists


The 12/16/1981 list was written by Mark Horton, who as late as the
1983 RFC 850 was using "all" as a sort of equivalent of "*". In

this context, "fa.all" probably meant "The fa.* hierarchy". Since
fa.all did not appear in Mark Horton's related December 23 "list",


I'm inclined to think it wasn't meant to be seen as a group in the
December 16 list.

fa.arms-d
Renamed from NET.arms-d on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Archived: May 19 to July 16, 1981; May 11 to October 26, 1982;
January 31 to March 26, 1983; May 19, 1983; September 25 to
October 16, 1983; April 23, 1984 to July 9, 1985; October 18 to
29, 1985. There are posts documenting that a number of these gaps
were real gaps in the ARPAnet list (which was usually moderated),
not just in the gateway or the archive.
I'm not certain, but think the mailing list was *not* moderated by
July 16, 1981.
Description line (12/16/1981): Continuing debate on arms
(arms-d@MC)
Moderators: Herb Lin, May 11, 1982 to October 16, 1983; John
Larson and Dave Caulkins, April 23, 1984 to some undetermined date
in 1985.
Description line (10/15/1985): Arms discussion digest.
Renamed to mod.politics.arms-d circa October 21, 1985.

fa.arpa-bboard
Renamed from NET.arpa-bboard on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Archived: May 15, 1981 to February 5, 1982 (infrequent posts);
May 12 to September 22, 1982; March 7, 1984 to October 11, 1985.
While I find it implausible that this list could have been
unmoderated, I find no references to a "moderator" in a Google
search of the newsgroup (except in conference announcements), and,
outside the newsgroup, no posts other than lists of newsgroups
that use both "fa.arpa-bboard" and "moderator". If it *was*
unmoderated, the standards of its posters were exceptionally high.
Description line (12/16/1981): Arpanet bulletin boards
(arpanet-bboards@AI)
Description line (10/15/1985): ARPANET bulletin board.
Renamed to net.announce.arpa-internet circa October 21, 1985.

fa.bitgraph
Archived: July 7 to August 9, 1982.
Apparently unmoderated (one of the few posts archived is a mailing
list subscription request).
Listed November 21, 1982 to February 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on bit
graphics.
Description line (2/1/1985): The BBN bitgraph terminal.
Rmgrouped by Gene Spafford on or before February 6, 1985 for lack
of activity since May of 1984 (nearly two years later than the end
of Google's archive).

fa.digest-p
Archived: December 7, 1981 to January 30, 1982. The latter date
may actually represent the mailing list's or the gateway's end.
I see no sign in the archived posts of a moderator.
Listed December 16, 1981 to February 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): For Digest maintainers
A post by Dave Curry to net.news.direc, on June 28, 1982, lists
mailing addresses for all of the other fa.* groups but offers only
question marks for this one.
Description line (2/1/1985): Digest-people digest.
Rmgrouped by Gene Spafford on or before February 6, 1985 for lack
of activity since at *least* November 1983, and for lack of a
surviving equivalent ARPAnet list.

fa.editor-p
Archived: October 2, 1981 to October 27, 1982; December 19, 1982;
March 13, 1983; June 3 to June 5, 1983; September 21 to October
10, 1983; July 17, 1984.
Unmoderated until November 2, 1981.
Moderator: J. Q. Johnson, November 2, 1981 to July 17, 1984
(probably), or June 5, 1983 (certainly).
Listed December 16, 1981 to February 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Editors (editor-people@su-score)
Description line (2/1/1985): Editor-people digest.
Rmgrouped by Gene Spafford on or before February 6, 1985 for lack
of activity since at least August 1984.

fa.energy
Renamed from NET.energy on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to February 1, 1985 without interruption.
Archived: May 15 to June 24, 1981; July 14, 1982.
Moderators: Oded Feingold, May 15 to 23, 1981 and June 23, 1981
to July 14, 1982; Robert Kerns, May 28 to June 10, 1981.
Description line (12/16/1981): Various energy topics (energy@MC)
Description line (2/1/1985): Energy programs, conservation, etc.
Rmgrouped by Gene Spafford on or before February 6, 1985 for lack
of activity since at *least* November 1983.

fa.home-sat
No posts are archived at Google.
Renamed from NET.home-sat on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed on May 12, 1981 only.
(Since that list had no description lines, none are available for
this group.)
No post available at Google explains its removal.

fa.human-nets
Renamed from NET.human-nets on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Archived: May 12 to June 4, 1981; May 19, 1982; July 31, 1982 to
April 18, 1983 (sometimes spottily); June 1, 1983 to March 16,
1984; June 29, 1984 to November 11, 1985; there are also smaller
gaps, but in general this is an unusually good archival for an
fa.* group.
Moderators: Don Erway (name inferred from address and .sig), May
12 to June 4, 1981; Mike Peeler, May 19, 1982; Mel Pleasant, July
31, 1982 to July 9, 1983; Charles McGrew, July 13, 1983 to
November 11, 1985.
Description line (12/16/1981): Computers in the real world
(human-nets@AI)
Description line (10/15/1985): Computer aided communications
digest.
Renamed to mod.human-nets circa October 21, 1985.
Note: This is generally described as one of the most important of
the fa.* groups (the others I've seen so described are
fa.unix-wizards and fa.sf-lovers), and it's the only one of those
that remained in fa.* until the end.

fa.info-cpm
Renamed from NET.info-cpm on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to June 15, 1983 without interruption.
Archived May 15 to June 28, 1981; May 12, 1982 to February 24,
1983 (copiously!); September 19 to 23, 1984.
The list-owner was Frank Wancho, at least in 1981-82. He seems to
have treaded very lightly, and I don't think this was a moderated
mailing list as that phrase is usually understood, although on at
least one occasion he threatened to unsubscribe people or shut the
list down over an obscenity.
Description line (12/16/1981): The CP/M operating system
(info-cpm@AI)
Description line (6/15/1983): CP/M (Control Program / Micro)
Operating System mailing list.
Rmgrouped apparently by Adam Buchsbaum, June 16, 1983, as
duplicative of net.micro.cpm.
Probably rmgrouped again by Ron Heiby in late September, 1984 in
response to the September 1984 traffic, which apparently resulted
from a mistake of Erik Fair's.
Listed on October 1, 1984 only.
Description line (10/1/1984): Talk about the popular
microcomputer OS, CPM.
"Deleted" by Gene Spafford, per a posting October 6, 1984, as
duplicative of net.micro.cpm.

fa.info-kermit
Archived November 28, 1984 to October 29, 1985.
Moderator: Frank da Cruz.
Listed December 1, 1984 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/1/1984): Information about the popular
Kermit software package.
Renamed to mod.protocols.kermit circa October 21, 1985.

fa.info-mac
Archived June 26, 1984 to April 8, 1985 (extremely copiously; many
of the digests are missing, but I think they were simply split
into the individual posts of which they were made, and individual
posts are profuse); June 6 to November 6, 1985.
Moderators: Edward Pattermann, June 26, 1984 to ?December 14,
1984; John Mark Agosta, ?December 14, 1984 to June 12, 1985 and
July 23 to August 6, 1985; Richard Alderson, July 6 to July 16 and
August 21 to November 6, 1985. This applies to the INFO-MAC
mailing list; the INFO-APPLEBUS mailing list was also gated into
this group, according to Erik Fair, but I find few postings
discernibly from it in the archive and so don't know whether that
list was moderated. I find it incredible that INFO-MAC was
moderated, quite honestly, in view of the number of postings.
Wow.
Gateway: Richard Furuta at the University of Washington.
Listed July 1, 1984 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (7/1/1984): MAC micros.
Description line (10/15/1985): Apple MacIntosh micros.
Split, ostensibly, into mod.computers.macintosh and
mod.protocols.appletalk circa October 21, 1985.

fa.info-micro
Renamed from NET.info-micro on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to November 21, 1982 without interruption.
Archived May 19, 1981 to January 29, 1982.
Moderator: Christopher Stacy, May 19 to July 30, 1981.
Apparently unmoderated from August 8, 1981 (a request to be added
to the mailing list is archived from December 18, 1981), although
I gather Keith Petersen was the list-owner at some point.
Description line (12/16/1981): Microcomputers (info-micro@AI)
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on micro
computers.
Rmgrouped by Adam Buchsbaum on or near December 5, 1982, as
duplicative of net.micro.

fa.info-terms
Renamed from NET.info-terms on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Archived May 25 to October 29, 1981 (spottily); January 29 to
August 14, 1982; December 23, 1982 to April 26, 1983; September 4
to 24, 1983; November 14, 1984; October 21 to November 2, 1985.
Patently unmoderated, since numerous archived posts, ranging in
date from October 23, 1985 to (believe it or not) June 11, 1981,
are subscribe or unsubscribe requests.
Description line (12/16/1981): News about terminals
(info-terms@MC)
Description line (10/15/1985): All sorts of terminals.
Apparently merged with net.info-terms circa October 21, 1985.

fa.info-vax
Archived November 16, 1981 to January 22, 1982; April 21 to August
17, 1982; December 1 to 31, 1982 (copiously; then the list shut
down to convert to TCP/IP); February 26 to March 26, 1983; August
21 to October 19, 1983 (spottily); September 13, 1984 to October
30, 1985.
Patently unmoderated; there are subscribe and unsubscribe requests
throughout the 1984 and 1985 archives, and from September 1983;
June 8, 1982 the list-owner (Norm Samuelson) threatened to
moderate if people kept sending such requests to the list, but in
July 1982 another is archived.
Listed December 16, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Information on the VAX, mostly VMS
Description line (10/15/1985): DEC's VAX* line of computers.
The asterisk points to a trademark reference.
Renamed to mod.computers.vax circa October 21, 1985.

fa.info-vlsi
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on very large
scale integrated circuits.
Archived November 30 to December 26, 1982; April 2 and 18, 1983;
September 27, 1983; January 10, 1984; May 8 to June 17, 1984;
August 13 to September 20, 1984; November 28 to December 10, 1984
(the last posting announces a change in the list's address); March
5 to 27, 1985; May 15 to October 15, 1985. The archives contain
several posts about how dead the newsgroup was.
Unmoderated, to judge from the subscribe and unsubscribe requests
that pervade the archives of the group. Tom Linnerooth apparently
was the list-owner, at least in 1985.
Description line (10/15/1985): Very large scale integrated
circuits.
Renamed to mod.vlsi circa October 21, 1985.

fa.laser-lovers
Archived November 9, 1983 to March 7, 1984; May 7, 1984 to April
18, 1985; May 29 to November 13, 1985.
Unmoderated.
Gateway: Richard Furuta at the University of Washington.
Listed November 15, 1983 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/15/1983): Lasers, facts, fiction, and
dreams.
Description line (10/15/1985): Laser printers, hardware and
software.
Renamed to mod.computers.laser-printers circa October 21, 1985.

fa.poli-sci
Created August 13, 1981 by Geoff Peck.
Archived August 27 to August 28, 1981; May 12 to August 14, 1982;
September 13, 1984 to November 9, 1985.
Moderator: Jonathan Alan Solomon, August 27 to August 28, 1981;
JoSH Hall, May 12, 1982 to November 9, 1985.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Political science
(poi-sci@rutgers)
Description line (10/15/1985): Politics and/versus science.
Apparently merged with mod.politics circa October 21, 1985.
Trivia notes: I found Steve Bellovin posting to the 1981 digests,
and among the posters to the last, November 9, 1985, edition were
Henry Spencer and Lynn Gazis.

fa.printers
Created on or near June 23, 1981 by Mark Horton (probably).
Archived June 23 and August 11, 1981 (two posts).
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 23, 1981 only.
Description line (12/16/1981): Printers
No post available at Google explains its removal. A post by Mark
Horton to fa.info-terms inquires as to whether the list to be fed
to fa.printers existed, but that post was posted June 14, so I
must assume the reply was that the list *did* exist, which leaves
open the question as to what happened.

fa.railroad
Archived December 14, 1981 to January 12, 1982; May 11 to July 30,
1982; September 14 to 22, 1982; March 25 to 26, 1983; October 14,
1983; May 9 to 23, 1984; July 5 to 26, 1984; November 1, 1984 to
June 30, 1985; August 2 to 22, 1985. There is a post dated
November 11, 1984, Message-ID <32...@ucbvax.ARPA>, which contains
Usenet-side posts dated June 21 to July 30 and October 14 to
November 9, 1984.
Unmoderated (several subscribe requests are archived).
Listed on November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info on railroads.
Rmgrouped by Adam Buchsbaum on or near December 5, 1982, as
duplicative of net.railroad.
The gateway was apparently restored March 11, 1983, to judge from
a test message at Google.
Listed April 2, 1983 to August 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (4/2/1983): Railroad services and interruption
of same.
Description line (8/15/1985): Real and model train fans'
newsgroup.
Probably rmgrouped by Erik Fair shortly after August 24, 1985, as
duplicative of net.railroad.

fa.risks
Archived September 9 to 27, 1985 (apparently as a result of a
reposting of some or all of these articles by Ron Heiby, per a
post by him to the group October 22, 1985).
Moderator: Peter Neumann.
Gateway: Brian Reid at Stanford University.
Listed on October 15, 1985 only.
Description line (10/15/1985): Risks and security
Apparently renamed to mod.risks circa October 21, 1985.
Note: This was the last fa.* group to be created.

fa.sf-lovers
Renamed from NET.sf-lovers on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to October 1, 1984 without interruption.
Archived May 13 to June 27, 1981; May 19 to December 31, 1982
(spottily); June 5, 1983.
Moderators: Jim McGrath, May 13 to June 17, 1981; Mike Peeler,
June 22 to 27, 1981; Jim McGrath, May 19 to September 22, 1982;
Stuart Cracraft, October 17, 1982 to December 31, 1982, and my
leading suspect for June 5, 1983.
Description line (12/16/1981): For science fiction fans
(sf-lovers@AI)
Description line (10/1/1984): Science fiction lovers' digest.
"Deleted" by Gene Spafford, per a posting October 6, 1984, as
inactive and duplicative of net.sf-lovers.
Note: This is generally described as one of the most important of
the fa.* groups.

fa.space
Created September 30, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Archived October 1, 1981 to February 28, 1982.
Moderator: Ted Anderson.
Listed November 29, 1981 to November 21, 1982 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): The space program (space@mc)
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on space,


space programs, space related research, etc.

Rmgrouped by Adam Buchsbaum on or near December 5, 1982, as
duplicative of net.space.

fa.tcp-ip
Archived October 14, 1981 to February 5, 1982; July 26 to December
23, 1982; February 26, 1983; April 22, 1983; June 14 to October
11, 1983 (spottily); July 16, 1984; March 15, 1985; May 14 to
October 19, 1985.
Moderator: Michael Muuss, October 14, 1981 to October 11, 1983.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): TCP & IP protocols (tcp-ip@brl)
Unmoderated from at least March 15, 1985 on.
Description line (10/15/1985): TCP and IP network protocols.
Renamed to mod.protocols.tcp-ip circa October 21, 1985.

fa.telecom
Created August 21, 1981 by Geoff Peck.
Archived August 27 to September 8, 1981; May 11 to September 27,
1982; October 30 to December 28, 1982; March 17, 1983 to April 10,
1984; June 20, 1984; August 3, 1984 to October 30, 1985. On the
whole, this is one of the best-archived of the fa.* groups.
Moderator: Jon Solomon.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Telecommunications
(telecom@rutgers)
Description line (10/15/1985): Telecommunications digest.
Renamed to mod.telecom circa October 21, 1985.

fa.teletext
Renamed from NET.teletext on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed on May 12, 1981 only.
Listed January 26, 1982 to February 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Teletext discusses all aspects of
``esoteric'' data systems. This includes teletext, viewdata,
closed-captioning, and digicasting.
Archived June 20 to 21, 1982 (six posts total).
Description line (2/1/1985): Teletext digest.
Rmgrouped by Gene Spafford on or before February 6, 1985 for lack
of activity since at *least* November 1983, and for lack of a
surviving equivalent ARPAnet list.

fa.unix-cpm
Created by Mark Horton on or near June 23, 1981, per messages
posted to net.general and to the group.
Archived June 24, 1981 (two posts total).
Listed November 29, 1981 to "November 20, 1982" without
interruption.


Note that the date of the November 20, 1982 list is unreliable:
it dates to sometime after March 9, 1982 and before the posting
date of November 20, 1982.

Description line (12/16/1981): Unix vs. CP/M (unix-cpm@UDEL)
Description line ("11/20/1982"): Digest of CPM/UNIX discussions.
No post available at Google explains its removal, but Google shows
no traffic later than June 24, 1981.

fa.unix-wizards
Renamed from NET.unix-wizards on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed May 12, 1981 to December 23, 1981 without interruption.
Archived May 15 to December 27, 1981 (in mind-boggling profusion);
July 2, 1982.
Unmoderated.
Description line (12/16/1981): Unix system gurus mailing list
(unix-wizards@SRI-UNIX)
Renamed to net.unix-wizards, probably by Andrew Knutsen, beginning
about December 24, 1981.
Note: This is generally described as one of the most important of
the fa.* groups.

fa.works
Archived June 23, 1981 to March 22, 1982; August 2 to August 15,
1982. (Mark Horton asks, in an archived post dated June 20, 1981,
whether an address change was correctly handled, implying that the
group had existed earlier.)
Unmoderated until at least August 3, 1981 (when the first digest
indicates that a moderator is being sought). However, by that
time Roger Duffey was already involved in the distribution of the
mail, and sometimes appending notes (signed "RDD") to posts.
Moderators: Roger Duffey, from whenever the list became
"moderated" to October 16, 1981; Jon Solomon, October 21, 1981 to
March 17, 1982; Mel Pleasant, March 17, 1982 to August 15, 1982.
Listed November 29, 1981 to November 21, 1982 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Work station computers (workS@AI)


Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on

workstations.
Rmgrouped by Adam Buchsbaum on or near December 5, 1982, as
duplicative of net.works.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:32:14 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's chronological posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the year 1981.

1983 is, compared to most of the rest of the 1980s, a relatively quiet
year in the newsgroup lists, and, I believe, in newsgroup creation in
general: lots of groups were being created, but no major upheavals
attended this. It does, however, see the beginning of regular posting
of the lists, and more importantly, the creation of the first
newsgroup moderated *from Usenet* (as opposed to the fa.* groups,
whose ARPAnet contributions were usually moderated, but whose Usenet
versions weren't necessarily).

When, then, Usenet moderation appears, I change the style of my
summaries. The change results in something that may look excessive.
Trust me; when we get to late 1984 and beyond, you'll see why.

Joe Bernstein


Lists of Newsgroups Posted in 1983

ADAM BUCHSBAUM

"List of Currently Active Newsgroups"
January 20, 1983
(The Date header, however, reads January 23, for no discernible
reason; there is a Posted header which agrees with the post's body
that the true date is January 20.)


net.news.group
Google Message-ID: bnews.alice.1412
(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

Added: net.ai, net.decus, net.emacs, net.graphics, net.info-terms
(again), net.lang.forth, net.med, net.wines (again), net.women.

Removed: fa.space (anyway, this time it isn't ambiguous).

Summary: From 16 (or 17) to 16 fa.* groups, from 105 to 114 net.*
groups, 130 total.


"List of Active USENET Groups"
March 2, 1983
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: bnews.alice.1551


(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

Added: net.books, net.micro.apple, net.philosophy, net.religion,
net.vvs.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups, from 114 to 119 net.* groups, 135
total.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
April 2, 1983
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: bnews.alice.1724


(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

Added: fa.railroad, net.analog, net.college, net.garden,
net.micro.16k, net.pets, net.research.

Summary: From 16 to 17 fa.* groups, from 119 to 125 net.* groups, 142
total.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
April 17, 1983
net.news.group
Google Message-ID: bnews.alice.1752


(The header was converted from B-News style by Google.)

Added: net.comics, net.rec.nude.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups, from 125 to 127 net.* groups, 144
total.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
June 15, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 19...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.announce, net.crypt, net.micro.cbm, net.micro.cpm,
net.movies.sw, net.std.

net.announce is listed as moderated in its description. It is the
first group so described in net.* in any list. Furthermore, it
continued so described in all lists until the appearance of more
formal moderation flags; and at that time, it was the oldest group so
flagged. I therefore presume that the description is accurate, in
which case net.announce is the first moderated group outside fa.*, in
other words, the first to be moderated using Usenet rather than the
ARPAnet as the means of moderation.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 127 to 132
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 1 moderated group, from 127 to 133
total. 150 total (1 moderated, 17 fa.*, 132 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
July 1, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 20...@alice.UUCP

With this post, the semi-monthly posting schedule began which was to
continue, with some exceptions, for years to come.

Removed: fa.info-cpm.

Summary: From 17 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, no change: 132
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 133 total. 149 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*,
132 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
July 16, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 20...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.mail.headers, net.mail.msggroup, net.text.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 132 to 135
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 133 to 136
total. 152 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 135 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
August 1, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 20...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.rec.disc.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 135 to 136
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 136 to 137
total. 153 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 136 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
August 15, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 21...@alice.UUCP

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
September 1, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 21...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.cog-eng, net.legal, net.women.only.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 136 to 139
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 137 to 140
total. 156 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 139 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
September 15, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 22...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.unix.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 139 to 140
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 140 to 141
total. 157 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 140 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
October 1, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 22...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.micro.6809, net.news.adm, net.news.sa, net.puzzle.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 140 to 144
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 141 to 145
total. 161 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 144 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
October 15, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 22...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.bicycle, net.lang.mod2, net.motss, net.rec.wood.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 144 to 148
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 145 to 149
total. 165 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 148 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
November 1, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 22...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.roots.

Summary: From 16 to 16 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 148 to 149
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 149 to 150
total. 166 total (1 moderated, 16 fa.*, 149 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
November 15, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 23...@alice.UUCP

Added: fa.laser-lovers, net.kids, net.sport.hoops.

Summary: From 16 to 17 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 149 to 151
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 150 to 152
total. 169 total (1 moderated, 17 fa.*, 151 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
December 1, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 23...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.astro, net.astro.expert, net.cse.cai, net.lang.f77,
net.tv.da. (Repeat after me, kids! "ABBREVIATIONS CONSIDERED
HARMFUL."!)

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 151 to 156
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 152 to 157
total. 174 total (1 moderated, 17 fa.*, 156 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
December 15, 1983
net.news.group
Message-ID: 23...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.nlang.celts.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In net.*, from 156 to 157
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 157 to 158
total. 175 total (1 moderated, 17 fa.*, 157 unmoderated).


This is the last newsgroup list known to me posted in 1983. Since we
now have a year's worth of unequivocally comparable lists, I can begin
to do:

Annual summary: From 17 (or 16) to 17 fa.* groups. In net.*, from
105 to 157 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 1 moderated group, from 105
to 158 total. Total, from 105 to 157 unmoderated groups, from 17 (or
16) to 17 fa.* groups, from 0 to 1 moderated group, from 122 (or 121)
to 175 total.


--
Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com

http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:36:08 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's chronological posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the year 1981.

List to list, the changes for much of 1984 were about as exciting as
watching grass grow. But things picked up dramatically towards the
end of the year, heralding larger changes in 1985 and hinting at the
Great Renaming beyond. In particular, note that the year begins with
the creation of the mod.* hierarchy, and that somewhat more than
halfway through, Gene Spafford takes over the lists, and the mod.*
hierarchy opens for serious business.

Joe Bernstein

Lists of Newsgroups Posted in 1984

ADAM BUCHSBAUM

"List of Active Newsgroups"
January 3, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 24...@alice.UUCP

There's something very symbolic, to me anyway, about the fact that the
list that first includes a mod.* group also includes a net shrinkage
of net.*.

This is also the first list to include names and addresses for
moderators. Since these are consistently presented, I conclude that
this is the first list to provide a provably reliable indication of
which groups are moderated.

Added: mod.ber, net.games.go, net.tv.drwho, net.veg.

Removed: net.applic, net.cse.cai, net.games.pacman, net.ucds,
net.usoft.s.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 1 moderated group, from 0 to 1 total.
In net.*, from 157 to 155 unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated
group, from 158 to 156 total. 174 total (2 moderated, 17 fa.*, 155
unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
January 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 24...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.micro.trs-80.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 155 to 156
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 156 to 157
total. 175 total (2 moderated, 17 fa.*, 156 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
February 1, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 25...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.bio, net.consumers (just in time for New Coke!),
net.nlang.greek.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 156 to 159
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 157 to 160
total. 178 total (2 moderated, 17 fa.*, 159 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
February 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 26...@alice.UUCP

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
March 1, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 26...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.announce.newusers, net.religion.jewish, net.works.apollo.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 159 to 161
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 2 moderated groups, from 160 to 163
total. 181 total (3 moderated, 17 fa.*, 161 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
March 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 26...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.abortion, net.micro.hp.

Removed: net.records, net.tv.da.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, no net change: 161
unmoderated, 2 moderated, 163 total. 181 total (3 moderated, 17 fa.*,
161 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
April 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 27...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.mag, net.net-people, net.origins.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 161 to 164
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 163 to 166
total. 184 total (3 moderated, 17 fa.*, 164 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
May 1, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 27...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.music.classical.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 164 to 165
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 166 to 167
total. 185 total (3 moderated, 17 fa.*, 165 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
May 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 27...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.tv.soaps.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 165 to 166
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 167 to 168
total. 186 total (3 moderated, 17 fa.*, 166 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
June 1, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.math.stat.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 166 to 167
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 168 to 169
total. 187 total (3 moderated, 17 fa.*, 167 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
June 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@alice.UUCP

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
July 1, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@alice.UUCP

Added: fa.info-mac, net.sci.

Summary: From 17 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no changes: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 167 to 168
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 169 to 170
total. 189 total (3 moderated, 18 fa.*, 168 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
July 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 29...@alice.UUCP

Added: net.micro.ti.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no changes: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 168 to 169
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 170 to 171
total. 190 total (3 moderated, 18 fa.*, 169 unmoderated).


GENE SPAFFORD

"List of Active Newsgroups"
August 15, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 96...@gatech.UUCP

It's noteworthy that this, the first newsgroup list Gene Spafford ever
posted [1], already begins the changes he introduced in the lists;
specifically, he added a paragraph about distributions to the
introductory material.

It's also noteworthy that the only change over the preceding month had
been a removal.

Removed: net.rec.caves.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no changes: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 169 to 168
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 171 to 170
total. 189 total (3 moderated, 18 fa.*, 168 unmoderated).

[1] - This contradicts what he said in his farewell message. If you
can find an earlier example, please let me know.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
August 31, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 99...@gatech.UUCP

No changes, except that the introductory material Adam Buchsbaum wrote
is here broken out into paragraphs, which makes it much easier to
read.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
September 23, 1984
net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

Added: net.math.symbolic.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no changes: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 168 to 169
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 170 to 171
total. 190 total (3 moderated, 18 fa.*, 169 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
October 1, 1984
net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

Added: fa.info-cpm, net.sources.bugs, net.wanted.sources.

Removed: net.adm.site.

Summary: From 18 to 19 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no changes: 0
unmoderated, 1 moderated, 1 total. In net.*, from 169 to 170
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 171 to 172
total. 192 total (3 moderated, 19 fa.*, 170 unmoderated).

DALE HALL (in the From: line, but signed by Gene Spafford)

"List of Active Newsgroups"
October 3, 1984
net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 1...@faron.UUCP

It's not clear to me whether this is the first known instance of a
clueless idiot reposting the entire list by mistake, or an intentional
repost; the only (at best dubious) evidence in favour of its being
intentional is an Approved: line. Anyway, it duplicates the October 1
posting.


GENE SPAFFORD

"List of Active Newsgroups"
October 15, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

This is the real arrival of the mod.* hierarchy. On a much less
important note, in this list, third-level groups finally got
description lines independent of their parent groups.

Added: mod.movies, mod.motss, mod.music, mod.newslists, mod.singles,
mod.sources, mod.std.c, mod.std.mumps.

Added, but without moderators, inactive: mod.unix, mod.std.

Removed: fa.info-cpm, fa.sf-lovers, mod.ber, net.vvs.

Summary: From 19 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 10 moderated groups (from 0 to 2
inactive ones), from 1 to 10 (2 inactive) total. In net.*, from 170
to 169 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 172 to
171 total. 198 (or 192) total (12 or 10 moderated, 17 fa.*, 169
unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
November 1, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
November 1, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

And with the advent of significant numbers of moderated groups, it
became obvious that the main list had no room for the moderators,
while ways to reach the moderators (in those days before domain names)
needed documenting in *much* more detail. Hence the lists of
moderators, which basically provided lists of ways to reach moderators
(along with *lots* of introductory text).

After this posting, for several years, the main list of newsgroups
provided no consistent flag indicating which groups were moderated.
As I understand it, in practice, existing news software assumed that
all mod.* and all *.announce.* groups were moderated; but I have no
reason to think software was in fact that uniform. I therefore take a
group's appearance in the list of moderators as the decisive indicator
whether or not it's moderated, starting with this list. Note that a
mod.* group without a moderator might simply be omitted from the list
of moderators, in which case I'll show it as unmoderated;
alternatively, it might be listed as having no moderator, in which
case I'll show it as moderated but inactive. There were, in fact,
several mod.* groups that *never* had a moderator, but did change
between these two "statuses".

An additional complication: there are various pieces of evidence that
the lists of moderators were *much* less carefully maintained than the
lists of active newsgroups. This occasionally makes for conflict
between the two on such subjects as whether a given group exists, or
is moderated (after the newsgroup list resumes flagging moderated
groups, in 1986). In any case where a mod.* group changed moderators,
became inactive, or was removed, one can legitimately wonder whether
the group had in fact been inactive for some time before these lists
notice the fact, although one can never assume this.

Added: mod.map, mod.map.news, mod.map.uucp.

Rendered inactive: mod.music. (But this appears to be an editing
error: the list of active newsgroups says there's no moderator, but
the list of moderators does list one. The conflict disappears with
the following posting, when the list of active newsgroups stops
mentioning moderators.)

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 10 to 13 moderated groups (from 2 to 3
inactive), from 10 to 13 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, no changes:
169 unmoderated groups, 2 moderated groups, 162 total. 201 (or 198)
total (15 or 12 moderated, 17 fa.*, 169 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
November 15, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
November 15, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

Added: mod.test, net.micro.mac.

mod.test becomes the first unmoderated mod.* group.

Rendered active: mod.music (if it was ever inactive), mod.unix.

Summary: From 17 to 17 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 1
unmoderated group, from 13 to 13 moderated groups (from 3 to 1
inactive), from 13 to 14 (1 inactive) total. In net.*, from 169 to
170 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 171 to 172
total. 203 (or 202) total (15 or 14 moderated, 17 fa.*, 171
unmoderated).


"Checkgroups message"
November 26, 1984
net.news.group
Message-ID: 10...@gatech.UUCP

Gene Spafford first posted a checkgroups as a regular post (rather
than as a control message) on November 26, 1984. At least that's the
first one Google's archive has, and there are the kind of comments on
the next one (December 1) that accompany a new thing. I haven't
collated this November 26 list of newsgroups to check for groups
created since November 15; I only wanted to note the advent of the
checkgroups because its format seems to be the basis for the eventual
format of the List of Active Newsgroups, and more importantly, because
there are cases where the List of Active Newsgroups is not archived,
but the checkgroups is, which allows some of the information contained
in the lost list to be retrieved. (See the 1986 post for the first
example of this, and more details on what information is available.)


"List of Active Newsgroups"
December 1, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
December 1, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

The one-apart Message-IDs suggest that Gene Spafford may, with these
lists, have begun posting diff listings headed "Changes to List of
Active Newsgroups" and "Changes to List of Moderators" respectively,
but these aren't archived until July of 1985, and there's no more
conclusive evidence that I know of.

Added: fa.info-kermit, net.music.folk, net.religion.christian,
net.theater.

Summary: From 17 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1
unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), 14 (1 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 170 to 173 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 172 to 175 total. 207 (or 206) total (15 or 14
moderated, 18 fa.*, 174 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
December 15, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
December 15, 1984
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

Removed: net.news.map.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1
unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), 14 (1 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 173 to 172 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 175 to 174 total. 206 (or 205) total (15 or 14
moderated, 18 fa.*, 173 unmoderated).


This is the last newsgroup list/moderator list pair known to me posted
in 1984.

Annual summary: From 17 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 1
unmoderated group, from 0 to 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), from 0
to 14 (1 inactive) total. In net.*, from 157 to 172 unmoderated
groups, from 1 to 2 moderated groups, from 158 to 174 total. Total,
from 157 to 173 unmoderated groups, from 17 to 18 fa.* groups, from 1
to 14 (1 inactive) moderated groups, from 175 to 206 (or 205) total.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:38:59 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's hierarchical posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the NET.* hierarchy.

Joe Bernstein


THE mod.* HIERARCHY

--Rise--

In Usenet, as in other human communities, one of the *first*
sentiments to arise was a longing for the good old days. (I strongly
suspect the australopithecines went around wondering why their
ancestors were stupid enough to leave the trees, and I remember that
at six years old I could long intensely for the past. One of the
oldest Egyptian texts we have complains that all the ideas worth
having have already been written. [1]) One should thus take the
constant complaints about Usenet with that much of a grain of salt:
some of the oldest Usenet posts we have, too, are complaints about
changes for the worse. But to judge by the earliest posts actually
preserved and by the newsgroups that existed to hold them, Usenet
really *was*, in its earliest days, the largely-technical network
we've been told ever since it should have remained. Not all of the
early newsgroups were specifically related to computer work - the most
obvious exception was fa.sf-lovers, but consider also fa.space,
fa.poli-sci or fa.arms-d - but the great majority were. However,
Usenet grew fast, and with growth came new interests and new
newsgroups; by the end of 1981 there were newsgroups about games,
chess, the space shuttle, motorcyles ... jokes.

And then in January of 1982 came net.flame, the newsgroup for insults.

In one of the first posts listing newsgroups that I've used to build
this chronology, Mark Horton called, December 23, 1981, for the
discouragement of offensive articles as a matter of Usenet policy. On
November 12, 1982, Jerry Schwarz's "Net Etiquette" document was first
posted. None of it improved the climate enough to satisfy those who
missed, um, Usenet's first year and a half; or those who were afraid
their bosses would find out what the phone bills were paying for. And
so a push for "moderation", Usenet's usual term for editorial or
censorial work, began.

(Moderation had the additional advantage of seeming to ensure that the
Usenet-ARPAnet gateways in fa.* could be posted to properly. The term
itself was borrowed, in fact, from the ARPAnet term for human-edited
mailing lists, although Usenet moderation has normally not involved
actual editing or consolidation of posts in the ARPAnet model, and has
always allowed for a kind of robo-moderation that on ARPAnet would be
taken as "unmoderated".)

It apparently took a while to reach this state of disillusionment, or
else it took a while to write the necessary software. The first
moderated newsgroup, net.announce, wasn't created until summer 1983,
and wasn't actually open for posting until September 2, 1983. Another
experimental group appeared at year's end, mod.ber - whose purpose,
summarising discussions one would otherwise not have time to follow,
conveys another of the dissatisfactions with the unmoderated net.*,
its ever-increasing size.

By the autumn of 1984, the kinks had been worked out, and a number of
new mod.* groups were created. Indeed, even with over half the year
gone, nearly half the net growth in the official newsgroup list in
1984 was in moderated groups (14/31), and in 1985 and 1986 the growth
in moderated groups actually outstripped the growth of Usenet as a
whole (46/39 [2]). The Usenet powers of the time clearly had a
preference.

This preference was sharpened by the fact that the explosive growth of
the network meant an explosive growth in the long-distance phone bills
sent to the institutions whose computers held it together. In a
mailing list composed largely of those "backbone" computers' admins,
organised by Gene Spafford in mid-1985, there was almost unanimous
agreement that any future network - by that point, few had much hope
that Usenet itself could continue - would have to be entirely
moderated.

--Fall--

In the event, that mailing list, like previous efforts, went nowhere.
But in 1986, Rick Adams, who ran the main transatlantic link, demanded
that the list of groups be better organised so that groups unworthy to
cross the ocean could be readily excluded. This rapidly resulted in
the Great Renaming, which is well documented in Lee Bumgarner's Great
Renaming FAQ (authoritative version at
<http://www.mindspring.com/~bumgarls/netstuff.htm>) and doesn't need
much attention here. And the Great Renaming, in turn, led to the
breakup of mod.*, to put the mod.* groups into the new hierarchies;
that breakup was agreed upon by 98% of those present at a Usenix
Usenet gathering, according to an e-mail from Adams, urging that it
proceed, to the Backbone Cabal mailing list on February 18, 1987
(forwarded to the Usenet.Hist mailing list by Spafford on October 11,
1990).

News software had already been changed again, to look elsewhere than
the group name for evidence that the group was moderated. The tests
began with the creation of news.lists in December 1986, and in the
spring of 1987 the mod.* groups were folded into the already-created
Big 7.

<<Warning. The following paragraph is almost entirely speculation; it
seems necessary to have something like it, given how the preceding is
structured, and I'm fairly sure the end results were as I say, but I'm
not at all sure the sequence of events and motivations is as I
represent it.>>

The insistence on moderation as Usenet's salvation also died a
relatively quick death. This had begun with the renaming into the new
hierarchies, at which point a number of more or less inactive or
duplicative mod.* groups were unmoderated. Not much later, Adams
opened a for-profit corporation one of whose assets was the
transatlantic link; suddenly Usenet traffic was, for at least some
participants, not merely a cost but a profit centre. Meanwhile,
dissidents, some of whom were friends with or members of the Backbone
Cabal, had started the alt.* network, which quickly demonstrated its
emphatically unmoderated nature. Controversial proposals resulted in
the demise of the Cabal and explosive growth in alt.*, and the voting
process which gained in authority after the Cabal's death resulted in
users, rather than admins, deciding whether new groups would be
moderated or not.

--Afterlife--

Nobody seems to have been making new mod.* groups the way some people
were making new fa.* groups, in the years after the Great Renaming.
But in 1997, a proposal was floated to create an all-moderated,
mostly-automated hierarchy, using what were then all the latest ideas
and tools, and in a bit of hubris that seemed appropriate to the scale
of the idea, this proposal took the mod.* name. Years later, no
groups have been created; the proposal remains in the hands of one of
its early supporters, Tim Skirvin, who has apparently been unable to
implement it for lack of central administrative computers. For
further information, see
<http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/manif.html> (Skirvin's "mod.*
manifesto") or the actual discussions in news.admin.net-abuse.policy,
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, and news.admin.hierarchies, from May to
July or so, 1997.

It's my opinion, in any event, that the new mod.* proposal is closer
to inheriting the spirit of the old net.* hierarchy, while the newer
net.* hierarchy is more of a true heir to the old mod.* (or, arguably,
NET.*).

--Notes--

[1] I bet you think I'm making this up, so here goes. This is from
the "Complaints of Khakheperre-sonb", as translated by Miriam
Lichtheim on p. 146 of her <Ancient Egyptian Literature. Volume I:
The Old and Middle Kingdoms>, Berkeley etc.: University of California
Press, c 1973.

Had I unknown phrases,
Sayings that are strange,
Novel, untried words,
Free of repetition;
Not transmitted sayings,
Spoken by the ancestors!
...
I say this in accord with what I have seen:
From the first generation to those who come after,
They imitate that which is past.

This dates to the late 1900s BC.

[2] OK, I bet you think I'm making that up too. Let me clarify:
Twelve mod.* or net.announce.* were created from twelve fa.* groups in
the fall of 1985 (fa.info-mac split, allegedly; fa.poli-sci was
merged with the existing mod.politics; and, not counted in the twelve,
fa.info-terms was merged with the existing net.info-terms). I'm not
counting any fa.* groups as having been moderated in this calculation,
since posting to them *as Usenet groups* didn't require the posts to
pass through a moderator; that accounts for 12 of the 46 net growth in
moderated groups. If you count as moderated those fa.* groups which
were, *as mailing lists*, moderated (because proper posting to fa.*
groups required posting to the mailing lists), you can reduce the net
growth; but as best I can tell, only seven of the fa.* groups qualify
for this reduction, so we end up with the hardly more plausible
situation that 39 of the 39 net growth in newsgroups, in 1985 and
1986, was in moderated groups.
In detail: Moderated antecedents: fa.arms-d, fa.human-nets,
fa.info-kermit, fa.info-mac, fa.poli-sci, fa.risks, fa.telecom.
Unmoderated antecedents: fa.arpa-bboard (?), fa.info-terms,
fa.info-vax, fa.info-vlsi, fa.laser-lovers, fa.tcp-ip.


GROUP BY GROUP

Note: Description lines are reformatted as necessary, but the text in

them is exactly what the original list has. The assembled
descriptions may not always agree on the group's nature, although
mod.* is more consistent in this regard than fa.* or net.*. In order


to ensure that this set of posts gets done at all, I'm having to limit
the research I do. So in this post I make no attempt to arbitrate
which description is right, but simply include the first and last line

for each group. (In the many cases where the first and last lines are
identical, I include only the first; the same holds for cases where
they differ only by the addition of a period at the end.)

Again to avoid delaying the initial series of posts, I'm also not

consistently including in this post information about whether these
groups were gatewayed, where or by whom, or about who proposed the
groups or when, or about who removed them or when. That information


is obviously high on my list of things to include in the later version
of the chronology.


mod.announce
Renamed from net.announce.
Listed June 19, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (6/19/1986): Moderated, general announcements of
interest to all.
Moderator: Mark Horton.
Description line (4/1/1987): General announcements of interest to
all.
Renamed to news.announce.important.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

Notes: See net.announce, in the net.* post, for comments on this
group.

mod.announce.newusers
Renamed from net.announce.newusers.
Listed June 19, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (6/19/1986): Moderated, explanatory postings for
new users.
Moderator: Gene Spafford.
Description line (4/1/1987): Explanatory postings for new users.
Renamed to news.announce.newusers.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.ai
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Discussions about Artificial
Intelligence
Moderator: Kenneth Laws.
Renamed to comp.ai.digest.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.amiga
Listed May 17, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (5/17/1986): Commodore Amiga micros -- info,
uses, but no programs.
Moderator: Bob Page.
Renamed to comp.sys.amiga.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.amiga.binaries
Listed May 17, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (5/17/1986): Encoded public domain programs in
binary form.
Moderator: Craig Norborg.
Renamed to comp.binaries.amiga.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.amiga.sources
Listed May 17, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (5/17/1986): Public domain software in source
code format.
Moderator: Craig Norborg.
Renamed to comp.sources.amiga.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.ber
Listed January 3, 1984 to October 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (1/3/1984): Summaries of discussions from other
groups.
Moderator: Brian Redman.
Note: This was the first mod.* group to be created, and the first
to be removed.

mod.compilers
Listed January 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/1/1986): Discussion about compiler
construction, theory, etc.
Moderator: John Levine.
Renamed to comp.compilers.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Discussion about various computers
and related.
Moderator: None was ever named, although the group was always
listed in the List of Moderators.
Merged into (unmoderated) comp.sys.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.68k
Listed April 17, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (4/17/1986): 68000-based systems.
Moderator: Mike Meyer.
Renamed to comp.sys.m68k.pc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.apollo
Created as part of the expansion of the list of gatewayed ARPAnet
mailing lists which accompanied the gateway groups' renaming from
fa.* to mod.*.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Apollo computer systems.
Moderator: Nathaniel Mishkin, November 1, 1985 to July 16, 1986.
Luis Ortiz, September 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.sys.apollo.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.masscomp
Listed May 17, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (5/17/1986): The Masscomp line of computers.
Moderator: Stan Barber.
Renamed to comp.sys.masscomp.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.ibm-pc
Created as part of the expansion of the list of gatewayed ARPAnet
mailing lists which accompanied the gateway groups' renaming from
fa.* to mod.*.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): The IBM PC, PC-XT, and PC-AT.
Moderators: This was presumably a panel-moderated group, and the
first such (unless you count the two moderators of mod.newslists
as a panel). It was always listed in the List of Moderators as
"(various)".
Renamed to comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.laser-printers
Renamed from fa.laser-lovers on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Laser printers, hardware and
software.
Moderator: Richard Furuta.
Renamed to comp.laser-printers.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.macintosh
Renamed from fa.info-mac on or near October 21, 1985 (allegedly
this was a split, but the archived traffic in fa.info-mac was
essentially all destined for this group).
Listed November 1, 1985 to March 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Apple MacIntosh micros.
Moderator: John Agosta.
Apparently split into mod.mac, mod.mac.binaries, and
mod.mac.sources, March 2, 1986.

mod.computers.pyramid
Created as part of the expansion of the list of gatewayed ARPAnet
mailing lists which accompanied the gateway groups' renaming from
fa.* to mod.*.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Pyramid 90x computers.
Moderator: Mark Weiser.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.sys.pyramid.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.ridge
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Ridge 32 computers and ROS.
Moderator: Bill Bogstad.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.sys.ridge.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.sequent
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Sequent systems, (esp. Balance
8000).
Moderator: John Quarterman, November 1, 1985 to December 16,
1986. Rich Kulawiec, January 1 to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to comp.sys.sequent.
Unlike other mod.* groups that survived to 4/1/1987, *not* listed
May 3, 1987, as "obsolete" or otherwise.

mod.computers.sun
Created as part of the expansion of the list of gatewayed ARPAnet
mailing lists which accompanied the gateway groups' renaming from
fa.* to mod.*.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Sun "workstation" computers
Moderator: Mike Caplinger, November 1, 1985 to January 16, 1986.
Scott Alexander, February 1 to September 1, 1986. Vicki Riffle,
September 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to comp.sys.sun.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.vax
Renamed from fa.info-vax on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): DEC's VAX* line of computers & VMS.


(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)

Moderator: Ramon Curiel.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.os.vms.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.computers.workstations
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Various workstation-type computers.
Moderator: Dave Steiner.
Did not appear in the List of Moderators for June 2, 1986, for
which reason I count it, for that list only, as an unmoderated
group. Owing to a gap in the archives, it isn't possible to find
out whether it was in any prior List of Moderators back to March
16, 1986. It returned to the List of Moderators for June 19,
1986.
Renamed to comp.sys.workstations.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.conferences
Listed June 19, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (6/19/1986): Calls for papers and conference
announcements.
Moderator: Dave Taylor.
Renamed to news.announce.conferences.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.comp-soc
Listed June 19, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (6/19/1986): Discussion on the impact of
technology on society.
Moderator: Dave Taylor.
Renamed to comp.society.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.general
Listed August 1, 1985 to October 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (8/1/1985): A moderated version of net.general
Moderator: James Armstrong, Jr.

mod.graphics
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Grpahics software, hardware,
theory, etc.
Moderator: Andy Cromarty.
Renamed to comp.graphics.digest.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.human-nets
Renamed from fa.human-nets on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Computer aided communications
digest.
Moderator: Charles McGrew.
Renamed to soc.human-nets.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.legal
Listed November 1, 1985 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Discussions of computers and the
law.
Moderator: Geoffrey Goodfellow, November 1, 1985 to June 2, 1986.
Mike Muuss, June 19, 1986 to (ostensibly) April 1, 1987.
Merged into (unmoderated) misc.legal.
Included in the Lists of Moderators December 1, 1986 to April 1,
1987 without interruption, despite its omission from the List of
Active Newsgroups.

mod.mac
Apparently created from a split of mod.computers.macintosh, March
2, 1986.
Listed March 2, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1986): Apple Macintosh micros -- info,
uses, but no programs.
Moderator: John Agosta.
Renamed to comp.sys.mac.digest.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.mac.binaries
Apparently created from a split of mod.computers.macintosh, March
2, 1986.
Listed March 2, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1986): Encoded public domain programs in
binary form.
Moderator: Roger Long.
Renamed to comp.binaries.mac.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.mac.sources
Apparently created from a split of mod.computers.macintosh, March
2, 1986.
Listed March 2, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (3/2/1986): Public domain software in source
code format.
Moderator: Roger Long.
Renamed to comp.sources.mac.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.mag
Listed April 17 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/17/1986): Discussions on electronicly
published "magazines"
Moderator: Chuq Von Rospach.
Merged into (unmoderated) rec.mag.

mod.mag.fidonet
Listed January 16 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/16/1987): FidoNew digest, official newsletter
of FidoNet Assoc.
Moderator: Tim Pozar.
Renamed to comp.org.fidonet.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

Note: This was the last mod.* group to be created.

mod.mag.otherrealms
Listed April 17, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (4/17/1986): Edited science fiction and fantasy
"magazine".
Moderator: Chuq Von Rospach.
Renamed to rec.mag.otherrealms.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.map
Listed November 1, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1984): Announcements and software
concerning maps and routing
Moderator: Mark Horton.
Description line (4/1/1987): Various maps, including UUCP maps.
Renamed to comp.mail.maps.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.map.news
Listed November 1, 1984 to May 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1984): Maps of the Usenet network of news
sites
Moderator: Karen Summers-Horton.

mod.map.uucp
Listed November 1, 1984 to September 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1984): Maps from the UUCP mapping project
Moderator: Karen Summers-Horton.

mod.movies
Listed October 15, 1984 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated reviews and discussion
of movies
Moderator: Andy Tannenbaum, October 15, 1984 to November 1, 1984.
Byron Howe, November 15, 1984. Byron Howes, December 1, 1984 to
December 1, 1986.
Description line (12/1/1986): Reviews and discussion of movies
Merged into (unmoderated) rec.arts.movies.

mod.motss
Listed October 15, 1984 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated discussion and info on
homosexuality
Moderator: Steve Dyer.
Description line (10/16/1986): Newsgroup on gay issues and topics
Merged into (unmoderated) soc.motss.

mod.music
Listed October 15, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated reviews and discussion
of things musical
Moderator: Greg Skinner, October 15, 1984. None named in List of
Active Newsgroups, but Greg Skinner named in List of Moderators,
November 1, 1984. Greg Skinner, November 15, 1984 to June 2,
1986. Doug Alan, June 19, 1986 to April 1, 1987.
Description line (4/1/1987): Reviews and discussion of things
musical.
Merged into (unmoderated) rec.music.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.music.gaffa
Apparently renamed from mod.music.love-hounds.
Listed September 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1986): Progressive music discussions (e.g.,
Kate Bush).
Moderator: Doug Alan.
Renamed to rec.music.gaffa.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.music.love-hounds
Listed June 19 to September 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (6/19/1986): Progressive music discussions
(e.g., Kate Bush).
Moderator: Doug Alan.
Apparently renamed to mod.music.gaffa.

mod.newprod
Listed August 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (8/1/1985): Announcements of new products of
interest to readers
Moderator: Ron Heiby.
Renamed to comp.newprod.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.newslists
Listed October 15, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line: Postings of news-related statistics and lists
Moderators: Gene Spafford and Rick Adams.
Merged into news.lists.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.os
Listed January 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/16/1986): Disussions about operating systems
and related areas.
Moderator(s): None named, January 16 to March 1, 1986. Mike
Meyer and Dave Mason, March 2, 1986 to January 1, 1987. Darrell
Long, January 16 to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to comp.os.research.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.os.os9
Listed January 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/16/1986): Discussions about the os9 operating
system.
Moderator(s): Alex Arthur and Bruce Perens, January 16 to July
16, 1986. John Daleske, September 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to comp.os.os9.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.os.unix
Apparently renamed from mod.unix.
Listed January 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/16/1986): Moderated discussion of Unix*
features and bugs.


(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)

Moderator: Ron Heiby.
Description line (4/1/1987): Discussion of UNIX* features and


bugs.
(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)

Renamed to comp.unix.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.philosophy
Listed July 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (7/16/1986): Discussion of philosphical issues
and concepts.
Moderator: Alan Wexelblat.
Merged into (unmoderated) talk.philosophy.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.philosophy.tech
Listed July 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (7/16/1986): Philosophy of science, math, logic,
technology.
Moderator: Peter Ladkin.
Description line (4/1/1987): Technical philosophy: math, science,
logic, etc.
Renamed to sci.philosophy.tech.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.politics
Listed June 15, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (6/15/1985): Discussions on political problems,
systems, solutions.
Moderator: James Armstrong, Jr., June 15, 1985 to July 1, 1986.
Merged with fa.poli-sci on or near October 21, 1985.
Moderator: JoSH Hall, November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987.
Note that these two were never listed as co-moderators, but always
as the moderators of two different groups, both groups being named
mod.politics. Only one group by that name was ever listed in the
List of Active Newsgroups. I don't understand this, but suspect
it was an editing error resulting from the merger; since JoSH Hall
was the moderator of soc.politics after the Great Renaming, I
would guess - but don't know - that James Armstrong, Jr. had
retired some time before he was removed from the List of
Moderators.
Renamed to soc.politics.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.politics.arms-d
Renamed from fa.arms-d on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Arms discussion digest.
Moderator: Harold Ancell, November 1, 1985 to an undetermined
list-date in April or May, 1986. Herb Lin, June 2, 1986 or
earlier to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to soc.politics.arms-d.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.protocols
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Various forms and types of FTP
protocol discussions.
Moderator: Mel Pleasant.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.protocols.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.protocols.appletalk
Allegedly the result of a split of fa.info-mac, but if so, the
archives don't document that there was pre-split traffic that went
to this group.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Applebus hardware & software
discussion.
Moderator: Ralph Hyre, Jr.
Renamed to comp.protocols.appletalk.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.protocols.kermit
Renamed from fa.info-kermit on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Information about the Kermit
package.
Moderator: Frank da Cruz.
Renamed to comp.protocols.kermit.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Renamed from fa.tcp-ip on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): TCP and IP network protocols.
Moderator: Vivian Neou.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.protocols.tcp-ip.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.psi
Listed July 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (7/16/1986): Discussion of paranormal abilities
and experiences.
Moderator: Chet Dobro, July 16 to November 1, 1986. Erich
Rickheit, December 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to misc.psi.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.rec
Listed July 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (7/1/1985): Discussions on pasttimes (not
currently active)
Moderator: None was ever named, although the group was always
listed in the List of Moderators.
Description line (4/1/1987): Discussions on pastimes (not
currently active).
Merged into (unmoderated) rec.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.rec.guns
Listed July 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (7/1/1985): Discussions about firearms
Moderator: Jordan Hubbard.
Renamed to rec.guns.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.recipes
Listed December 16, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1985): A "distributed cookbook" of
screened recipes.
Moderator: Brian Reid.
Description line (4/1/1987): Recipes from the USENET Cookbook
(troff and text).
Renamed to rec.food.recipes.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

Note: This is the newsgroup whose renaming provoked the creation
of alt.*, improbable but true.

mod.religion
Listed September 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (9/16/1986): Top-level group with no moderator
(as of yet).
Moderator: This newsgroup was never listed in the List of
Moderators, so I have counted it (probably incorrectly) as an
unmoderated group.
Merged into (unmoderated) talk.religion.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.religion.christian
Apparently renamed from (unmoderated) net.religion.christian.
Listed September 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (9/16/1986): Discussions on Christianity and
related topics.
Moderator: Charles Hedrick.
Renamed to soc.religion.christian.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

Note: This may be the first example of a moderated group outright
replacing an unmoderated one.

mod.risks
Renamed from fa.risks.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Risks to the public from computers
& users.
Moderator: Peter Neumann.
Renamed to comp.risks.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.singles
Listed October 15, 1984 to June 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated version of net.singles
Moderator: Chuq Von Rospach.
Rmgrouped by the moderator for lack of traffic.

mod.sources
Listed October 15, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated postings of public
domain sources
Moderator: John Nelson, October 15, 1984 to June 2, 1986. Rich
Salz, June 19, 1986 to April 1, 1987.
Description line (4/1/1987): postings of public-domain sources.
Renamed to comp.sources.unix.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.sources.doc
Listed January 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/1/1986): Archived public-domain
documentation.
Moderator: Ron Natalie.
Renamed to comp.doc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.sources.games
Listed September 1, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (9/1/1986): Moderated postings of public-domain
game sources
Moderator: Rich Salz, September 1, 1986 to March 16, 1987. Bill
Randle, April 1, 1987.
Description line (4/1/1987): Postings of public-domain game
sources.
Renamed to comp.sources.games.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.techreports
Listed January 16, 1986 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/16/1986): Announcements and lists of
technical reports.
Moderator: Lawrence Leff.
Renamed to comp.doc.techreports.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.telecom
Renamed from fa.telecom on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Telecommunications digest.
Moderator: Jon Solomon, November 1, 1985 to an undetermined
list-date in April or May, 1986. Eliot Moore, June 2, 1986 or
earlier to April 1, 1987.
Renamed to comp.dcom.telecom.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.test
Listed November 15, 1984 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/15/1984): Testing of moderated newsgroups --
no moderator
Moderator: This newsgroup was not listed in the List of
Moderators until July 1, 1985, so I have counted it before then
(probably incorrectly) as an unmoderated group. Although it was
then listed in the List of Moderators for the rest of its life
(and beyond! until December 16, 1986), no moderator was ever named
for it.
Merged into (unmoderated) misc.test.

mod.unix
Listed October 15, 1984 to January 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated discussion of Unix*
features and bugs


(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)

Moderator: None named, October 15 to November 1, 1984. Tom
Teixeira, November 15, 1984 to April 2, 1985. Ron Heiby, April
15, 1985 to April 1, 1987.
Apparently renamed to mod.os.unix.

mod.vlsi
Renamed from fa.info-vlsi on or near October 21, 1985.
Listed November 1, 1985 to December 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/1/1985): Very large scale integrated
circuits.
Moderator: Tom Linnerooth.
Renamed to (unmoderated) comp.lsi, representing a merger with
net.lsi.

mod.std
Listed October 15, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Moderated discussion about various
standards
Moderator: None named, October 15, 1984 to April 2, 1985 (but
with a suggestion to "contact Mark Horton"). Mark Horton, April
15, 1985 to April 1, 1987.
Description line (4/1/1987): Discussion about various standards.
Renamed to comp.std.misc.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.std.c
Listed October 15, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Discussion about C language
standards
Moderator: Orlando Sotomayor-Diaz.
Renamed to comp.std.c.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.std.mumps
Listed October 15, 1984 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (10/15/1984): Discussion about standards for
MUMPS
Moderator: Hokey.
Description line (4/1/1987): Discussion for the X11.1 committee
on Mumps.
Renamed to comp.std.mumps.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

mod.std.unix
Listed July 1, 1985 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (7/1/1985): Discussion for the P1003 committee
on Unix
Moderator: John Quarterman.
Description line (4/1/1987): Discussion for the P1003 committee
on UNIX.
Renamed to comp.std.unix.


Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

--

Joe Bernstein, writer and accounting clerk j...@sfbooks.com

http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:42:21 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's chronological posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the year 1981.

Much of 1985 was a still worse rerun of (much of) 1984's
watching-paint-dry changes in the newsgroup lists. But late in the
year, the fa.* hierarchy was folded into mod.*. This is the most
dramatic event in a year when, in my view, the Backbone Cabal took
full control of the newsgroup creation process. The other main sign
of this control was the increasing frequency of rmgroups.

The sheer tedium of most of the lists in fact represents something
new, which I also attribute to the Background Cabal's work: This is
the year in which newsgroup creation almost stood still, and in which
nearly all of the meager net increase in newsgroups, was in moderated
newsgroups.

Joe Bernstein


Lists of Newsgroups Posted in 1985

GENE SPAFFORD

"List of Active Newsgroups"
January 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
January 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
January 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
January 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

Added: net.news.stargate.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1
unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), 14 (1 inactive)

total. In net.*, from 172 to 173 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 174 to 175 total. 207 (or 206) total (15 or 14


moderated, 18 fa.*, 174 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
February 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
February 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.UUCP

Added: net.games.hack, net.politics.theory, net.sources.mac.

Summary: From 18 to 18 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1
unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), 14 (1 inactive)

total. In net.*, from 173 to 176 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 175 to 178 total. 210 (or 209) total (15 or 14
moderated, 18 fa.*, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
February 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
February 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.UUCP

Added: net.music.synth, net.nlang.india, net.sources.games.

Removed: fa.bitgraph, fa.digest-p, fa.editor-p, fa.energy,
fa.teletext.

Summary: From 18 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1


unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), 14 (1 inactive)

total. In net.*, from 176 to 179 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 178 to 181 total. 208 (or 207) total (15 or 14
moderated, 13 fa.*, 180 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
March 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
March 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.UUCP

Removed: net.works.apollo.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1


unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups (1 inactive), 14 (1 inactive)

total. In net.*, from 179 to 178 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 181 to 180 total. 207 (or 206) total (15 or 14
moderated, 13 fa.*, 179 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups"
March 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.UUCP

"List of Moderators"
March 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.UUCP

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups"
April 2, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators"
April 2, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.CSNET

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 12 April 1985)"
April 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 4...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 12 April 1985)"
April 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 6...@gatech.CSNET

For the first time, the list of moderators provides separate comment
and submission addresses. (There is also a change in how mail paths
are provided. Basically, the list of moderators assumes, with this
posting, its lasting shape.)

Added: net.music.gdead.

Rendered active: mod.std.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 1 to 1
unmoderated group, from 13 (1 inactive) to 13 (0 inactive) moderated
groups, 14 (0 inactive) total. In net.*, from 178 to 179 unmoderated
groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 180 to 181 total. 208
total (15 moderated, 13 fa.*, 180 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 12 April 1985)"
May 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 4...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 12 April 1985)"
May 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 4...@gatech.CSNET

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 3 May 1985)"
May 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 5...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 1 May 1985)"
May 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 5...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.micro.att, net.nlang.africa.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 1
unmoderated group, 13 moderated groups, 14 total. In net.*, from 179
to 181 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2 moderated groups, from 181 to
183 total. 210 total (15 moderated, 13 fa.*, 182 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 17 May 1985)"
June 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 2...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 17 May 1985)"
June 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 2...@gatech.CSNET

Removed: mod.map.news.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 1 to 1
unmoderated group, from 13 to 12 moderated groups, from 14 to 13
total. In net.*, no change: 181 unmoderated groups, 2 moderated
groups, 183 total. 209 total (14 moderated, 13 fa.*, 182
unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 10 June 1985)"
June 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 3...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 10 June 1985)"
June 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 3...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.politics.

Removed: mod.singles.

No net changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 1 July 1985)"
July 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 4...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 1 July 1985)"
July 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 4...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 2 July 1985)"
July 2, 1985
mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Message-ID: 4...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.rec.guns, mod.std.unix.

Added, but without a moderator, inactive: mod.rec.

Rendered inactive: mod.test. (I doubt this reflects a real change in
the group's status; rather, it had been omitted from the list of
moderators, therefore not treated as moderated in my lists; starting
with this list it's included, but with no moderator, hence treated as
moderated but inactive.)

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 1 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 12 to 16 moderated groups (from 0 to 2
inactive), from 13 (0 inactive) to 16 (2 inactive) total. In net.*,
no change: 181 unmoderated groups, 2 moderated groups, 183 total.
212 (or 210) total (18 or 16 moderated, 13 fa.*, 181 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 12 July 1985)"
July 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 5...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 9 July 1985)"
July 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 5...@gatech.CSNET

The first copies in the Google archives of "Changes to List of Active
Newsgroups" and "Changes to List of Moderators" date to this posting
run. I don't know whether this is the first time such changes
postings were actually posted. Anyway, these posts amounted to
elaborate diffs on the old and new lists of the relevant type, and
provided quick ways for savvy readers to find out what was going on.
There are periods ahead in which one or both of the main lists are
missing from the archives; rarely, a changes posting survives instead,
allowing reconstruction of the missing list, which is the point of
mentioning them here.

Added: net.misc.coke.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated groups, 16 moderated groups (2 inactive), 16 (2 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 181 to 182 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 183 to 184 total. 213 (or 211) total (18 or 16
moderated, 13 fa.*, 182 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 31 July 1985)"
August 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 7...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 24 July 1985)"
August 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 7...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.general, mod.newprod, net.bizarre.

Removed: net.mail.msggroup, net.micro.zx, net.movies.sw,
net.rec.coins, net.rec.disc, net.women.only.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 16 to 18 moderated groups (2 inactive), 18 (2
inactive) total. In net.*, from 182 to 177 unmoderated groups, from 2
to 2 moderated groups, from 184 to 179 total. 210 (or 208) total (20
or 18 moderated, 13 fa.*, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 14 August 1985)"
August 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 8...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 7 August 1985)"
August 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 8...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.database, net.ham-radio.packet.

Removed: net.micro.432, net.std, net.theater, net.usoft.

Summary: From 13 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated groups, 18 moderated groups (2 inactive), 18 (2 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 177 to 175 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 179 to 177 total. 208 (or 206) total (20 or 18
moderated, 13 fa.*, 175 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 29 August 1985)"
September 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 7 August 1985)"
September 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 11...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.games.board, net.games.chess, net.micro.amiga,
net.news.notes.

Removed: fa.railroad, net.chess, net.notes.

Summary: From 13 to 12 fa.* groups. In mod.*, no change: 0
unmoderated groups, 18 moderated groups (2 inactive), 18 (2 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 175 to 177 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 2
moderated groups, from 177 to 179 total. 209 (or 207) total (20 or 18
moderated, 12 fa.*, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 14 September 1985)"
September 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 14 September 1985)"
September 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 12...@gatech.CSNET

Removed: mod.map.uucp.

Summary: From 12 to 12 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 18 to 17 moderated groups (from 2 to 2
inactive), from 18 (2 inactive) to 17 (2 inactive) total. In net.*,
no change: 177 unmoderated groups, 2 moderated groups, 179 total.
208 (or 206) total (19 or 17 moderated, 12 fa.*, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 20 September 1985)"
October 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 13...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 23 September 1985)"
October 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 13...@gatech.CSNET

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 14 October 1985)"
October 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 15...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 7 October 1985)"
October 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 15...@gatech.CSNET

Added: fa.risks, net.auto.tech.

Removed: mod.general, net.misc.coke.

Summary: From 12 to 13 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 17 to 16 moderated groups (from 2 to 2
inactive), from 17 (2 inactive) to 16 (2 inactive) total. In net.*,
no net change: 177 unmoderated groups, 2 moderated groups, 179 total.
209 (or 207) total (19 or 17 moderated, 13 fa.*, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 30 October 1985)"
November 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 18...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 29 October 1985)"
November 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 18...@gatech.CSNET

This list has the most spectacular editing error of any list thus far
or for years to come, but more seriously, shows the end of the fa.*
hierarchy, in what amounts to a Lesser Renaming. This was accompanied
by a massive expansion of mod.*, significantly beyond what it took to
accommodate the renamed fa.* groups; but note that Erik Fair, in
proposing this Lesser Renaming, also proposed most of the other new
mod.* groups, as gateways of previously ungated ARPAnet lists, so that
the expansion really amounts to a precursor of the inet distribution
(on which see the 1987 post). And this list *also* shows the end of
net.bizarre, which became known in the wider world, rightly or wrongly
(see the lists of removals above), as the opening flourish of the
Backbone Cabal's power. Little wonder, with all this going on, that
the editing error slipped through.

Added: mod.ai, mod.computers.apollo, mod.computers.ibm-pc,
mod.computers.laser-printers, mod.computers.macintosh,
mod.computers.pyramid, mod.computers.ridge, mod.computers.sequent,
mod.computers.sun, mod.computers.vax, mod.computers.workstations,
mod.graphics, mod.human-nets, mod.legal, mod.politics.arms-d,
mod.protocols, mod.protocols.appletalk, mod.protocols.kermit,
mod.protocols.tcp-ip, mod.risks, mod.telecom, mod.vlsi,
net.announce.arpa-internet.

Added, but inactive for lack of a moderator: mod.computers.

Added, but evidently in an editing error: net.arch, net.astro,
net.astro.expert, net.audio, net.auto, net.auto.tech, net.aviation,
net.bicycle, net.bio, net.books, net.bugs, net.bugs.2bsd,
net.bugs.4bsd, net.bugs.usg, net.bugs.uucp, net.bugs.v7, net.cog-eng,
net.college, net.columbia, net.comics. These groups all were already
listed, in sequence, and seem to have been pasted duplicatively over
the next list of groups:

Removed, but evidently in an editing error: net.consumers, net.cooks,
net.crypt, net.cse, net.cycle, net.database, net.dcom, net.decus,
net.emacs, net.eunice, net.flame, net.followup, net.games,
net.games.board, net.games.chess, net.games.emp, net.games.frp,
net.games.go, net.games.hack, net.games.pbm, net.games.rogue.

Removed (and not by editing error): fa.arms-d, fa.arpa-bboard,
fa.human-nets, fa.info-kermit, fa.info-mac, fa.info-terms,
fa.info-vax, fa.info-vlsi, fa.laser-lovers, fa.poli-sci, fa.risks,
fa.tcp-ip, fa.telecom, net.bizarre.

This list also noted which *un*moderated groups had gateways to
Arpanet (or in one case Bitnet) mailing lists, for the first time
since 1982. The following groups were listed: net.astro (with
uncertainty as to whether that gateway was working), net.emacs,
net.ham-radio, net.ham-radio.packet, net.info-terms, net.lang.ada,
net.lang.c, net.lang.forth (this is the Bitnet gateway),
net.lang.pascal, net.lang.prolog, net.mail.headers, net.micro,
net.micro.amiga, net.micro.atari, net.micro.cpm, net.origins,
net.physics, net.railroad, net.sf-lovers, net.sources, net.space,
net.unix, net.unix-wizards, net.video. The list of gatewayed
newsgroups is separate in this and succeeding lists from the main list
of newsgroups, and is worse maintained (although not as badly as the
independent list of moderators).

Summary: From 13 to 0 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated
groups, from 16 to 39 moderated groups (from 2 to 3 inactive), from 16
(2 inactive) to 39 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 177 to 175
unmoderated groups, from 2 to 3 moderated groups, from 179 to 178
total. 211 (or 208) total (42 or 39 moderated, 175 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 10 November 1985)"
November 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 19...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 8 November 1985)"
November 15, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 19...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.internat.

Added, to correct the previous editing error: net.consumers,
net.cooks, net.crypt, net.cse, net.cycle, net.database, net.dcom,
net.decus, net.emacs, net.eunice, net.flame, net.followup, net.games,
net.games.board, net.games.chess, net.games.emp, net.games.frp,
net.games.go, net.games.hack, net.games.pbm, net.games.rogue. None of
these groups was really newgrouped at this time, they just had to be
put back into the list from which they'd been edited out by mistake.

Removed, to correct the previous editing error: duplicative copies of
net.arch, net.astro, net.astro.expert, net.audio, net.auto,
net.auto.tech, net.aviation, net.bicycle, net.bio, net.books,
net.bugs, net.bugs.2bsd, net.bugs.4bsd, net.bugs.usg, net.bugs.uucp,
net.bugs.v7, net.cog-eng, net.college, net.columbia, net.comics. None
of these groups was really rmgrouped at this time, although one soon
would be;they just went from being listed twice back to being listed
once.

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 39 moderated
groups (3 inactive), 39 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 175 to 177
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 178 to 180
total. 219 (or 216) total (42 or 39 moderated, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 29 November 1985)"
December 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 21...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 8 November 1985)"
December 1, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 21...@gatech.CSNET

Removed: net.flame.

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 39 moderated
groups (3 inactive), 39 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 177 to 176
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 180 to 179
total. 218 (or 215) total (42 or 39 moderated, 176 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 3 December 1985)"
December 16, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 22...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 3 December 1985)"
December 16, 1985
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 22...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.recipes.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 39 to 40
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 39 (3 inactive) to 40 (3
inactive) total. In net.*, no change: 176 unmoderated groups, 3
moderated groups, 179 total. 219 (or 216) total (43 or 40 moderated,
176 unmoderated).


This is the last newsgroup list/moderator list pair known to me posted

in 1985.

Annual summary: From 18 to 0 fa.* groups. In mod.*, from 1 to 0
unmoderated groups, from 13 to 40 moderated groups (from 1 to 3
inactive), from 14 (1 inactive) to 40 (3 inactive) total. In net.*,
from 172 to 176 unmoderated groups, from 2 to 3 moderated groups, from
174 to 179 total. Total, from 173 to 176 unmoderated groups, from 18
to 0 fa.* groups, from 15 (1 inactive) to 43 (3 inactive) moderated
groups, from 206 (or 205) to 219 (or 216) total.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 19, 2002, 11:44:44 PM1/19/02
to
For an introduction to this thread's chronological posts, please see
the first post in the series, for the year 1981.

This is the year of the Great Renaming, beginning with the September 1
posting. I doubt I need to add any more preface here.

Joe Bernstein


Lists of Newsgroups Posted in 1986

GENE SPAFFORD

"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 31 December 1985)"
January 1, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 23...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 31 December 1985)"
January 1, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 23...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.compilers, mod.sources.doc.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 40 to 42
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 40 (3 inactive) to 42 (3


inactive) total. In net.*, no change: 176 unmoderated groups, 3

moderated groups, 179 total. 221 (or 218) total (45 or 42 moderated,
176 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 13 January 1986)"
January 16, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 24...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 13 January 1986)"
January 16, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 24...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.os.os9, mod.os.unix, mod.techreports.

Added, but inactive for lack of a moderator: mod.os.

Removed: mod.unix.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 42 to 45
moderated groups (from 3 to 4 inactive), from 42 (3 inactive) to 45 (4


inactive) total. In net.*, no change: 176 unmoderated groups, 3

moderated groups, 179 total. 224 (or 220) total (48 or 44 moderated,
176 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 13 January 1986)"
February 1, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 25...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 30 January 1986)"
February 1, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 25...@gatech.CSNET

No changes.


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 13 February 1986)"
February 16, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 27...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 30 January 1986)"
February 16, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 27...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.lang.c++.

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 45 moderated
groups (4 inactive), 45 (4 inactive) total. In net.*, from 176 to 177
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 179 to 180
total. 225 (or 221) total (48 or 44 moderated, 177 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 19 February 1986)"
March 1, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 19 February 1986)"
March 1, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.micro.atari8, net.micro.atari16.

Removed: net.micro.atari.

Although net.micro.atari had been removed, it remained on the list of
gated unmoderated groups for months to come.

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 45 moderated
groups (4 inactive), 45 (4 inactive) total. In net.*, from 177 to 178
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 180 to 181
total. 226 (or 222) total (48 or 44 moderated, 178 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 2 March 1986)"
March 2, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 2 March 1986)"
March 2, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 28...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.mac, mod.mac.binaries, mod.mac.sources.

Rendered active by getting a moderator: mod.os.

Removed: mod.computers.macintosh.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 45 to 47
moderated groups (from 4 to 3 inactive), from 45 (4 inactive) to 47 (3
inactive) total. In net.*, no change: 178 unmoderated groups, 3
moderated groups, 181 total. 228 (or 225) total (50 or 47 moderated,
178 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 14 March 1986)"
March 16, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 30...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 2 March 1986)"
March 16, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 30...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.sources.d.

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 47 moderated
groups (3 inactive), 47 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 178 to 179
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 181 to 182
total. 223 (or 219) total (50 or 47 moderated, 179 unmoderated).


"Checkgroups message"
April 1, 1986
net.news.group, net.news.adm
Message-ID: 31...@gatech.CSNET

This begins a two month period during which Google's archives, derived
for this period from the University of Toronto's, include no lists of
active newsgroups, nor lists of moderators, nor changes postings about
these lists. However, the archives do include checkgroups messages,
and the first changes postings after the gap refer to postings within
the gap. This leads me to believe that I'm seeing a gap in archive
retention, rather than a gap in original posting.

Checkgroups messages at this time did not carry moderation flags nor
indications of which groups were gatewayed. Thus the only facts that
can be documented for these two months from posts of this sort are the
bare addition or removal of newsgroups.

No changes.


"Checkgroups message"
April 17, 1986
net.news.group, net.news.adm
Message-ID: 33...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.computers.68k, mod.mag, mod.mag.otherrealms. Since all
mod.* groups at this time were moderated, and the first lists of
moderators after the gap indicate that these groups were, at that
time, moderated, I presume they were so created. There is no basis
for guessing whether any of them started out inactive, although none
but mod.mag fit the usual pattern for inactive mod.* groups.

Removed: net.internat. (It would be restored in the next list. Gene
Spafford is on record from around this time as objecting to the
group.)

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 47 to 50
moderated groups (from 3 to probably 3 inactive), from 47 to 50 (from
3 to probably 3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 179 to 178
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 182 to 181
total. 231 (or 228) total (53 or 50 moderated, 178 unmoderated).


"Checkgroups message"
May 3, 1986
net.news.group, net.news.adm
Message-ID: 34...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.internat (again).

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 50 moderated
groups (3 inactive), 50 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 178 to 179
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 181 to 182
total. 232 (or 229) total (53 or 50 moderated, 179 unmoderated).


"Checkgroups message"
May 17, 1986
net.news.group, net.news.adm
Message-ID: 36...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.amiga, mod.amiga.binaries, mod.amiga.sources,
mod.computers.masscomp, net.house, net.politics.terror. Again, I
assume that all the mod.* groups were created moderated and active.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 50 to 54
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 50 (3 inactive) to 54 (3
inactive) total. In net.*, from 179 to 181 unmoderated groups, from 3
to 3 moderated groups, from 179 to 184 total. 238 (or 235) total (57
or 56 moderated, 181 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 24 May 1986)"
June 2, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 37...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 17 May 1986)"
June 2, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 37...@gatech.CSNET

Added: net.consumers.house, net.micro.ns32k.

Removed: net.house, net.micro.16k.

Unmoderated: mod.computers.workstations. (This group could have been
removed from the List of Moderators at any time over the preceding two
months, of course, but at any rate, it isn't on the June 2nd one.
Since it returns on the June 19 list, this is probably an error, not a
real change.)

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 1 unmoderated groups, from 54 to 53
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 54 (3 inactive) to 54 (3
inactive) total. In net.*, no net change: 181 unmoderated groups, 3
moderated groups, 184 total. 238 (or 235) total (56 or 53 moderated,
182 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 19 June 1986)"
June 19, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 39...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 19 June 1986)"
June 19, 1986
mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 39...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.announce, mod.announce.newusers, mod.conferences,
mod.comp-soc, mod.music.love-hounds.

Re-moderated: mod.computers.workstations.

This is the first posting to remove net.micro.atari from the list of
gatewayed unmoderated newsgroups, and the first to add
net.micro.atari8 and net.micro.atari16 to that list.

Summary: In mod.*, from 1 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 53 to 59
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 54 (3 inactive) to 59 (3
inactive) total. In net.*, no net change: 181 unmoderated groups, 3
moderated groups, 184 total. 243 (or 240) total (62 or 59 moderated,
181 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 27 June 1986)"
July 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 40...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 21 June 1986)"
July 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 40...@gatech.CSNET

Removed: net.works.

Summary: In mod.*, no change: 0 unmoderated groups, 59 moderated
groups (3 inactive), 59 (3 inactive) total. In net.*, from 181 to 180
unmoderated groups, from 3 to 3 moderated groups, from 184 to 183
total. 242 (or 239) total (62 or 59 moderated, 180 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 13 July 1986)"
July 16, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 41...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 13 July 1986)"
July 16, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 41...@gatech.CSNET

Added: mod.philosophy, mod.philosophy.tech, mod.psi.

Removed: net.announce, net.announce.newusers.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 59 to 62
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 59 to 62 (from 3 to 3
inactive) total. In net.*, from 180 to 180 unmoderated groups, from 3
to 1 moderated groups, from 183 to 181 total. 243 (or 240) total (63
or 60 moderated, 180 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 31 August 1986)"
September 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 44...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 30 August 1986)"
September 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 44...@gatech.CSNET

This list shows that the Great Renaming has begun. It starts small:
"First they came for the...".

The gap between the July 16 list and this one is a real gap in posting
(the changes postings for September 1 indicate that the previous
postings were in fact dated July 16). There are two additional gaps
before year's end, October 1 and November 16, also real gaps in
posting. These gaps, the first in some time, intervene in every stage
of the renaming of the net.* groups, and so are spectacularly
ill-timed from the historical point of view (although it's perfectly
comprehensible that there *would* be delays in routine tasks during
the renaming!).

Added: mod.music.gaffa, mod.sources.games, talk.bizarre,
talk.religion.

Removed: mod.music.love-hounds.

Since talk.religion was immediately renamed, talk.bizarre is thus
indisputably the Big 8 group that has lived longest under the same
name, by a matter of several weeks. This strikes me as poetic
justice.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 0 unmoderated groups, from 62 to 63
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 62 to 63 (from 3 to 3
inactive) total. In net.*, no change: 180 unmoderated groups, 1
moderated group, 181 total. In talk.*, from 0 to 2 unmoderated
groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 0 to 2 total. 246 (or 243)
total (64 or 61 moderated, 182 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 15 September 1986)"
September 16, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 45...@gatech.CSNET

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 15 September 1986)"
September 16, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 45...@gatech.CSNET

This list documents the rest of the creation of talk.*. In the
process, it shows the *.misc convention as governing the Big 7 from
birth (there's even a renaming of a general group to *.misc in this
very list!).

A corresponding cosmetic change: While the net.* and mod.* lists
retained the hierarchical structure (separate columns for "subgroups")
until the end, the Big 7 lists were aligned flush left from the start;
since for some time net.* and mod.* shared space in the lists with the
Big 7 hierarchies, the upshot is that the lists change appearance
halfway through. I'll also note that while multi-line descriptions
had been on their way out for a long time (I doubt they ever appeared
in the checkgroups messages), I have not yet seen one for any Big 7
group.

Trivia note: this list also features the last group to be created in
net.*.

Added: mod.religion, mod.religion.christian, net.music.makers,
talk.abortion, talk.origins, talk.philosophy.misc, talk.politics.misc,
talk.politics.theory, talk.religion.misc, talk.rumors. Note that
mod.religion would never appear (at all) in the Lists of Moderators,
and I therefore count it as an unmoderated group.

Removed: talk.religion.

Summary: In mod.*, from 0 to 1 unmoderated groups, from 63 to 64
moderated groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 63 to 65 (from 3 to 3
inactive) total. In net.*, from 180 to 181 unmoderated groups, from 1
to 1 moderated group, from 181 to 182 total. In talk.*, from 2 to 8
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 2 to 8 total.
255 (or 252) total (65 or 62 moderated, 190 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 4 October 1986)"
October 16, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 47...@gatech.EDU

"Changes to List of Moderators"

October 16, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 47...@gatech.EDU

This list shows the creation of misc.*, sci.*, and soc.*, and the
removal of the net.* groups that had been put into talk.*.

Added: misc.consumers, misc.consumers.house, misc.headlines,
misc.invest, misc.jobs, misc.kids, misc.legal, misc.misc, misc.taxes,
misc.text, misc.wanted, sci.astro, sci.bio, sci.crypt,
sci.electronics, sci.lang, sci.math, sci.math.stat, sci.math.symbolic,
sci.med, sci.misc, sci.physics, sci.research, sci.space,
sci.space.shuttle, soc.college, soc.culture.african,
soc.culture.celtic, soc.culture.greek, soc.culture.indian,
soc.culture.jewish, soc.culture.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.roots,
soc.singles, soc.net-people, soc.women.

Removed: net.abortion, net.origins, net.philosophy, net.politics,
net.politics.terror, net.politics.theory, net.religion,
net.religion.jewish, net.rumor.

talk.origins replaces net.origins in the list of gatewayed unmoderated
groups.

Summary: In misc.*, from 0 to 11 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0
moderated groups, from 0 to 11 total. In mod.*, no change: 1
unmoderated group, 64 moderated groups (3 inactive), 65 (3 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 181 to 172 unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1
moderated group, from 182 to 173 total. In sci.*, from 0 to 14
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 0 to 14 total.
In soc.*, from 0 to 13 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated
groups, from 0 to 13 total. In talk.*, no change: 8 unmoderated
groups, 0 moderated groups, 8 total. 284 (or 281) total (65 or 62
moderated, 219 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 31 October 1986)"
November 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 55...@gatech.EDU

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 31 October 1986)"
November 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,net.news.group
Message-ID: 55...@gatech.EDU

This list shows the creation of comp.* and news.*, along with a single
placeholder rec.* group, and shows the removal of the net.* groups
that had been placed into misc.*, sci.*, and soc.*.

Added: comp.ai, comp.arch, comp.bugs.2bsd, comp.bugs.4bsd,
comp.bugs.misc, comp.bugs.sys5, comp.cog-eng, comp.databases,
comp.dcom.lans, comp.dcom.modems, comp.edu, comp.emacs, comp.graphics,
comp.lang.ada, comp.lang.apl, comp.lang.c, comp.lang.c++,
comp.lang.forth, comp.lang.fortran, comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.misc,
comp.lang.modula2, comp.lang.pascal, comp.lang.prolog,
comp.lang.smalltalk, comp.lsi, comp.mail.headers, comp.mail.misc,
comp.mail.uucp, comp.misc, comp.org.decus, comp.org.usenix,
comp.os.cpm, comp.os.eunice, comp.os.misc, comp.periphs,
comp.sources.d, comp.sources.wanted, comp.std.internat,
comp.sys.amiga, comp.sys.apple, comp.sys.atari.8bit,
comp.sys.atari.st, comp.sys.att, comp.sys.cbm, comp.sys.dec,
comp.sys.hp, comp.sys.ibm.pc, comp.sys.intel, comp.sys.m6809,
comp.sys.m68k, comp.sys.mac, comp.sys.misc, comp.sys.nsc.32k,
comp.sys.tandy, comp.sys.ti, comp.terminals, comp.text,
comp.unix.questions, comp.unix.wizards, comp.unix.xenix, misc.forsale,
news.admin, news.config, news.groups, news.misc, news.newsites,
news.software.b, news.software.notes, news.stargate, news.sysadmin,
rec.misc.

Removed: mod.motss, net.analog, net.astro, net.astro.expert, net.bio,
net.college, net.columbia, net.consumers, net.consumers.house,
net.crypt, net.followup, net.general, net.invest, net.jobs, net.kids,
net.legal, net.math, net.math.stat, net.math.symbolic, net.med,
net.misc (but see below), net.motss, net.net-people, net.nlang,
net.nlang.africa, net.nlang.celts, net.nlang.greek, net.nlang.india,
net.physics, net.religion.christian, net.research, net.roots, net.sci,
net.singles, net.social, net.space, net.suicide, net.taxes, net.test,
net.wanted, net.wanted.sources, net.women.

One of the three lines of net.misc's former description remained in
the List of Active Newsgroups, although net.misc was not itself
listed.

Each of the following list of groups replaces its net.* predecessor in
the list of gatewayed unmoderated groups, but in each case, the
gateway is flagged to indicate that it isn't certainly known to work:
comp.emacs, comp.lang.ada, comp.lang.c, comp.lang.pascal,
comp.lang.prolog, comp.mail.headers, comp.os.cpm, comp.sys.atari.8bit,
comp.sys.atari.st, comp.sys.misc, comp.terminals, comp.unix.questions,
comp.unix.wizards, sci.astro, sci.physics, and sci.space. A similar
caution is added concerning the gateway of talk.origins.

Summary: In comp.*, from 0 to 61 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0
moderated groups, from 0 to 61 total. In misc.*, from 11 to 12
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 11 to 12 total.
In mod.*, from 1 to 1 unmoderated group, from 64 to 63 moderated
groups (from 3 to 3 inactive), from 65 to 64 (from 3 to 3 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 172 to 131 unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1
moderated group, from 173 to 132 total. In news.*, from 0 to 9
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 0 to 9 total.
In rec.*, from 0 to 1 unmoderated group, from 0 to 0 moderated groups,
from 0 to 1 total. In sci.*, no change: 14 unmoderated groups, 0
moderated groups, 14 total. In soc.*, no change: 13 unmoderated
groups, 0 moderated groups, 13 total. In talk.*, no change: 8
unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 8 total. 314 (or 311) total
(64 or 61 moderated, 250 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 29 November 1986)"
December 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,news.groups
Message-ID: 70...@gatech.EDU

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 29 November 1986)"
December 1, 1986
mod.newslists,mod.announce.newusers,news.groups
Message-ID: 71...@gatech.EDU

This list shows the real creation of rec.*, and the removal of the
net.* groups that had been placed into comp.* and news.*.

Added: rec.arts.books, rec.arts.comics, rec.arts.drwho,
rec.arts.movies, rec.arts.poems, rec.arts.sf-lovers,
rec.arts.startrek, rec.arts.tv, rec.arts.tv.soaps, rec.arts.wobegon,
rec.audio, rec.autos, rec.autos.tech, rec.aviation, rec.bicycle,
rec.birds, rec.boats, rec.food.cooking, rec.food.drink, rec.food.veg,
rec.games.board, rec.games.bridge, rec.games.chess, rec.games.empire,
rec.games.frp, rec.games.go, rec.games.hack, rec.games.misc,
rec.games.pbm, rec.games.rogue, rec.games.trivia, rec.games.video,
rec.gardens, rec.ham-radio, rec.ham-radio.packet, rec.humor,
rec.humor.d, rec.mag, rec.motorcycles, rec.music.classical,
rec.music.folk, rec.music.gdead, rec.music.makers, rec.music.misc,
rec.music.synth, rec.nude, rec.pets, rec.photo, rec.puzzles,
rec.railroad, rec.scuba, rec.skiing, rec.skydiving,
rec.sport.baseball, rec.sport.basketball, rec.sport.football,
rec.sport.hockey, rec.sport.misc, rec.travel, rec.video,
rec.woodworking.

Removed: mod.legal, mod.test, net.ai, net.arch, net.bugs,
net.bugs.2bsd, net.bugs.4bsd, net.bugs.usg, net.bugs.uucp,
net.bugs.v7, net.cog-eng, net.cse, net.database, net.dcom, net.decus,
net.emacs, net.eunice, net.graphics, net.info-terms, net.internat,
net.lan, net.lang, net.lang.ada, net.lang.apl, net.lang.c,
net.lang.c++, net.lang.f77, net.lang.forth, net.lang.lisp,
net.lang.mod2, net.lang.pascal, net.lang.prolog, net.lang.st80,
net.lsi, net.mail, net.mail.headers, net.micro, net.micro.6809,
net.micro.68k, net.micro.apple, net.micro.amiga, net.micro.atari8,
net.micro.atari16, net.micro.att, net.micro.cbm, net.micro.cpm,
net.micro.hp, net.micro.mac, net.micro.ns32k, net.micro.pc,
net.micro.ti, net.micro.trs-80, net.news, net.news.adm, net.news.b,
net.news.config, net.news.group, net.news.newsite, net.news.notes,
net.news.sa, net.news.stargate, net.periphs, net.sources.d, net.text,
net.unix, net.unix-wizards, net.usenix.

mod.legal and mod.test remained on the List of Moderators despite
their removal from the List of Active Newsgroups.

Each of the following list of groups replaces its net.* predecessor in
the list of gatewayed unmoderated groups, but in each case, the
gateway is flagged to indicate that it isn't certainly known to work:
rec.arts.sf-lovers, rec.ham-radio, rec.ham-radio.packet, rec.railroad,
rec.video. net.micro.amiga is removed from the list (but
comp.sys.amiga is not added); net.lang.forth is replaced by
comp.lang.forth without any caution that the gateway may not work.

Summary: In comp.*, no change: 61 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated
groups, 61 total. In misc.*, no change: 12 unmoderated groups, 0
moderated groups, 12 total. In mod.*, from 1 to 1 unmoderated group,
from 63 to 61 moderated groups (from 3 to 2 inactive), from 64 (3
inactive) to 62 (2 inactive) total. In net.*, from 131 to 66
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 132 to 67 total.
In news.*, no change: 9 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 9
total. In rec.*, from 1 to 62 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0
moderated groups, from 1 to 62 total. In sci.*, no change: 14
unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 14 total. In soc.*, no
change: 13 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 13 total. In
talk.*, no change: 8 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 8 total.
309 (or 306) total (63 or 60 moderated, 246 unmoderated).


"List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 10 December 1986)"
December 16, 1986
news.lists,mod.announce.newusers,news.groups
Message-ID: 79...@gatech.EDU

"List of Moderators (Last changed: 15 December 1986)"
December 16, 1986
news.lists,mod.announce.newusers,news.groups
Message-ID: 79...@gatech.EDU

This list shows the removal of those net.* groups that had been placed
into rec.*, after which net.* was a ghost hierarchy consisting of just
five groups whose fate was still being debated. Thus was completed
the first stage of the Great Renaming, the renaming of net.*.

It also shows the creation of the first, quasi-experimental, Big 7
moderated group, news.lists. And thus was begun the second stage of
the Great Renaming, the renaming of mod.*.

Added: news.lists.

Removed: mod.mag, mod.movies, net.audio, net.auto, net.auto.tech,
net.aviation, net.bicycle, net.books, net.comics, net.cooks,
net.cycle, net.games, net.games.board, net.games.chess, net.games.emp,
net.games.frp, net.games.go, net.games.hack, net.games.pbm,
net.games.rogue, net.games.trivia, net.games.video, net.garden,
net.ham-radio, net.ham-radio.packet, net.jokes, net.jokes.d, net.mag,
net.movies, net.music, net.music.classical, net.music.folk,
net.music.gdead, net.music.makers, net.music.synth, net.pets,
net.poems, net.puzzle, net.railroad, net.rec, net.rec.birds,
net.rec.boat, net.rec.bridge, net.rec.nude, net.rec.photo,
net.rec.scuba, net.rec.ski, net.rec.skydive, net.rec.wood,
net.sf-lovers, net.sport, net.sport.baseball, net.sport.football,
net.sport.hockey, net.sport.hoops, net.startrek, net.travel, net.tv,
net.tv.drwho, net.tv.soaps, net.veg, net.video, net.wines,
net.wobegon.

mod.legal and mod.test remained on this List of Moderators, despite
their official nonexistence (and the lack of a mod.test moderator).

Summary: In comp.*, no change: 61 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated
groups, 61 total. In misc.*, no change: 12 unmoderated groups, 0
moderated groups, 12 total. In mod.*, from 1 to 1 unmoderated group,
from 61 to 59 moderated groups (from 2 to 2 inactive), from 62 (2
inactive) to 60 (2 inactive) total. In net.*, from 66 to 4
unmoderated groups, from 1 to 1 moderated group, from 67 to 5 total.
In news.*, from 9 to 9 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 1 moderated
groups, from 9 to 10 total. In rec.*, no change: 62 unmoderated
groups, 0 moderated groups, 62 total. In sci.*, no change: 14
unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 14 total. In soc.*, no
change: 13 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 13 total. In
talk.*, no change: 8 unmoderated groups, 0 moderated groups, 8 total.
245 (or 243) total (61 or 59 moderated, 184 unmoderated).


This is the last newsgroup list/moderator list pair known to me posted

in 1986.

Annual summary: In comp.*, from 0 to 61 unmoderated groups, from 0 to
0 moderated groups, from 0 to 61 total. In misc.*, from 0 to 12
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 0 to 12 total.
In mod.*, from 0 to 1 unmoderated group, from 40 to 59 moderated
groups (from 3 to 2 inactive), from 40 (3 inactive) to 60 (2 inactive)
total. In net.*, from 176 to 4 unmoderated groups, from 3 to 1
moderated groups, from 179 to 5 total. In news.*, from 0 to 9
unmoderated groups, from 0 to 1 moderated groups, from 0 to 10 total.
In rec.*, from 0 to 62 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated
groups, from 0 to 62 total. In sci.*, from 0 to 14 unmoderated
groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 0 to 14 total. In soc.*,
from 0 to 13 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0 moderated groups, from 0
to 13 total. In talk.*, from 0 to 8 unmoderated groups, from 0 to 0
moderated groups, from 0 to 8 total. Total, from 176 to 184
unmoderated groups, from 43 (3 inactive) to 61 (2 inactive) moderated
groups, from 219 (or 216) to 245 (or 243) total.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 20, 2002, 12:37:41 AM1/20/02
to
In article <3c4a40c1$0$95686$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
I wrote:

> For a much more detailed discussion with full evidence, please see the
> followup post with Subject line "Early lists of newsgroups".

I had to update the post, but here it is, and with this post ends the
set of fourteen promised in my initial post.

Yay! One down, five to go! (And a long way off. I lost roughly
six days' worth of paid work to do this set of posts; I can't afford
to do the next until I'm between temp jobs again.)

I'll note pre-emptively that I do *not* intend, for better or for
worse, to post any of the other evidences I'm accumulating, which are
adequately available from my website, and from the places whence *I*
got them. But I thought posting *this* package justified, for the
combination of historic interest, the fact that some of this evidence
isn't archived nearly as widely or as accessibly as it should be, and
the fact that my own attempt to interpret it isn't really
comprehensible apart from the evidence itself (in my opinion).


This document does contain things which could be called newsgroup
lists, like the other documents in this series, but unlike those it
also includes considerable text by me, situating the lists and trying
from them to form conclusions about the earliest Usenet newsgroups.

For those who don't want to read in detail this fairly confusing
document, here's a summary:

List contained in a software distribution, circa June 5, 1980:
NET.general, NET.v7bugs, NET.news.

An essay in which I conclude that NET.general was first, that
NET.v7bugs and NET.news were probably created in early to mid-May,
1980, and were second and third, and that the rest of the NET.* groups
probably appeared after June 5.

List contained in an announcement of a renaming, May 12, 1981:

fa.arpa-bboard, fa.info-cpm, fa.sf-lovers, fa.human-nets,
fa.info-terms, fa.info-micro, fa.arms-d, fa.energy, fa.unix-wizards,

fa.teletext, and fa.home-sat.

Appendix: Thirteen posts from 1980.

Joe Bernstein

The following script is part of an A News distribution available at

<ftp://ftp.std.com/obi/USENET/a/>

- after you've obtained a.news.tar.Z and worked the relevant changes
on it, this script is under the filename news.install in the directory
news.

The file a.news.tar is also available at my website,

<http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/>.

There is a note in the FTP directory at ftp.std.com claiming that the
A News distribution is that provided at the Delaware Usenix. At
several places within the distribution, a date is given, and that date
is invariably in the neighbourhood of June 5, 1980, a date consistent
with comments I've seen in unreliable sources about the Delaware
Usenix.

The relevant lines are rather more than halfway down, following the
comment line that reads "If no .ngfile, make one."

BEGIN QUOTED SCRIPT

if test "$#" != 3
then
echo "usage: $0 newsdir nuser ngroup"
exit 1
fi
NEWSDIR=$1
NEWSUSR=$2
NEWSGRP=$3


: Get name of local system
SYSNAME=`grep sysname /usr/include/whoami.h | sed 's/.*\"\(.*\)\".*/\1/'`
if test "$SYSNAME" = ""
then
echo "$0: Cannot get system name"
exit 1
fi

: Ensure NEWSDIR exists
if test ! -d $NEWSDIR
then
mkdir $NEWSDIR
fi
chmod 755 $NEWSDIR
chown $NEWSUSR $NEWSDIR
chgrp $NEWSGRP $NEWSDIR

: Ensure certain files in NEWSDIR exist
touch $NEWSDIR/.uindex $NEWSDIR/.nindex $NEWSDIR/.history $NEWSDIR/.bitfile

: If no .sys file, make one.
if test ! -f $NEWSDIR/.sys
then
cat > $NEWSDIR/.sys << EOF
$SYSNAME:NET.ALL,to_$SYSNAME
duke:NET.ALL,to_duke
EOF
fi

: If no .seq file, make one.
if test ! -f $NEWSDIR/.seq
then
echo '100' >$NEWSDIR/.seq
fi

: If no .ngfile, make one.
if test ! -f $NEWSDIR/.ngfile
then
cat > $NEWSDIR/.ngfile << EOF
general
NET.general
NET.v7bugs
NET.news
test
to_duke
to_$SYSNAME
EOF
fi

: ensure index files are in most recent first order
sort -t: -rn +1 $NEWSDIR/.nindex -o $NEWSDIR/.nindex
sort -t: -rn +1 $NEWSDIR/.uindex -o $NEWSDIR/.uindex

chmod 644 $NEWSDIR/.[a-z]*
chown $NEWSUSR $NEWSDIR/.[a-z]*
chgrp $NEWSGRP $NEWSDIR/.[a-z]*

if test -d $NEWSDIR/.canned
then
chmod 755 $NEWSDIR/.canned
fi

echo reminder: uux must permit rnews

END QUOTED SCRIPT

The only other evidence I know of for the earliest newsgroups consists
of:

1. There's a list of the three earliest newsgroups which I find in:
1) John Quarterman's <The Matrix>, 1990, p. 244; 2) Tim Geller's
article about the conflict sparked by AOL's arrival on Usenet, which
was apparently published in the August 1995 issue of <The Net>
magazine, but which I saw in his own copy, as submitted rather than as
printed, at <http://www.tgeller.com/writing/past-writing/aol.shtml>;
3) Lee Bumgarner's Great Renaming FAQ (where the list is credited to
Geller, not Quarterman). I've seen no list of the earliest newsgroups
which disagrees with this one, except for the news.install file
reproduced above. See also the NET.* post in this thread, under
NET.test and NET.news.

2. There is an archive of net.v7bugs offered on CD-ROM by the Unix
Heritage Society, whose home page is <http://minnie.tuhs.org/>. The
archive apparently comes from Henry Spencer, the person who kept the
University of Toronto archive that formed the basis of the defunct
A-News Archive (see below) and is now integrated (for the most part)
into Google's archive. I have no reason to think this CD-ROM contains
additional evidence beyond what's mentioned below, but would welcome it
if I were wrong. I don't know whether the archive is currently
offered; it's mentioned in, for example, Warren Toomey's 1999 document,
"Saving UNIX from /dev/null" <http://minnie.tuhs.org/Seminars/Saving_Unix/>.

3. I've seen several surviving posts from 1980, dating back as far as
April 26 of that year. These have been available in two places:

a) The A-News Archive that Bruce Jones offered via first FTP and
then HTTP from communication.ucsd.edu contained a number of posts
preceding the archive's real start date of May 11, 1981.
Specifically, it contained *at least* a post to NET.v7bugs dated May
18, 1980; a post to NET.general dated November 11, 1980; and a post to
NET.news dated May 16, 1980, which may or may not represent that
group's creation. (There were also posts dated January 21, 1981 to
NET.micro, announcing that group's creation, and dated April 7, 1981
to NET.unix-wizards, which had not yet been renamed to
fa.unix-wizards. Any other pre-May 11 posts in the archive would have
been in one of those five groups, and would have been later than the
posts referred to here.) These posts appear to be in Google's
archive, but hidden by the fact that the NET.* names were lowercased
and by incorrect dates; see please my previous post (January 5, 2002)
to alt.fan.dejanews, news.groups, and news.groups.questions,
message-ID <dbc8daca.02010...@posting.google.com>, in which
at least some of the NET.v7bugs posts are located. The only other
1980 post I've found so far at Google is the November 11, 1980 post to
NET.general, which is also reproduced below.

b) Bruce Jones also offered an archive of the Usenet.Hist mailing
list he ran beginning in 1990. In that archive, which remains
available in various places, is an e-mail from Gene Spafford dated
October 17, 1990. This is, in turn, a forwarding of an e-mail Gene
Spafford got from Steve Bellovin dated October 26, 1987; and *that*
is, in turn, a forwarding of an e-mail Steve Bellovin got from Thomas
Truscott dated October 26, 1987. Thomas Truscott wrote that Cyrus
Rahman, a Duke physics grad student, had recently sent him old data
from a disk on an old computer that had moved to the physics
department, and enclosed two things from the old data, the second of
which was a small archive of thirteen posts. (See APPENDIX below.)
These posts date between April 26, 1980 and November 11, 1980. The
earliest post in this archive to NET.general dates to April 26, 1980;
there are nine other posts to NET.general. The earliest post in this
archive to NET.v7bugs dates to May 27, 1980; there are two other posts
to NET.v7bugs.

One of the posts to NET.general in the second group is unusually long
(for that era, anyway!), announces a bug in V7, and dates to May 13.
If this wasn't a mispost, then we seem to have a suggestion that the
first newsgroups other than NET.general were created in mid-May, 1980
- May 16 for NET.news, assuming the vanished post was, in fact, about
the group's creation, and anytime from May 14 to May 18 for
NET.v7bugs, based on the dates of relevant posts in both archives.
This sequence of events would accord well with the fact that Usenet
first really took off following the Delaware Usenix (which must have
been after June 5, 1980) - before it really took off, what need was
there for many newsgroups? This sequence of events also accords well
with the flood of posts by Mark Horton to NET.v7bugs which I've found
in the Google archives (see a), above), all dated May 18, 1980 as if
Horton had been saving the posts until there was a newsgroup for them.
But there's no guarantee at all that this is really how things
happened; and it's little use to go ask the people who were there,
when the mailing list archive mentioned under b) provides copious
evidence of uncertain memories.

Mark Horton, besides being a prolific poster to NET.v7bugs, is
generally credited with two major events of 1980-81: the creation of
the ARPAnet-Usenet gateways, and the "lowercasing" of the newsgroup
names (from NET.general to net.general, for example). These are both
relevant to the next "list" of newsgroups.

Message-ID: <anews.Aucbvax.1340>
Newsgroups: net.general
X-Path: utzoo!duke!mhtsa!eagle!ucbvax!mark
From: ucbvax!mark
Date: Tue May 12 12:39:01 1981
Subject: network name change is in effect
X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header


I have renamed all the arpanet newsgroups from NET.whatever to fa.whatever.
This includes arpa-bboard, info-cpm, sf-lovers, human-nets, info-terms,
info-micro, arms-d, energy, unix-wizards, teletext, and home-sat.

If you are a subscriber to one or more of the above, you should use
netnews -s to change your subscription from, for example NET.human-nets
to fa.human-nets.

If you are a system administrator for netnews and you have not already
fixed your .sys file to know about the new names, you should do so
at once, or risk losing news.

Mark

APPENDIX

The posts in the archive labeled b) above follow. Yes, they're still
available in at least two other places; but with the uncertain status
of the early posts in the A-News Archive, I can't help thinking this
is a case of the more the merrier; and anyway, these help document
some of what I say above.

news.articles
>From jte Sat Apr 26 22:02:50 1980
at-bugs : NET.general
"at" cannot schedule execution on March 1 during leap years.
Fix: />59/s//>=59/

"at" cannot schedule an event during the following year
if requested by month and date.
Fix: Unknown

If the shell script produced by "at" includes the assignment
of exported variables with special characters (e.g. $IFS)
the script can fail.
Fix: A fairly good fix is
/fprintf(file, "%s.n", .ep++);/c
++ix;
fprintf(file, "%.*s'%s'\n", ix-*ep, *ep, ix);
*ep++;
.
A better fix would scan *ep to take care of single
qoute marks in a shell variable.

>From jte Mon Apr 28 23:16:57 1980
ac-bugs : NET.general
"ac" as distributed with V7 has several problems.
1) General terminal names are not supported. All terminals
except the console must be named "ttynn". This causes
serious accounting problems as logins on all other terminals
are mapped into the console.
2) Ac looks for "}" to indicate a new date instead of the
correct "{".
3) "Midnight" (-d option) is not always computed correctly.
4) Diagnostic messages are incomplete.

Duke has rewritten ac and fixed these problems.
The new version is available from "duke!~uucp/duke/cmd/ac.c".

>From swd Sun May 4 20:47:16 1980
look bugs : NET.general
look(1) expects /usr/dict/words to be sorted with -d and -f
options. As distributed (on version 7) the wordlist is
not correctly sorted. As a result, "look ba" yields nothing.
Fix: sort -d -f /usr/dict/words -o /usr/dict/words

>From research!dmr Tue May 13 03:27:25 1980
Floating-point bug in V7 Unix: NET.general
J. W. Stevenson of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam has
discovered and diagnosed a most interesting bug in
V7 Unix. The problem is that the floating-point registers and
status are sometimes not saved across memory expansion via
sbreak() or stack growth or (less importantly) forks.
The problem only occurs when a swap is needed to
accomplish the expansion.

What happens is that the swap output IO is begun,
and then the registers are saved when the process
calls swtch() from sleep().
It is possible for the image to be written out before
the saving of the registers.

For reasons I do not fully understand situations can
occur in which the bug manifests itself consistently.
It seems to me that the register-saving should be finished
within a few hundred microseconds at most after initiation of IO
while the actual transfer (with ordinary moving-head disks)
will not begin for several milliseconds at least.
Nevertheless we have demonstrated the bug quite consistently;
by the usual sort of coincidence,
one of our machines began showing floating-point problems
the very same week that Stevenson's letter arrived.
(If the controller prefetches a significant amount of
data or if the disk is very fast then the consistency is not
surprising.)

At any rate, as suggested by Stevenson, the problem can be
fixed by adding the following code

if (u.u_fpsaved == 0) {
savfp(&u.u_fps);
u.u_fpsaved = 1;
}

to the following places in sys/slp.c:

before original line 507, "a2 = malloc(coremap, n);", in newproc();

and, after original line 564, "if(a2 == NULL) {", in expand().

>From vax135!ucbvax!mark Tue May 27 23:39:00 1980
uux bug : NET.v7bugs
A bug in uux prevents the - option from working with binary files.
To fix it, in uux.c, search for "fputs". (It's in an if (pipein) {.)
replace the fgets/fputs loop by
while ((c = getc(stdin)) != EOF)
putc(c, fpd);
and declare c somewhere to be an int. (I put the line
register int c;
right after the if (pipein).)

Fixing this bug will allow the new uusend program, which will be released
shortly, to work, allowing the transfer of binary files across indirect
uucp links.

>From unc!smb Thu May 29 19:44:57 1980
at bug : NET.general
The 'at' command insists on creating the spool file in mode 644, regardless
of your umask setting. Thus one is unable to create confidential requests.

>From swd Thu Jun 26 10:58:16 1980
uucp bug : NET.general
In distributed v7 uucp, if the USERFILE grows
to over 15 lines, uucico will die.
Fix: in chkpth.c chg line 14 from
struct userpath Upt[15];
to
struct userpath Upt[MAXUSERS];
As distributed, MAXUSERS is 20. Chkpth will check
and complain if USERFILE has more lines than MAXUSERS.

>From swd Thu Jul 10 10:42:51 1980
mkconf bug : NET.v7bugs
Some time ago a bug was reported in scanf relating to
scanning the format string "%d%c". (This bug is fixed
in the duke version of stdio.)
It seems that mkconf.c REQUIRES this bug in order to work.
Thus we suggest the following fix to mkconf.c:

diff mkconf.c.good mkconf.c.original
107c107
< " trap; br7+10. / 11/70 parity\n",
> " trap; br7+7. / 11/70 parity\n",
739,740d738
< if (n == 0)
< n = sscanf(line, "%s%s%ld", keyw, dev, &num);

>From sid!cf Thu Jul 10 22:33:51 1980
Unix alive on P-E 3240: NET.general
Wollongong Unix has just been installed on a Perkin Elmer 3240
at the University of Melbourne. It is alive and well running
two users. Those tired of VAX delivery times or Unibus Adapter
troubles can take heart.

More info later.

>From vax135!ucbvax!cory:optvax:horton Fri Jul 11 01:11:04 1980
ucbopt lives : NET.general
The optvax at UCB, on the Berknet, has been added to the news network.
This vax is a private vax with a few research projects going on on it.
It is connected off the ucbcory machine, corresponding to the
physical configuration of the Berknet.
Mark Horton

>From trt Wed Aug 13 09:48:33 1980
col : NET.v7bugs
The buffer-flush bug in col(1) that was mentioned in previous news
is due to using an automatic (local) variable for buffering stdout:
char fbuff[BUFSIZ];
should be changed to
static char fbuff[BUFSIZ];
(exit() also works since main() will not return before flushing.)
Col(1) is just one of several V7 programs with this flaw.

In the Duke version of stdio one can bypass the problem with
setbuf(stdout, SYSBUF);
where SYSBUF is a flag indicating buffering is desired.

>From vax135!ucbvax!cory:optvax:jimbo Mon Sep 29 20:40:00 1980
Spice & Splice mail aliases: NET.general
We are creating mail aliases for distribution of occasional messages of
interest and reporting of bugs for both the Spice and Splice circuit
simulation programs. This is not really for user consulting but to
make it easier to report bugs or find out what has been fixed already.
Interested parties who would like to put a name on one or both should
send a note to:

esvax.spice@berkeley (over ARPA-Net)
ucbopt!spice (over "uucp")
or
esvax.splice@berkeley (over ARPA-Net)
ucbopt!splice (over "uucp")

These aliases should be used for all incoming messages.

Jim

>From decvax!shannon Tue Nov 11 17:26:58 1980
DEC on Usenet : NET.general

DEC now has a Unix system on the Usenet uucp network.
Anyone with questions about or problems with DEC hardware
and it's relationship (interaction) with Unix, feel free
to contact us. We are members of the Telecommunications
Industry Group (TIG or Telco) of DEC and are actively
involved with Unix on current and new DEC hardware.

Currently, we are routing all Usenet traffic through duke.
If necessary or desirable, we could poll other systems as
well. For now, mail duke!decvax!person. Our network
names, etc. are below, feel free to contact us.

decvax!shannon - Bill Shannon (formerly of Case Western Reserve Univ.)
decvax!aps - Armando Stettner

Rob Maxwell

unread,
Jan 21, 2002, 2:22:46 AM1/21/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
news:3c4a31e3$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> This post is the first in a thread devoted to the history of some
> Usenet newsgroups. I will post thirteen more posts in this thread
> this weekend, most of which are summaries of results to date for the
> years 1980 to 1986 and for the hierarchies NET.*, net.*, fa.*, and
> mod.*. In the future, I hope to post such preliminary posts for the
> remaining years to date, and for the Big 8 hierarchies, if possible
> also to this thread. This post is primarily meant to ensure that
> people who want to select or kill the entire thread can easily do so.
>

It would be easier to filter these posts to read/ignore if you tagged them
[History]. That way you would be forced to reply to yourself and you can't
count on this thread remaining on any one server.

>
> May all this be some use. I've taken some trouble to be able to post


> this to Usenet, and not just dump it on my website, so I mean it when
> I say that I welcome contributions, comments, and criticisms.

There are two canonical sources for the Big 8. They hold copies of all RFDs,
CFV results, and control newgroup/rmgroup messages from 1991-02-18 to June
2001 and from 1992-01-06 through current. There are, also, lists of groups
added/removed available. You should find tale's Big 8 checkgroups in the
"other messages" folder. By the way, you do know about inet groups, right?

ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups
This is tale's original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
(Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he left until
it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)

ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups
This is the current archive run by tale which starts Jan 92

-Rob

>
> Joe Bernstein

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 23, 2002, 10:42:10 PM1/23/02
to
In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
<robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:3c4a31e3$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> > This post is primarily meant to ensure that


> > people who want to select or kill the entire thread can easily do so.
> >
>
> It would be easier to filter these posts to read/ignore if you tagged them
> [History].

Sorry; you're right that I should've enabled subject filtering too.

> That way you would be forced to reply to yourself and you can't
> count on this thread remaining on any one server.

I haven't a clue what this sentence means.

Oh. You mean "wouldn't be forced" ? Um, with respect: *I* read by
thread, and if *I* were reading these posts, I'd certainly want them
all neatly set aside in a single thread for me. (And they will be;
I'll have Pnews working the way I want it by the time I'm ready to
post again, for sure.)

As to not counting on the thread staying on a server, well, no
kidding. But I am assuming anyone who cares deeply about it will keep
it *in their killfile*. What I missed is that not everyone can kill
on references.

> > May all this be some use. I've taken some trouble to be able to post
> > this to Usenet, and not just dump it on my website, so I mean it when
> > I say that I welcome contributions, comments, and criticisms.
>
> There are two canonical sources for the Big 8. They hold copies of all RFDs,
> CFV results, and control newgroup/rmgroup messages from 1991-02-18 to June
> 2001 and from 1992-01-06 through current. There are, also, lists of groups
> added/removed available. You should find tale's Big 8 checkgroups in the
> "other messages" folder. By the way, you do know about inet groups, right?
>
> ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups
> This is tale's original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
> (Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he left until
> it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)
>
> ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups
> This is the current archive run by tale which starts Jan 92

OK. Obviously, I knew about the ISC archive and knew that it had been
preceded by a UUnet archive. I had *not* known that there was material
at UUnet that didn't get transferred.

Your URLs are wrong for control messages, which live in a different
directory (and by the way, *that* archive is *not* canonical; it
includes all newgroups and rmgroups received at its various homes, not
just official ones, and not just for Big 8 hierarchies).

<ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/control/...>
<ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/control/...>

(Here I'll insert the requisite warning: thanks to HipCrime, web
browsers fed these URLs normally crash after they get the 15,000,000th
hierarchy or group name. What you have to do is finish the URL with
the name of the *group*, not hierarchy, you actually want:

<ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/control/news/news.announce.newgroups.Z>

so as to get only the 15,000,000 HipCrime-spawned control messages
on that particular group, something the average microcomputer program
can actually sorta handle. This is not aimed at you, Rob Maxwell,
since you presumably know this; I just don't want anyone else who
might happen to read this to try clicking in the wrong place...
which is why the ellipses are inserted in the URLs I gave.)

Of *course* I know about inet groups. There are three major reasons
for breaking at the end of 1986; they are, in increasing order of
importance, alt.*, *then* inet, *then* the Great Renaming. As best I
can tell, the great majority of official Big 8 groups created in 1987
were created either by the renaming of mod.* or by rapid "promotion" of
inet groups. (Yes, that means I've done the spreadsheet stuff for
1987. But if anyone has any lists of inet groups lying around, older
than 1988, I'd be grateful; Google is turning up very little, and the
FTP server Erik Fair's announcement points you to, of course, no
longer exists.)

Anyway, I've now downloaded everything (except for the odd mistake on
my part) up to 12/31/1998, from Google, that I expect to need. I'll
cross-check it against ISC and/or UUnet. But I had been meaning to
avoid any serious consultation of those archives in the first three
stages of the work, so as to avoid getting sucked into the extremely
interesting (to me) topic of changes in how newsgroups were created, a
topic which I could spend endless time on. (The single biggest reason
I'm *doing* this job in two basic steps is that otherwise I'd spend
forever digging in the ISC archive and in Google's news.groups archive.
Limiting the preliminary work to the official lists cuts that short
and makes at least the preliminary stages doable within finite time.)

As it is, once I've downloaded the 1999 and 2000 checkgroups, I'll
probably take my computer offline again until it's time to post some
results. Bad things are happening to me.

(Meanwhile, I've yet to see any comments on the thread the information
is actually in. Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other
than the server I'm posting from and Google? Were my posts so perfect
or so execrable that nobody dares say anything? Or just so boring
that nobody's read any of them?)

Sebastian Brocks

unread,
Jan 24, 2002, 10:45:07 AM1/24/02
to
Hi Joe,

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> Were my posts so perfect or so execrable that nobody dares say anything?

It was really interesting, I jsut had nothing to add.
--
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Rob Maxwell

unread,
Jan 24, 2002, 12:38:58 PM1/24/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
news:3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

Yes, I am aware of these but, the nan sub-directory contains a (used to be)
regular postings about new group adds and removals, sort of a summary of
tale's (then) recent control posts. Also, the other messages sub-directory
is the home of tale's checkgroups (both Big 8 and Big 8/inet). Although,
google should have the checkgroups archived they might have missed one
whereas news.isc.org would not miss a control/RFD/CFV obviously.

For the far off future, tale has a document that discusses dead/private
heirarchies that maybe be of interest when (if?) decide to expand outside of
the Big 8:

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/HIERARCHY-NOTES

The CONFIG sub-directory is also the home of news.isc.org's current active
and newsgroups files.

Also, of note, is Lewis S. Eisen 's "Master List of Newsgroup Hierarchies"
would be helpful to trackdown the various heirarchies, although it appears
regular maintenance has stopped as of March 19, 2001. Anyhoo, it can be
found in news.admin.hierarchy on google or at it's home website:
http://www.magma.ca/~leisen/mlnh/

The MLNH also mentions a dead regular posting entitled "Usenet Hierarchies:
Config Files FAQ" which did list the heirarchy manager/management contact
info and is based on INN's control.ctl file. The UHCF FAQ is which gives a
quick overview of what control.ctl is is available here:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/hierarchies-config/

The current, actual control.ctl file is here:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/control.ctl

>
> (Meanwhile, I've yet to see any comments on the thread the information
> is actually in. Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other
> than the server I'm posting from and Google? Were my posts so perfect
> or so execrable that nobody dares say anything? Or just so boring
> that nobody's read any of them?)

It is out there and somewhat interesting but, it is kind of difficult to
discuss this without doing the same hard work you have done and it seems
that everyone from that era (who could correct any information) is gone. As
far as I know, tale is the longest user of Usenet.

-Rob

Bruce Baugh

unread,
Jan 24, 2002, 11:19:56 PM1/24/02
to
In article <3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other
> than the server I'm posting from and Google?

It made it to Newsguy. You did a thorough enough job that I'm left
without questions or reactions other than "neat!"

--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
I am what I know / A glacier made from layers of history's snow / And
what I know is what I see / In dreaming and reality / On and on this
cycle goes / Wretchedness and beauty juxtaposed - Jeff Johnson,
"Chambord"

Rob Maxwell

unread,
Jan 25, 2002, 1:50:52 AM1/25/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
news:3c4a57cc$0$38167$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

>
> : If no .ngfile, make one.
> if test ! -f $NEWSDIR/.ngfile
> then
> cat > $NEWSDIR/.ngfile << EOF
> general
> NET.general
> NET.v7bugs
> NET.news
> test

This seems to imply that "test" was the first "*.test" newsgroup and
therefore one of the first four (not three) newsgroups.

-Rob

> to_duke
> to_$SYSNAME
> EOF
> fi

Hugh Watkins

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 12:26:36 AM1/26/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote

snipo

> (Meanwhile, I've yet to see any comments on the thread the information
> is actually in. Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other
> than the server I'm posting from and Google? Were my posts so perfect
> or so execrable that nobody dares say anything? Or just so boring
> that nobody's read any of them?)

Oh Joe

It got to me
route below

thanks


I think most are overawed by the detail and the lengh :-0)

Hugh W

Path:
uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!priapus.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!puce.r
eadfreenews.net!news.readfreenews.net!208.42.156.33.MISMATCH!authen.puce.readfreenews.net.POSTED!not-for-mail
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 21:42:10 -0600
From: Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: [History] Re: A Chronology of Usenet Newsgroups: Start Post
References: <3c4a31e3$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>
Organization: None
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
Mail-Copies-To: nobody
User-Agent: YA-NewsWatcher/3.1.8
Lines: 113
Message-ID: <3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>
NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Jan 2002 21:42:30 CST
NNTP-Posting-Host: 3f9f83b5.authen.puce.readfreenews.net
X-Trace: 1011843750 puce.readfreenews.net 95682 joe/192.132.13.226
X-Complaints-To: ab...@readfreenews.com
Xref: uni-berlin.de news.groups:473216

In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
<robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:3c4a31e3$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> > This post is primarily meant to ensure that
> > people who want to select or kill the entire thread can easily do so.

snip


Philip Newton

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 5:28:19 AM1/26/02
to
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 21:42:10 -0600, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
wrote:

> Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other than the
> server I'm posting from and Google?

It got to news.cis.dfn.de:

> Path: uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!priapus.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!puce.readfreenews.net!news.readfreenews.net!208.42.156.33.MISMATCH!authen.puce.readfreenews.net.POSTED!not-for-mail

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <nospam...@gmx.li>
That really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 12:41:21 PM1/26/02
to
In article <a2pgs...@enews3.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
<robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> > In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
> > <robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> > > ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is tale's
> > > original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
> > > (Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he
> > > left until it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)

Are you sure about those dates, by the way?

The archive's welcome message claims that it reaches from 1989.

> > > ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is the
> > > current archive run by tale which starts Jan 92

This start date is definitely wrong. The 1991 "New Usenet Groups" and
"Current Status" postings are at ISC's archive too. And this archive
has the same welcome message as UUnet's has.

> the nan sub-directory contains a (used
> to be) regular postings about new group adds and removals, sort of a
> summary of tale's (then) recent control posts. Also, the other
> messages sub-directory is the home of tale's checkgroups (both Big 8
> and Big 8/inet). Although, google should have the checkgroups
> archived they might have missed one whereas news.isc.org would not
> miss a control/RFD/CFV obviously.

The checkgroups are definitely *not* in either archive. I'm surprised,
but not shocked.

(One thing to note: for most of their history, checkgroups were
posted, and properly so, to entirely different sets of newsgroups from
those the more FAQ-like lists went to.)

news.lists was archived at uu.net (until June 2001) but only with the
most recent copy of each post. I didn't check whether checkgroups were
archived there, but it doesn't seem much use to, frankly; and I know
the checkgroups 1998-2000 weren't posted to news.lists (am not sure
about all earlier dates). They *were*, however, posted to nan, so
their not being archived is a mystery to me. On the other hand, the
other long posts also went to nan, and also aren't archived there (the
"List of Active Newsgroups" is the most pertinent example).

On the other hand, the "New Usenet Groups", "Current Status", and
(sigh) "Bogus Usenet Groups" postings are *far* more useful than I had
realised, for my purposes, and lasted much much longer. This solves a
great mystery for me. For all my problems with tale, he was the person
who instituted this archive, an incredibly valuable historical
resource. It made no sense to me *at all* that the person who had done
that would also be the person who terminated the "List of Active
Newsgroups" postings that had been going on (by the time he did so) for
fourteen years. I assumed it was because the List had become redundant
(with the active file he made available in the CONFIG directory), and
also had become so long that posting it to Usenet at all was arguably a
Bad Thing. But now I see that it was also because these three postings
were quasi-replacements; in other words, tale did not suddenly at the
end of 1996 decide that he didn't care about keeping a historical
record after all. (What happened in July of 2000, when all three posts
stopped, is another question.) The posts asking what had become of the
List posts also asked about these three, so I'd always assumed they'd
died at the same time; oops - they revived again, which the List posts
did not. (No, I don't know why I don't remember *seeing* them in nan
all those years, sorry!)

(I *will* note that not posting full lists to Usenet at all is *not*
necessarily a Good Thing. Is UUCPnet completely dead, then? Is there
*nobody* running a news server who has no FTP access? Alternatively,
is the ISC archive, um, that would be *Internet* Standards Consortium,
yes? is that archive reachable by UUCP?)

> For the far off future, tale has a document that discusses
> dead/private heirarchies that maybe be of interest when (if?) decide
> to expand outside of the Big 8:
>
> ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/HIERARCHY-NOTES

Since I've downloaded the complete (archived) run of the "Alternative
Newsgroup Hierarchies" postings, that expansion is an ever-present
temptation, but I'm holding it at bay by reminding myself that that
list's picture of alt.* had, by the time I returned to Usenet, very
little resemblance to reality.

Most of the national and linguistic hierarchies never appeared in that
posting, by the way, although for some bizarre reason relcom.* did. I
remember fj.* existing as early as 1985, for example (although
obviously I never read it). (Google has nothing in fj.* before -
untrustworthy presentation-date here - June 11, 1987, and doesn't seem
to have archives of it itself, as opposed to cross-posts, before
January 1, 1992.) And we have learnt recently that dk.* existed by
1983, while Toronto had a full suite of local-to-national hierarchies
by 1984.



> Also, of note, is Lewis S. Eisen 's "Master List of Newsgroup
> Hierarchies" would be helpful to trackdown the various heirarchies,
> although it appears regular maintenance has stopped as of March 19,
> 2001. Anyhoo, it can be found in news.admin.hierarchy on google or at
> it's home website: http://www.magma.ca/~leisen/mlnh/

Lewis Eisen announced he was discontinuing it, as I recall, in
news.admin.hierarchies (note group name). Since Simon Lyall was
already producing the Config Files FAQ, nobody was terribly interested
in continuing the other list, although that list was always much
longer. (Note: I can't find this thread now, so am relying on
my own untrustworthy memory only.)



> The MLNH also mentions a dead regular posting entitled "Usenet
> Hierarchies: Config Files FAQ" which did list the heirarchy
> manager/management contact info and is based on INN's control.ctl
> file. The UHCF FAQ is which gives a quick overview of what
> control.ctl is is available here:
> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/hierarchies-config/
>
> The current, actual control.ctl file is here:
> ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/control.ctl

You have the sequence of events backwards, far as I know. Simon Lyall
started posting the Config Files FAQ, and after a while the INN people
adopted it as the basis for their master control.ctl. (It isn't just
in the ISC archive, but also is part of what you get if you download
INN itself. This is a significant part of what gives tale the power he
has; for at least one major server, the *default* is to honour his
control messages, so you have to be aware of this and take specific
action if you intend to do anything else. Although the catch in that,
in turn, is that that default works best if you install PGPverify,
which apparently many news admins don't. The Big 8's declining
propagation has much more to do with this kind of thing than with any
conscious acts by the individual news admins, these days.)

> > (Meanwhile, I've yet to see any comments on the thread the
> > information is actually in. Did that thread actually propagate
> > anywhere other than the server I'm posting from and Google? Were
> > my posts so perfect or so execrable that nobody dares say anything?
> > Or just so boring that nobody's read any of them?)
>
> It is out there and somewhat interesting but, it is kind of difficult
> to discuss this without doing the same hard work you have done and it
> seems that everyone from that era (who could correct any information)
> is gone. As far as I know, tale is the longest user of Usenet.

I thank the people who've replied to this paragraph. May I note,
however, one thing? Part of the reason I did the hierarchy summaries
at *all* was to make it possible for people who had read particular
groups back then to chime in with comments on those groups. Please
keep this in mind for when the summaries for the Big 8 groups appear,
since there are certainly many people in news.groups who remember 1990,
for example.

Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
admittedly leaves a wide opening). People whose first archived posts
are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;
Brad Templeton and Chuq von Rospach are examples, but not the only
ones. (I've seen Brad Templeton's posts this year in at least two
hierarchies, in fact.) One reason I chose news.groups for the thread
was the hope that such veterans would notice it here, but if any have,
they've not chosen to say anything, which of course is their right. I
just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration of
such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me; and of
course "lists of newsgroups" remain officially on-topic here...

(Detail note: it looks like CvR actually got onto Usenet proper in
1983 sometime; what's archived from 1981 and 1982 is all in gatewayed
groups.)

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/

Bruce Baugh

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 2:29:05 PM1/26/02
to
In article <3c52ea53$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> I just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration
> of such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me; and
> of course "lists of newsgroups" remain officially on-topic here...

Shots in the dark:

alt.folklore.computers
alt.sysadmin.recovery
rec.arts.sf.*

Hugh Watkins

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 11:23:20 PM1/26/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote

snip

>
> Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
> archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
> that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
> admittedly leaves a wide opening). People whose first archived posts
> are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;
> Brad Templeton and Chuq von Rospach are examples, but not the only
> ones. (I've seen Brad Templeton's posts this year in at least two
> hierarchies, in fact.)

snip

email them direct with a short question
the first Danish phrase I found was a joke

Hugh W

************* searches *************************
> En j0diske kvinde der hedder "Maria"? Det er da noget du tror!!

Date-Received: Tue, 13-Nov-84 01:27:13 EST

Organization: DIKU, U of Copenhagen, DK

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22ken+perlow%22

the writer, musician in USA, told me by email how he learnt Danish on a Kibbutz

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=%22ken+perlow%22&num=100&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wg

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=author:ken+author:perlow&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&start=200&sa=N

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=Jul+author:ken+author:perlow&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&filter=0

which did not show in the other searches

Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1exp 11/4/83; site ihuxq.UUCP
From: k...@ihuxq.UUCP (ken perlow)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Danish on the net
Message-ID: <4...@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Dec-83 12:23:14 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.441
Posted: Fri Dec 23 12:23:14 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Dec-83 10:53:02 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 8


En glaedelig jul og et godt nytaar!
--
*** ***
JE MAINTIENDRAI ***** *****
****** ******
ken perlow ***** *****
(312)979-7261 ** ** ** **
..ihnp4!ihuxq!ken *** ***

A happy jule and a good new year !

The Danish spelling for Denmark " Danmark " goes a year further back

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=danmark&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1
&as_maxy=1984&filter=0

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=bnews.cbosgd.2914&output=gplain

Date: Tue Dec 21 06:50:56 1982
Subject: USENET map for europe


and the Dutch University town Delft

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=delft&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1&a
s_maxy=1984&filter=0

>From agn@BBN-UNIX Fri May 21 13:56:01 1982
Date: 21 May 1982 16:43:13 EDT (Friday)
From: Alan G. Nemeth <agn at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: USENIX schedule
To: lou@berkeley
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl=en&selm=bnews.populi.194

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?as_ugroup=net.usenix&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1983
&num=100&hl=en

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=anews.Aharpo.379&output=gplain

Message-ID: <anews.Aharpo.379>
Newsgroups: net.usenix
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!mhtsa!harpo!ber
From: harpo!ber
Date: Wed Mar 3 19:02:15 1982
Subject: ;login: newsletter


help running the new unix boxes was one of the main interests


and games

Message-ID: <anews.Aharpo.216>
Newsgroups: net.general
X-Path: utzoo!duke!chico!harpo!ber
From: harpo!ber
Date: Wed May 27 20:52:50 1981
Subject: USENIX othello(r) tourney


X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header


In case your interested and haven't heard (my apologies) there will be
a 3rd annual USENIX Othello Tournament at the texas meeting (thursday night).
We will run on onyx's. Contact me for further information.

brian redman
chico!ber
(201) 386-2884

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=redman&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1&
as_maxy=1982&filter=0

Message-ID: <anews.Aharpo.192>
Newsgroups: net.news
X-Path: utzoo!duke!chico!harpo!root
From: harpo!root
Date: Mon May 18 21:07:26 1981
Subject: bltnet


X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header


re: any btl sites that don't talk to at least one-other via usenet
let me know and I'll be your net buddy. I don't see any problem in
forming a complete subnet.

PS, put btl.ALL in your data bases, in particular btl.news for starters.

brian redman

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=anews.Aucbvax.1347&output=gplain

Date: Wed May 13 23:10:11 1981
Subject: blfp on usenet


X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header


Here are some suggestions for putting the Bell Labs Free Press on USENET: big snip

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=is&num=100&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=5&as_maxy=1981&f
ilter=0


oldest this time

Message-ID: <anews.Autzoo.567>
Newsgroups: comments
X-Path: utzoo!henry
From: utzoo!henry
Date: Fri May 1 13:04:38 1981
Subject: ps r##


X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header


Actually, this does not give you the effect of the t option at all;
it gives you the effect of no option, because ps is simply ignoring
the option it does not understand.


Rob Maxwell

unread,
Jan 27, 2002, 12:07:39 AM1/27/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
news:3c52ea53$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> In article <a2pgs...@enews3.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
> <robu...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> > news:3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...
>
> > > In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
> > > <robu...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > > > ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is tale's
> > > > original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
> > > > (Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he
> > > > left until it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)
>
> Are you sure about those dates, by the way?

The oldest "New Groups Being Created" is dated 19910218. Although, a closer
look at the post reveals that tale reposted it Sep 27 10:46:04 1993
apparently to get the ftp to absorb it from rpi.

>
> The archive's welcome message claims that it reaches from 1989.

>
> > > > ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is the
> > > > current archive run by tale which starts Jan 92
>
> This start date is definitely wrong. The 1991 "New Usenet Groups" and
> "Current Status" postings are at ISC's archive too. And this archive
> has the same welcome message as UUnet's has.

Really, the oldest NUG I saw was 19920106. Anyways, I had just woke-up when
I wrote that after having accidentily deleting my first attempt late last
night whilst closing some windows. :/

>
> > the nan sub-directory contains a (used
> > to be) regular postings about new group adds and removals, sort of a
> > summary of tale's (then) recent control posts. Also, the other
> > messages sub-directory is the home of tale's checkgroups (both Big 8
> > and Big 8/inet). Although, google should have the checkgroups
> > archived they might have missed one whereas news.isc.org would not
> > miss a control/RFD/CFV obviously.
>
> The checkgroups are definitely *not* in either archive. I'm surprised,
> but not shocked.

That surprises me as the FAQ-like ones should be in 'other messages'.


>
> (One thing to note: for most of their history, checkgroups were
> posted, and properly so, to entirely different sets of newsgroups from
> those the more FAQ-like lists went to.)

Well, yes, the checkgroups proper can be "posted" to any group and the
Control: header would automatically re-direct them to control.checkgroups
after the server reacted to them.

No, "Internet Software Consortium" and it is also the home of INN, BIND, and
DHCP as well as tale and the Big 8. http://www.isc.org/

[opps! Hey, I was half asleep.] :) Though, I should have gotten it right as
I am (at the moment) the most recent non-auto-posted poster in n.a.h.

Since Simon Lyall was
> already producing the Config Files FAQ, nobody was terribly interested
> in continuing the other list, although that list was always much
> longer. (Note: I can't find this thread now, so am relying on
> my own untrustworthy memory only.)
>
> > The MLNH also mentions a dead regular posting entitled "Usenet
> > Hierarchies: Config Files FAQ" which did list the heirarchy
> > manager/management contact info and is based on INN's control.ctl
> > file. The UHCF FAQ is which gives a quick overview of what
> > control.ctl is is available here:
> > http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/hierarchies-config/
> >
> > The current, actual control.ctl file is here:
> > ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/control.ctl
>
> You have the sequence of events backwards, far as I know. Simon Lyall
> started posting the Config Files FAQ, and after a while the INN people
> adopted it as the basis for their master control.ctl. (It isn't just
> in the ISC archive, but also is part of what you get if you download
> INN itself.

But, they are not always the same version. The seperate version would be the
most current after Russ updates it at least until the next INN update
includes it. Plus it is easier to download it from the ftp they extract it
from the latest INN package, though I have done both.

Also, The Config Files FAQ implies the control.ctl existed first and Simon
created a unified one for optional use that later rone and now Russ Allbery
maintain, and it was added into INN as the new default control.ctl, thus
saving news admins much time wasted editing the old control.ctl whenever
they added a new hierarchy assuming they could easily find the info they
needed in the pre-Simon days.

This is a significant part of what gives tale the power he
> has; for at least one major server, the *default* is to honour his
> control messages, so you have to be aware of this and take specific
> action if you intend to do anything else. Although the catch in that,
> in turn, is that that default works best if you install PGPverify,
> which apparently many news admins don't. The Big 8's declining
> propagation has much more to do with this kind of thing than with any
> conscious acts by the individual news admins, these days.)

Actually, most consider the massive abuse of alt.* newgroup/rmgroup controls
to have caused many NAs to just throw-up their arms and set the entirety of
control.ctl to drop every thing that comes in especially with hipcrime
newgrouping across many dozens of hierarchies (pgp-verify and not) in one
batch. There are even more that do drop _all_ rmgroups from everybody
including tale and japan.*.

Ahh, they have been less noticed in my travels through Usenet.

-Rob

George William Herbert

unread,
Jan 27, 2002, 3:44:31 AM1/27/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>[...]

>Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
>archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
>that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
>admittedly leaves a wide opening).

Minor comment: there are *huge* gaps in coverage for the mid to
late 1980s. The first account I posted to Usenet from has a
grand total of 3 entries in the Google archive; I used it for
3 years including participation in the Morris worm threads
and a whole lot more than that.

If we're trying to do serious historical research into that
time period, those gaps have to be acknowledged whether Google
is amenable to attempting to fix them piecemeal or not.

>People whose first archived posts
>are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;
>Brad Templeton and Chuq von Rospach are examples, but not the only
>ones. (I've seen Brad Templeton's posts this year in at least two
>hierarchies, in fact.) One reason I chose news.groups for the thread
>was the hope that such veterans would notice it here, but if any have,
>they've not chosen to say anything, which of course is their right. I
>just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration of
>such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me; and of
>course "lists of newsgroups" remain officially on-topic here...
>
>(Detail note: it looks like CvR actually got onto Usenet proper in
>1983 sometime; what's archived from 1981 and 1982 is all in gatewayed
>groups.)

I think Henry Spencer has largely given up on news.groups,
but he hangs out in the space groups still. I think someone
posted that the earliest article identified in the archives
was one of his.


-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com


Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 5:14:20 AM1/28/02
to
(Back to posting from Google... Is there a cancel flood going on
again, or is the problem local to the server I've been using?)

gher...@gw.retro.com (George William Herbert) wrote in message
news:<a30elf$a46$1...@gw.retro.com>...

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> >[...]
> >Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
> >archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
> >that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
> >admittedly leaves a wide opening).
>
> Minor comment: there are *huge* gaps in coverage for the mid to
> late 1980s. The first account I posted to Usenet from has a
> grand total of 3 entries in the Google archive; I used it for
> 3 years including participation in the Morris worm threads
> and a whole lot more than that.
>
> If we're trying to do serious historical research into that
> time period, those gaps have to be acknowledged whether Google
> is amenable to attempting to fix them piecemeal or not.

OK. I knew there were lots of gaps - my own first post is missing,
for example, and I've been finding gaps in my research, some of which
are mentioned in the thread full of results. But I wouldn't have
thought they were *that* severe.

I still maintain that it's very unlikely that tale was posting as
early as some other people who are still around. (Note for any who
didn't know: it's been stated on this newsgroup by people who know
him that "tale" is the only login David Lawrence has ever used, more
or less, which is why the search on "tale" and "Lawrence" struck me as
a legitimate approach.) But I'll concede that he could go back a year
or two - three? - further than what's in the archive.

> >People whose first archived posts
> >are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;

> I think Henry Spencer has largely given up on news.groups,


> but he hangs out in the space groups still. I think someone
> posted that the earliest article identified in the archives
> was one of his.

Um, that someone posted wrong. Mind, the person was smart enough to
figure out independently that Google gets dates wrong, and this is a
Good Thing (they've ignored several e-mails from me about it, so only
public shaming seems likely to get them to do/say anything), but the
oldest article I've seen identified in the archives is by Mark Horton,
as are the next several.

Horton's post

<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=anews.Aucbvax.106&output=gplain>

My attack on net.v7bugs, listing other 1980 posts:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=dbc8daca.0201050328.63590e74%40posting.google.com&output=gplain>

Mark and/or Mary Ann Horton appears not to have posted to Usenet for a
couple of years, and not to news.groups for longer, but I'm not really
sure about this - this person has had several addresses in recent
years.

That said, yes, Henry Spencer is another example of someone who's been
around longer'n tale. And I'm pretty sure I've seen him elsewhere on
news.* relatively recently, though not here.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 5:31:33 AM1/28/02
to
"Rob Maxwell" <robu...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:<a301v...@enews2.newsguy.com>...

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:3c52ea53$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

(and alternating back)

> > > > > ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is tale's
> > > > > original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
> > > > > (Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he
> > > > > left until it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)
> >
> > Are you sure about those dates, by the way?
>
> The oldest "New Groups Being Created" is dated 19910218. Although, a closer
> look at the post reveals that tale reposted it Sep 27 10:46:04 1993
> apparently to get the ftp to absorb it from rpi.

Dates of 1993-1995 are fairly numerous on the older materials in the
archives; they seem to reflect when he got around to doing stuff, not
true dates of the posts. (There are numerous leads showing that the
1991 posts really do date from 1991, not least of which are the
independent archives at Google.)

> > The archive's welcome message claims that it reaches from 1989.

That message is wrong.

I've downloaded the 1989 traffic from nan, from Google, I'll download
the 1990 traffic this week, and I've written tale asking whether he
wants copies. We'll see what happens.

> > The checkgroups are definitely *not* in either archive. I'm surprised,
> > but not shocked.
>
> That surprises me as the FAQ-like ones should be in 'other messages'.

Most of the FAQ-like ones were also posted to news.lists (or
news.lists.misc, for the brief period in which they still existed
after that renaming). tale's news.lists archive takes a completely
different approach from his nan archive, keeping only the most recent
copy of each post, presumably on the grounds that it's the only one
needed and it's Just So Big. My guess would be that he taught the nan
archive to ignore the list-like posts regardless of whether they'd
gone to news.lists or not.

> > (One thing to note: for most of their history, checkgroups were
> > posted, and properly so, to entirely different sets of newsgroups from
> > those the more FAQ-like lists went to.)
>
> Well, yes, the checkgroups proper can be "posted" to any group and the
> Control: header would automatically re-direct them to control.checkgroups
> after the server reacted to them.

Um, the only time the Big 8 or their 3 predecessor hierarchies ever
had checkgroups posted as *control* messages, to the best of my
knowledge, is in mid-1985 when Gene Spafford was first trying the idea
out. He apparently got a bunch of complaints by e-mail, and so when
he started posting checkgroups again, a few months later, he only
posted them as regular posts.

(Google appears not to archive control messages, which forces me to be
somewhat indefinite. But note that by the beginning of 1988 the inet
groups had prompted already the double-posting of checkgroups that has
been mandatory ever since, and that *certainly* cripples any chance of
posting a Big 8 checkgroups as a control message.)

The 1998-2000 checkgroups were definitely not posted as control
messages.

[snipping your elaboration on the history of Simon Lyall's FAQ -
thanks!]

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 5:57:44 AM1/28/02
to
"Rob Maxwell" <robu...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:<a2qva...@enews4.newsguy.com>...

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:3c4a57cc$0$38167$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...
>
> >
> > : If no .ngfile, make one.
> > if test ! -f $NEWSDIR/.ngfile
> > then
> > cat > $NEWSDIR/.ngfile << EOF
> > general
> > NET.general
> > NET.v7bugs
> > NET.news
> > test
>
> This seems to imply that "test" was the first "*.test" newsgroup and
> therefore one of the first four (not three) newsgroups.
>
> -Rob
>
> > to_duke
> > to_$SYSNAME
> > EOF
> > fi

Um, no. Read the rest of the file (down to EOF).

It depends on what you define a "newsgroup" as. In general, I've used
the word to mean "propagated newsgroup" or even "net-wide newsgroup"
here, but that isn't strictly proper.

"general" was the name for the newsgroup everyone at your site should
read. It was not propagated. The person who was posting as "A
Meowbot" over on alt.fan.dejanews seems to know his or her A News, and
says that "general" was the single most active group at most sites
back then. Note the recent posts claiming (falsely) that a post by
Henry Spencer to "general", *before* he was actually on the network,
is the oldest in Google. I would be surprised if the first Usenet
post with a newsgroup named hadn't been to "general", in any event.

"to_duke" and similar things were newsgroups for stuff that the named
site should get, but nobody else. I assume they were meant mainly for
mail, but don't actually know. Mark Horton renamed these to
"to.duke", etc., in B News. I have no idea when this way of handling
two-site stuff went out of style. If the first Usenet post to a
newsgroup *wasn't* to "general", then I'd bet money it went to either
"to_duke" or "to_unc". (Although "test" is also a candidate.)

There are claims in the Usenet.Hist archives that in early news,
uppercase in the group name meant "propagate this group net-wide".
This is why the NET.* - {fa.*,net.*} renaming mattered.

So my contention is that the people who say the earliest three
newsgroups were NET.general, NET.v7bugs, and NET.test are speaking of
"newsgroups" in the same way I am, as widely-propagated newsgroups,
which is the *usual* modern meaning (notice how uncomfortable people
on news.admin.* get when discussing things like the microsoft.public.*
groups), but which certainly isn't the only possible one (again,
microsoft.public.*). And that they're still getting their list wrong.
But that perhaps part of their error results from the early existence
of the *local* newsgroup "test" (as well as the local newsgroups
"general" and "to_"wherever). (The rest of their error - dropping
NET.news - I have no good explanation for.)

By the way, I spent yesterday afternoon ignoring the first-stage work
and even the downloads I need to do before isolating my computer
again, in order to find creation dates for the net.* newsgroups
attested in 1981 and 1982. So far, what I'm finding is that *most* in
fact are provably later than May, 1981. This appears to strengthen
numerous claims I made in this thread - for example, about the list of
NET.* groups in June 1980, the importance of fa.* groups in early
Usenet, the beginnings of namespace controversy and significant
numbers of non-technical groups in the fall of 1981, etc. It also
weakens considerably my claim that the early posted lists were
intentionally exclusive in character. I'll post further details when
I've finished (so far, I've done about a third of this work), or
anyway before I do isolate my computer.

Jay Denebeim

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 10:39:42 AM1/28/02
to
In article <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>That said, yes, Henry Spencer is another example of someone who's been
>around longer'n tale. And I'm pretty sure I've seen him elsewhere on
>news.* relatively recently, though not here.

Another one would be Greg Woodbury. His father was a prof at Duke and
was involved in creating the original connection between Duke and NC
State which is where usenet started. Greg has been posting pretty
much since day one. As far as I know he's the only person left from
that time period, so he's the oldest.

Jay
--
* Jay Denebeim Moderator rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated *
* newsgroup submission address: b5...@deepthot.org *
* moderator contact address: b5mod-...@deepthot.org *
* personal contact address: dene...@deepthot.org *

Jay Denebeim

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 10:58:24 AM1/28/02
to
In article <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>"to_duke" and similar things were newsgroups for stuff that the named
>site should get, but nobody else. I assume they were meant mainly
>for mail, but don't actually know.

Definately not mail. Mail packets in UUCP were totally different than
news packets. I never used them, however I believe they were used for
something like the IHAVE/SENDME protocol used today. See, the way
things normally worked is every time a site was batching news for
another site it would take all the articles that other site wanted
that did not have the other site on the path.

That works fine as long as there is exactly one path between any two
sites on the network. This, obviously doesn't work for very long.
What happened then is you'd get redundant posts, posts you already
have would show up.

I don't know the mechanism for the to_*, however some way the sending
site would give a list of message id's it was proposing to send. The
receiving site would get that message and send one back saying which
ones it actually wanted. (You'd have a to_duke *and* a to_unc on both
sites for this) Then the sending site would only batch up the ones
that the receiving site really wanted.

Back in the UUCP days, I was pretty much a leaf node, and when I
wasn't I still only had one site towards the net, so this was never an
issue.

Thomas Galloway

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 3:30:32 PM1/28/02
to
In article <a33rbu$698$1...@dent.deepthot.org>,

Jay Denebeim <dene...@deepthot.org> wrote:
>In article <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>,
>Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>>That said, yes, Henry Spencer is another example of someone who's been
>>around longer'n tale. And I'm pretty sure I've seen him elsewhere on
>>news.* relatively recently, though not here.
>Another one would be Greg Woodbury. His father was a prof at Duke and
>was involved in creating the original connection between Duke and NC
>State which is where usenet started. Greg has been posting pretty
>much since day one. As far as I know he's the only person left from
>that time period, so he's the oldest.

Well, first off, the original connection was between Duke and UNC-Chapel
Hill, not NC State. Come to think of it, I'm not sure when State even
made it onto Usenet; I'm sure they weren't the third site (I believe
that was TUCC, the Research Triangle University Computer Coalition or
somesuch, which was tied into all three of Duke, UNC, and State, but
I certainly don't recall State being particularly active on Usenet at
the beginning.

And as for old-timers, well, I was an undergrad CS major at UNC-CH when
Usenet started (and had even known Tom Truscott at Duke for a while
pre-Usenet, as I was an active chess tournament director and pre-Usenet
Tom was known for the DUCHESS computer chess program) and my first posts
also predate the Google archive starting point. My guestimate is that
if Usenet had registration numbers, mine would have two digits and likely
be in the lower half of that range.

Side anecdote: A few years ago, I got in an email flame war with Joel Furr.
He concluded one message with an attempt to impress me due to his "posting
from an account at Duke, where Usenet started". My reply was that I'd
probably be a lot more impressed by that if I hadn't have had an account
at UNC-CH, the other site where Usenet started, *when Usenet actually
started, rather than 15 years later*.

tyg t...@panix.com

George William Herbert

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 5:44:29 PM1/28/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>> >[...]
>> >Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
>> >archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
>> >that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
>> >admittedly leaves a wide opening).
>>
>> Minor comment: there are *huge* gaps in coverage for the mid to
>> late 1980s. The first account I posted to Usenet from has a
>> grand total of 3 entries in the Google archive; I used it for
>> 3 years including participation in the Morris worm threads
>> and a whole lot more than that.
>>
>> If we're trying to do serious historical research into that
>> time period, those gaps have to be acknowledged whether Google
>> is amenable to attempting to fix them piecemeal or not.
>
>OK. I knew there were lots of gaps - my own first post is missing,
>for example, and I've been finding gaps in my research, some of which
>are mentioned in the thread full of results. But I wouldn't have
>thought they were *that* severe.

I think they are that severe, for at least the 1987-89 timeframe.
I don't personally know about before that, and after that seems to
be relatively solid...

I started in 87, so I'm particularly annoyed about the gaps
around then, particularly as the echos of the Great Renaming
were reverberating and we don't seem to have a good archive
of the various issues that raised.

>I still maintain that it's very unlikely that tale was posting as
>early as some other people who are still around. (Note for any who
>didn't know: it's been stated on this newsgroup by people who know
>him that "tale" is the only login David Lawrence has ever used, more
>or less, which is why the search on "tale" and "Lawrence" struck me as
>a legitimate approach.) But I'll concede that he could go back a year
>or two - three? - further than what's in the archive.

On this specific point of how far back Tale goes,
I have no better information. I just wouldn't conclude
anything from just the Google archives of that period...


-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com

Jay Denebeim

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 5:32:30 PM1/28/02
to
In article <a34cd8$7m7$1...@panix3.panix.com>,
Thomas Galloway <t...@panix.com> wrote:

>Well, first off, the original connection was between Duke and UNC-Chapel
>Hill, not NC State.

Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. My brain first called up 'NCSU' and I
said to myself, duh, it's not state, it was CH, so I typed North
Carolina State University... Don't ask me why.

>Come to think of it, I'm not sure when State even made it onto
>Usenet; I'm sure they weren't the third site (I believe that was
>TUCC, the Research Triangle University Computer Coalition or
>somesuch, which was tied into all three of Duke, UNC, and State, but
>I certainly don't recall State being particularly active on Usenet at
>the beginning.

It was way before my time, but IIRC TUCC postdated usenet. When TUCC
came on line it had usenet on it. I think... Presumably state went
on when TUCC started. One of my feeds is state, I could ask my
contact there if anyone cares.

Thomas Galloway

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 5:55:43 PM1/28/02
to
In article <a34k8d$nlr$1...@gw.retro.com>,

George William Herbert <gher...@gw.retro.com> wrote:
>I think they are that severe, for at least the 1987-89 timeframe.
>I don't personally know about before that, and after that seems to be
>relatively solid...

Different archives. This came up over in rec.arts.comics.misc (which has
a surprisingly large number of old-timers), and Henry Spencer posted
as to how his UToronto archive seemed to be the one Google used for the
mid-to-late 80s. He went on to explain how it was incomplete; as volume
and storage costs (both media and sheer physical space) went up, they
started focusing their archive on technical groups rather than discussion
ones. Which, as he'll say, in retrospect was probably the wrong decision.
There's now a very good archive of posts about, say, obscure problems with
the Amiga, but a really bad archive of posts about social and cultural
issues. And the latter is more interesting from a general historical view.

tyg t...@panix.com

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 6:28:59 PM1/28/02
to
This is at least my fourth attempt to post this post - don't get me
started about Netscape right now - so I apologise if it comes off as
hastily written. I've been researching it most of the afternoon.

In article <a33rbu$698$1...@dent.deepthot.org>, dene...@deepthot.org (Jay
Denebeim) wrote:

> Another one would be Greg Woodbury. His father was a prof at Duke
> and was involved in creating the original connection between Duke and
> NC State which is where usenet started. Greg has been posting pretty
> much since day one.

[NC State - > UNC-Chapel Hill correction already made. Um, Tom Galloway,
do *you* happen to remember anything, or have any documents, regarding
newsgroups existing before November, 1981? Pretty please?]

Thanks for the info about Greg Woodbury.

However,

> As far as I know he's the only person left from that time period, so
> he's the oldest.

he certainly isn't. Besides Tom Galloway's entirely credible claim,
see please

<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a14q3p%24d2r%241%40hal.cs.duke.edu&output=gplain>

and note the NNTP-Posting-Host header; although that newsgroup has in
its history been a mailing list gateway, and for all I know for certain
still could be, this particular post was originated in Usenet.

Upon finding this I was heartened to go cyber-stalking the other Famous
Founders, but the results were not as encouraging.

Steve Bellovin posted reasonably often until December 1996, it appears.
Since then, with one dubious exception in March 2000, all of his posts
archived at Google appear to have originated from mailing list
gateways.

Jim Ellis, as piranha posted here last year, is dead. His name is also
that of at least two other fairly prolific posters, and in relatively
cursory efforts, I was unable to find anything provably by him at
Google. He does have at least two posts in the small 1980 archive I
posted in the "Early Lists" post.

Stephen Daniel, whose name is quite common, has been the hardest to
track down. I *think* but am not sure that he's a Stephen W. Daniel
(strictly because an "swd" at Duke is present in the 1980 archive).
The most recent post I'm confident is by him is from 1992, and to
misc.jobs.offered, and I'm not confident of many posts prior to that
either, at Google. (The 1992 post uses no middle initial.) The person
who is credited with originating the "dotted newsgroup structure"
doesn't *seem* to have used that structure much.

Of these four men, only Steve Bellovin appears to have a Web page. (I
actually searched Duke's site for "Truscott", without success.)

A Less Famous Founder, Dennis Rockwell, may or may not be the same
Dennis Rockwell as has a posting history at Google. I'm fairly certain
all posts by "Dennis Rockwell" at Google are this person's work; all
the addresses make sense as a series, and most of them have posted
about railroads and about computer-related stuff, both. This Dennis
Rockwell's oldest preserved post dates to 1984 (from a mailing list
gateway), and his last post outside mailing list gateways to 1998; he
was very prolific 1993-1998. He apparently works now, and worked in
1984, at BBN. He has a Web page, which appears to be long-neglected,
and which includes a bookmarks page that gives no hint of any
particular interest in Usenet.

I haven't done anything similar with respect to Matt Glickman, Gene
Spafford, Lauren Weinstein, Adam Buchsbaum, or other non-founding
Famous People. I did have to cyber-stalk Mark Horton in order to write
to, as it turns out, Mary Ann Horton to ask about the status of
news.announce.important; this person has a Web page, which like
Bellovin's takes some credit for Usenet, but seems not to have posted
since 1999.

I've been resisting the temptation to write to these people about this
project, on the grounds that if they were interested they could find
out about it, and after all they must all be rather sick of people
asking them about Usenet. But finding that Tom Truscott is actually
*still posting* certainly increases the temptation. (I did, in any
event, write to Mary Ann Horton, and mention this project as my reason
for doing so, so one at least of them does know.)

In any event, I'll throw in here some other stuff I've found lately.

The 20th birthday of news.groups, at least in its former incarnation as
net.news.group, was two weeks ago tomorrow. I'm sure everyone already
knew that and was just reluctant to wish the group a *happy* birthday,
or maybe it just slipped everyone's mind (as it did mine, I'll
confess). But maybe everyone *didn't* already know that the original
proposal for the group was made by Jerry Schwarz, more famous as the
author of the original netiquette and FAQ document; he made it twice,
in fact, in December 1981 (as net.names) and then two days before the
creation (as net.news.groups). Maybe the netiquette and FAQ ideas were
his attempt to balance his karma. At any rate, it's now official: we
can no longer make excuses for news.groups on the grounds that it's a
teenager, because it no longer is.

(In contrast, news.announce.newgroups dates to August 8, 1989, which
means it will *become* a teenager later this year, and quite frankly,
I'm *hoping* for some raging hormones in *that* group.)

Tom Truscott's post cited above was a followup to a post by Greg Woods,
the first moderator of news.announce.newgroups (who didn't last long
at *all*).

Keith Lynch says he's kept every e-mail he ever got, since getting onto
the ARPAnet in ?1977, and he was an early subscriber to several of the
major mailing lists. He wrote a timeline based on his archives, which
is at

<http://keithlynch.net/timeline.html>

and which asserts that the first ! in an address in his archives was in
September 1980. This strongly suggests a date in that general
neighbourhood for the first gateways, although that seems awfully late
(given that Mark Horton was already on Usenet in May of that year).
Maybe that's just when people started successfully *posting* to the
ARPAnet lists from Usenet? Another interesting claim in that timeline
is that moderation dates only to February 1980 even on the ARPAnet
(SF-LOVERS being the first moderated list, ironically enough).

All for now.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com

http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/

Thomas Galloway

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 8:43:28 PM1/28/02
to
In article <3c55ded5$0$95684$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>[NC State - > UNC-Chapel Hill correction already made. Um, Tom Galloway,
>do *you* happen to remember anything, or have any documents, regarding
>newsgroups existing before November, 1981? Pretty please?]

'Fraid not. Didn't realize at the time something this significant was
happening, and I wasn't directly involved with it any more than any other
random grad student/senior CS major at the time.

>Of these four men, only Steve Bellovin appears to have a Web page. (I
>actually searched Duke's site for "Truscott", without success.)

Note that the organization line in the post you referenced was "SAS Institute".
Doing a search there doesn't come up with anything directly related to Tom,
but he is listed in the acknowledgements of a paper along with others at
SAS Institute who helped out. So I'd guess he's at SAS as a matter of course,
but not surprisingly still has an account/access at Duke (particularly since
SAS is in the Research Triangle area along with Duke).

tyg t...@panix.com

A Meowbot

unread,
Jan 28, 2002, 11:37:36 PM1/28/02
to
j...@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein) wrote:

> "general" was the name for the newsgroup everyone at your site should
> read. It was not propagated. The person who was posting as "A
> Meowbot" over on alt.fan.dejanews seems to know his or her A News,

Only in the sense that I'm using it today (not for Usenet, of course).
It still makes a really nice distributed, archived MOTD server.

> and says that "general" was the single most active group at most
> sites back then.

To clarify, general is where A News posts stuff if you don't specify
newsgroups. I think this was one really good idea that should never
have been dropped, having something local as the default. Not having
such a thing is much of the reason we see lots of weird random junk in
news.groups, and propagated defaults lead to the types of messes that
prompted news.newusers.questions to go moderated.

> "to_duke" and similar things were newsgroups for stuff that the named
> site should get, but nobody else. I assume they were meant mainly for
> mail, but don't actually know.

The to.* groups are still used. Yes, their job is to send new to a
specific site, generally for administrative things. The most common
usage is to direct ihave/sendme control messages, though almost nobody
really uses those any more.

> Mark Horton renamed these to "to.duke", etc., in B News. I have no
> idea when this way of handling two-site stuff went out of style.

NNTP has its own ihave/sendme dance built in, so the control messages
are no longer required.

> If the first Usenet post to a
> newsgroup *wasn't* to "general", then I'd bet money it went to either
> "to_duke" or "to_unc". (Although "test" is also a candidate.)
>
> There are claims in the Usenet.Hist archives that in early news,
> uppercase in the group name meant "propagate this group net-wide".
> This is why the NET.* - {fa.*,net.*} renaming mattered.

I can't find anything in the software that enforces this, so that
leaves the uppercasing of propagated groups as strictly an early
convention. There is a .sys file (much like newsfeeds in INN) that
controls this stuff, and it doesn't much care.

Why the lowercasing would be a big deal is that newsgroup names are
case sensitive. From the software's point of view, NET.meow and
net.meow are different groups, so both have to be in .ngfile (active)
to catch all the traffic.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 12:41:21 PM1/26/02
to
In article <a2pgs...@enews3.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
<robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> > In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
> > <robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> > > ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is tale's
> > > original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
> > > (Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he
> > > left until it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)

Are you sure about those dates, by the way?

The archive's welcome message claims that it reaches from 1989.

> > > ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is the


> > > current archive run by tale which starts Jan 92

This start date is definitely wrong. The 1991 "New Usenet Groups" and


"Current Status" postings are at ISC's archive too. And this archive
has the same welcome message as UUnet's has.

> the nan sub-directory contains a (used


> to be) regular postings about new group adds and removals, sort of a
> summary of tale's (then) recent control posts. Also, the other
> messages sub-directory is the home of tale's checkgroups (both Big 8
> and Big 8/inet). Although, google should have the checkgroups
> archived they might have missed one whereas news.isc.org would not
> miss a control/RFD/CFV obviously.

The checkgroups are definitely *not* in either archive. I'm surprised,
but not shocked.

(One thing to note: for most of their history, checkgroups were


posted, and properly so, to entirely different sets of newsgroups from
those the more FAQ-like lists went to.)

news.lists was archived at uu.net (until June 2001) but only with the

yes? is that archive reachable by UUCP?)

> For the far off future, tale has a document that discusses
> dead/private heirarchies that maybe be of interest when (if?) decide
> to expand outside of the Big 8:
>
> ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/HIERARCHY-NOTES

Since I've downloaded the complete (archived) run of the "Alternative


Newsgroup Hierarchies" postings, that expansion is an ever-present
temptation, but I'm holding it at bay by reminding myself that that
list's picture of alt.* had, by the time I returned to Usenet, very
little resemblance to reality.

Most of the national and linguistic hierarchies never appeared in that
posting, by the way, although for some bizarre reason relcom.* did. I
remember fj.* existing as early as 1985, for example (although
obviously I never read it). (Google has nothing in fj.* before -
untrustworthy presentation-date here - June 11, 1987, and doesn't seem
to have archives of it itself, as opposed to cross-posts, before
January 1, 1992.) And we have learnt recently that dk.* existed by
1983, while Toronto had a full suite of local-to-national hierarchies
by 1984.

> Also, of note, is Lewis S. Eisen 's "Master List of Newsgroup
> Hierarchies" would be helpful to trackdown the various heirarchies,
> although it appears regular maintenance has stopped as of March 19,
> 2001. Anyhoo, it can be found in news.admin.hierarchy on google or at
> it's home website: http://www.magma.ca/~leisen/mlnh/

Lewis Eisen announced he was discontinuing it, as I recall, in
news.admin.hierarchies (note group name). Since Simon Lyall was


already producing the Config Files FAQ, nobody was terribly interested
in continuing the other list, although that list was always much
longer. (Note: I can't find this thread now, so am relying on
my own untrustworthy memory only.)

> The MLNH also mentions a dead regular posting entitled "Usenet
> Hierarchies: Config Files FAQ" which did list the heirarchy
> manager/management contact info and is based on INN's control.ctl
> file. The UHCF FAQ is which gives a quick overview of what
> control.ctl is is available here:
> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/hierarchies-config/
>
> The current, actual control.ctl file is here:
> ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/control.ctl

You have the sequence of events backwards, far as I know. Simon Lyall


started posting the Config Files FAQ, and after a while the INN people
adopted it as the basis for their master control.ctl. (It isn't just
in the ISC archive, but also is part of what you get if you download

INN itself. This is a significant part of what gives tale the power he


has; for at least one major server, the *default* is to honour his
control messages, so you have to be aware of this and take specific
action if you intend to do anything else. Although the catch in that,
in turn, is that that default works best if you install PGPverify,
which apparently many news admins don't. The Big 8's declining
propagation has much more to do with this kind of thing than with any
conscious acts by the individual news admins, these days.)

> > (Meanwhile, I've yet to see any comments on the thread the


> > information is actually in. Did that thread actually propagate
> > anywhere other than the server I'm posting from and Google? Were
> > my posts so perfect or so execrable that nobody dares say anything?
> > Or just so boring that nobody's read any of them?)
>
> It is out there and somewhat interesting but, it is kind of difficult
> to discuss this without doing the same hard work you have done and it
> seems that everyone from that era (who could correct any information)
> is gone. As far as I know, tale is the longest user of Usenet.

I thank the people who've replied to this paragraph. May I note,


however, one thing? Part of the reason I did the hierarchy summaries
at *all* was to make it possible for people who had read particular
groups back then to chime in with comments on those groups. Please
keep this in mind for when the summaries for the Big 8 groups appear,
since there are certainly many people in news.groups who remember 1990,
for example.

Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find


archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which

admittedly leaves a wide opening). People whose first archived posts


are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;

Brad Templeton and Chuq von Rospach are examples, but not the only
ones. (I've seen Brad Templeton's posts this year in at least two
hierarchies, in fact.) One reason I chose news.groups for the thread
was the hope that such veterans would notice it here, but if any have,
they've not chosen to say anything, which of course is their right. I
just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration of
such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me; and of
course "lists of newsgroups" remain officially on-topic here...

(Detail note: it looks like CvR actually got onto Usenet proper in
1983 sometime; what's archived from 1981 and 1982 is all in gatewayed
groups.)

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/

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This message was cancelled from within The Unacanceller's glorious new software, Lotus 1-2-3 For Rogue Cancellers.

Rob Maxwell

unread,
Jan 27, 2002, 12:07:39 AM1/27/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
news:3c52ea53$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> In article <a2pgs...@enews3.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
> <robu...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> > news:3c4f82a4$0$95682$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...
>
> > > In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
> > > <robu...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > > > ftp.uu.net/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is tale's
> > > > original archive that runs from Feb 91 through June 01.
> > > > (Apparently his programming of the ftp continued to run after he
> > > > left until it was either stopped by someone or it broke.)
>
> Are you sure about those dates, by the way?

The oldest "New Groups Being Created" is dated 19910218. Although, a closer


look at the post reveals that tale reposted it Sep 27 10:46:04 1993
apparently to get the ftp to absorb it from rpi.

>


> The archive's welcome message claims that it reaches from 1989.

>
> > > > ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups This is the
> > > > current archive run by tale which starts Jan 92
>
> This start date is definitely wrong. The 1991 "New Usenet Groups" and
> "Current Status" postings are at ISC's archive too. And this archive
> has the same welcome message as UUnet's has.

Really, the oldest NUG I saw was 19920106. Anyways, I had just woke-up when


I wrote that after having accidentily deleting my first attempt late last
night whilst closing some windows. :/

>


> > the nan sub-directory contains a (used
> > to be) regular postings about new group adds and removals, sort of a
> > summary of tale's (then) recent control posts. Also, the other
> > messages sub-directory is the home of tale's checkgroups (both Big 8
> > and Big 8/inet). Although, google should have the checkgroups
> > archived they might have missed one whereas news.isc.org would not
> > miss a control/RFD/CFV obviously.
>
> The checkgroups are definitely *not* in either archive. I'm surprised,
> but not shocked.

That surprises me as the FAQ-like ones should be in 'other messages'.
>


> (One thing to note: for most of their history, checkgroups were
> posted, and properly so, to entirely different sets of newsgroups from
> those the more FAQ-like lists went to.)

Well, yes, the checkgroups proper can be "posted" to any group and the


Control: header would automatically re-direct them to control.checkgroups
after the server reacted to them.
>

No, "Internet Software Consortium" and it is also the home of INN, BIND, and


DHCP as well as tale and the Big 8. http://www.isc.org/

is that archive reachable by UUCP?)

[opps! Hey, I was half asleep.] :) Though, I should have gotten it right as


I am (at the moment) the most recent non-auto-posted poster in n.a.h.

Since Simon Lyall was


> already producing the Config Files FAQ, nobody was terribly interested
> in continuing the other list, although that list was always much
> longer. (Note: I can't find this thread now, so am relying on
> my own untrustworthy memory only.)
>
> > The MLNH also mentions a dead regular posting entitled "Usenet
> > Hierarchies: Config Files FAQ" which did list the heirarchy
> > manager/management contact info and is based on INN's control.ctl
> > file. The UHCF FAQ is which gives a quick overview of what
> > control.ctl is is available here:
> > http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/hierarchies-config/
> >
> > The current, actual control.ctl file is here:
> > ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/control.ctl
>
> You have the sequence of events backwards, far as I know. Simon Lyall
> started posting the Config Files FAQ, and after a while the INN people
> adopted it as the basis for their master control.ctl. (It isn't just
> in the ISC archive, but also is part of what you get if you download
> INN itself.

But, they are not always the same version. The seperate version would be the


most current after Russ updates it at least until the next INN update
includes it. Plus it is easier to download it from the ftp they extract it
from the latest INN package, though I have done both.

Also, The Config Files FAQ implies the control.ctl existed first and Simon
created a unified one for optional use that later rone and now Russ Allbery
maintain, and it was added into INN as the new default control.ctl, thus
saving news admins much time wasted editing the old control.ctl whenever
they added a new hierarchy assuming they could easily find the info they
needed in the pre-Simon days.

This is a significant part of what gives tale the power he


> has; for at least one major server, the *default* is to honour his
> control messages, so you have to be aware of this and take specific
> action if you intend to do anything else. Although the catch in that,
> in turn, is that that default works best if you install PGPverify,
> which apparently many news admins don't. The Big 8's declining
> propagation has much more to do with this kind of thing than with any
> conscious acts by the individual news admins, these days.)

Actually, most consider the massive abuse of alt.* newgroup/rmgroup controls


to have caused many NAs to just throw-up their arms and set the entirety of
control.ctl to drop every thing that comes in especially with hipcrime
newgrouping across many dozens of hierarchies (pgp-verify and not) in one
batch. There are even more that do drop _all_ rmgroups from everybody
including tale and japan.*.

>

Ahh, they have been less noticed in my travels through Usenet.

-Rob

>


> Joe Bernstein
>
> --
> Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
> http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/

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Hugh Watkins

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 12:26:36 AM1/26/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote

snipo

> (Meanwhile, I've yet to see any comments on the thread the information


> is actually in. Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other
> than the server I'm posting from and Google? Were my posts so perfect
> or so execrable that nobody dares say anything? Or just so boring
> that nobody's read any of them?)

Oh Joe

thanks

Hugh W

In article <a2gfl...@enews4.newsguy.com>, "Rob Maxwell"
<robu...@excite.com> wrote:

> "Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in message

> news:3c4a31e3$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net...

> > This post is primarily meant to ensure that
> > people who want to select or kill the entire thread can easily do so.

snip

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Hugh Watkins

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 11:23:20 PM1/26/02
to

"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote

snip

>


> Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
> archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
> that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
> admittedly leaves a wide opening). People whose first archived posts
> are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;
> Brad Templeton and Chuq von Rospach are examples, but not the only
> ones. (I've seen Brad Templeton's posts this year in at least two
> hierarchies, in fact.)

snip

Hugh W

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22ken+perlow%22

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=%22ken+perlow%22&num=100&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wg

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=author:ken+author:perlow&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&start=200&sa=N

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=Jul+author:ken+author:perlow&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&filter=0

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=danmark&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1
&as_maxy=1984&filter=0

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=bnews.cbosgd.2914&output=gplain

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=delft&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1&a
s_maxy=1984&filter=0

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?as_ugroup=net.usenix&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1983
&num=100&hl=en

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=anews.Aharpo.379&output=gplain


and games

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=redman&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=1&
as_maxy=1982&filter=0

brian redman

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=anews.Aucbvax.1347&output=gplain

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=is&num=100&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=26&as_maxm=5&as_maxy=1981&f
ilter=0


oldest this time

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George William Herbert

unread,
Jan 27, 2002, 3:44:31 AM1/27/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>[...]
>Anyway, tale is not the longest-standing user of Usenet. I find
>archived posts by tale dating to February 14, 1988, and nothing older
>that's by him and has "tale" and "Lawrence" both in the post (which
>admittedly leaves a wide opening).

Minor comment: there are *huge* gaps in coverage for the mid to


late 1980s. The first account I posted to Usenet from has a
grand total of 3 entries in the Google archive; I used it for
3 years including participation in the Morris worm threads
and a whole lot more than that.

If we're trying to do serious historical research into that
time period, those gaps have to be acknowledged whether Google
is amenable to attempting to fix them piecemeal or not.

>People whose first archived posts


>are in 1981 or 1982 have posted to news.groups within recent memory;
>Brad Templeton and Chuq von Rospach are examples, but not the only
>ones. (I've seen Brad Templeton's posts this year in at least two
>hierarchies, in fact.) One reason I chose news.groups for the thread
>was the hope that such veterans would notice it here, but if any have,
>they've not chosen to say anything, which of course is their right. I
>just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration of
>such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me; and of
>course "lists of newsgroups" remain officially on-topic here...
>
>(Detail note: it looks like CvR actually got onto Usenet proper in
>1983 sometime; what's archived from 1981 and 1982 is all in gatewayed
>groups.)

I think Henry Spencer has largely given up on news.groups,


but he hangs out in the space groups still. I think someone
posted that the earliest article identified in the archives
was one of his.


-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com

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Bruce Baugh

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 2:29:05 PM1/26/02
to
In article <3c52ea53$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> I just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration
> of such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me; and
> of course "lists of newsgroups" remain officially on-topic here...

Shots in the dark:

alt.folklore.computers
alt.sysadmin.recovery
rec.arts.sf.*

--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
I am what I know / A glacier made from layers of history's snow / And
what I know is what I see / In dreaming and reality / On and on this
cycle goes / Wretchedness and beauty juxtaposed - Jeff Johnson,
"Chambord"

========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======:
From: Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net>
Control: cancel <bruce-baugh-2643...@enews.newsguy.com>
Subject: cmsg cancel <bruce-baugh-2643...@enews.newsguy.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 00:45:07 GMT
Message-ID: <cancel.bruce-baugh-2...@enews.newsguy.com>


X-No-Archive: yes
Newsgroups: microsoft.test,alt.flame.niggers,news.groups
NNTP-Posting-Host: commflt.fastlanetrans.com 64.3.87.88
Lines: 1

Path: news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.fh-hannover.de!fu-berlin.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.gamma.ru!Gamma.RU!newsfeed.simtel.ru!Simtel.RU!out.nntp.be!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!sjc-feed.news.verio.net!sea-feed.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!msrnewsc1!cppssbbsa01.microsoft.com!tkmsftngp01!tkmsftngp02!u&n&a&c&anceller
Xref: news.uni-stuttgart.de control:40725179

Philip Newton

unread,
Jan 26, 2002, 5:28:19 AM1/26/02
to
On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 21:42:10 -0600, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
wrote:

> Did that thread actually propagate anywhere other than the


> server I'm posting from and Google?

It got to news.cis.dfn.de:

> Path: uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!priapus.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!puce.readfreenews.net!news.readfreenews.net!208.42.156.33.MISMATCH!authen.puce.readfreenews.net.POSTED!not-for-mail

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <nospam...@gmx.li>
That really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======:
From: Philip Newton <pne-news...@newton.digitalspace.net>
Control: cancel <rj055uof88kpnr6o2...@4ax.com>
Subject: cmsg cancel <rj055uof88kpnr6o2...@4ax.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 23:58:10 GMT
Message-ID: <cancel.rj055uof88kpn...@4ax.com>


X-No-Archive: yes
Newsgroups: microsoft.test,alt.flame.niggers,news.groups
NNTP-Posting-Host: commflt.fastlanetrans.com 64.3.87.88
Lines: 1

Path: news.uni-stuttgart.de!cert.uni-stuttgart.de!news.belwue.de!news.uni-ulm.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!blackbush.xlink.net!blackbush.de.kpnqwest.net!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!hub1.nntpserver.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!out.nntp.be!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!sjc-feed.news.verio.net!sea-feed.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!msrnewsc1!cppssbbsa01.microsoft.com!tkmsftngp01!tkmsftngp02!u&n&a&c&anceller
Xref: news.uni-stuttgart.de control:40725922

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 29, 2002, 2:32:03 PM1/29/02
to
Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote in message
news:<bruce-baugh-2643...@enews.newsguy.com>...

> In article <3c52ea53$0$95685$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

[re people who were reading Usenet by 1986 - note this is not the same
topic as later in the thread which deals with by 1981...]

> > I just don't know of any other group with a *higher* concentration
> > of such people, outside net.* or some such place closed to me;

> Shots in the dark:
>
> alt.folklore.computers

Possible. I wouldn't know.

> alt.sysadmin.recovery

I would've expected this, but not from what I can see now. There are
a number of regular posters currently there whom I recognise from
news.groups as of when I first came here, but *none* whose names I
recognise from scanning the 1981-82 archives, and very few for whom I
know of *any* evidence that they were on before the Great Renaming
(not, mind, that I went and researched every single poster!). I
didn't even see most of the names I'd've expected from the last time I
visited, maybe two years ago. Surprise.

> rec.arts.sf.*

Definitely.

I would guess that fair chunks of comp.* and rec.* also have a
concentration. (Larry Wall, after all, still posts, doesn't he? And
certainly not here. See also my post further on in the thread about
Famous Founders.) Offhand, comp.lang.*, comp.protocols.*,
rec.arts.sf.* and rec.arts.comics.*, and for some bizarre reason
rec.railroad seems to have more than its share of veterans.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer amazed to be signing such a frivolous post
and disappointed to have to post it from Google on the day I
finally got Pnews acting as I wanted - curses on rogue cancellers!
j...@sfbooks.com http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/

Jay Denebeim

unread,
Jan 29, 2002, 3:06:12 PM1/29/02
to
In article <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>for some bizarre reason rec.railroad seems to have more than its
>share of veterans.

Why bizarre? Railroads (and model railroads) are *very* geeky.

Aahz Maruch

unread,
Jan 29, 2002, 7:00:56 PM1/29/02
to
In article <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>,

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>I would guess that fair chunks of comp.* and rec.* also have a
>concentration. (Larry Wall, after all, still posts, doesn't he? And
>certainly not here. See also my post further on in the thread about
>Famous Founders.) Offhand, comp.lang.*, comp.protocols.*,
>rec.arts.sf.* and rec.arts.comics.*, and for some bizarre reason
>rec.railroad seems to have more than its share of veterans.

That's because rec.railroad is a bogus newsgroup that's kept alive *by*
veterans who refused to accept the vote result for misc.transport.rail.
It's a sentiment that I would normally disapprove of, but m.t.r was
another vote that was, er, railroaded through in the era of
.misc-ification.

If I were into railroads, I might well encourage my ISP to newgroup it
here, despite the fact that it's normally a Big-8 strict constructionist.
--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2002 by aa...@pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista

"Every flame is sacred, every flame is great." --Orc

Keith F. Lynch

unread,
Jan 29, 2002, 10:59:07 PM1/29/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> This is at least my fourth attempt to post this post - don't get me
> started about Netscape right now - so I apologise if it comes off as
> hastily written.

You don't have any way of saving it if it doesn't post? You have to
re-write it every time you try posting?

> I haven't done anything similar with respect to Matt Glickman, Gene
> Spafford, Lauren Weinstein, Adam Buchsbaum, or other non-founding
> Famous People.

Are you only interested in Usenet? I have ARPAnet email from Lauren
dating back to September 1979, and newsgroup postings from his as recently
as last October. See http://users.exis.net/~jnc/humor/lauren.digest,
which was written in 1980, and purports to have been written by Lauren
in 1988. It gives a fascinating snapshot of how people 22 years ago
viewed the future of the net.

The earliest message from me in the Google newsgroup archives is in
1982. But I wasn't even aware of Usenet at the time, nor was I on it
until perhaps 1987. Like many of the early messages, it was relayed
from an ARPAnet/Internet email list.

> Keith Lynch says he's kept every e-mail he ever got, since getting onto
> the ARPAnet in ?1977, and he was an early subscriber to several of the
> major mailing lists. He wrote a timeline based on his archives, which
> is at <http://keithlynch.net/timeline.html>

Thanks for the plug. Actually, I've been saving email for even longer
than that. I was using email 28 years ago, though not on any network.

> and which asserts that the first ! in an address in his archives was
> in September 1980.

Right. From menlo70!daul, relayed off Berkeley at 21:09:46-PDT on
Wednesday, September 10th.

> Another interesting claim in that timeline is that moderation dates
> only to February 1980 even on the ARPAnet (SF-LOVERS being the first
> moderated list, ironically enough).

I should have said January, simultaneous with digestification. In
fact, it was a side effect of digestification, since there were not
yet any automated digestifying tools. And it was SF-LOVERS and
HUMAN-NETS both. As to why, see the appended message.

Once again I renew my request for pre-1981 HUMAN-NETS archives.
Surely I don't have the only ones? Thanks.

Here's the message announcing the "temporary" digestification of
SF-LOVERS (which is still running, and still digestified, over 22
years later). Also note the mention of the 1990s.

Date: 14 JAN 1980 0451-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Here I am, and here I remain
To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, sf-lovers-dm at MIT-DMS
To: sf-lovers-ml at MIT-ML, sf-lovers-mc at MIT-MC

Gentlebeings,

SF-LOVERS has exhibited a phenomenal growth in both the number of
subscribers and the volume of mail handled since it began in September.
The number of subscribers has more than doubled to a current total of
215. The rate of submission has increased more than 6 fold reaching an
average of 7 msgs per day. Submission rates of more than 15 msgs per
day were achieved on 3 October, 9 December, 7 January, 8 January, and
10 January. The volume of mail (ie. size) handled has tripled. During
each peak, requests were made to reduce the amount of mail. They were
not heeded sufficiently.
On 10 January mail to SF-LOVERS and HUMAN-NETS (another ARPAnet
wide mailing list similar to SF-LOVERS) brought MIT-AI to a virtual
stand still. No free storage was available. As soon as some storage was
freed the COMSAT would immediately claim it in attempting to empty its
queues. The major problem was that MIT-AI was not able to redistribute
to sites outside MIT quickly enough. A number of messages to SF-LOVERS
and other lists were lost. On the evening of 10 January I took 3 steps
in an attempt to solve the problem: temporarily shut down HUMAN-NETS,
reallocate the task of redistributing mail to sites outside MIT, and
request a decrease in the amount of mail submitted. On 11 January the
first two LONG messages sent to SF-LOVERS severely overloaded MIT-MC.
As a result the next 4 messages were not transmitted to recipients at
MIT-MC, Xerox PARC, Stanford University, and SRI. Some mail unrelated
to SF-LOVERS was also lost, more time was wasted in circumventing the
mess, and more people were irritated. Ironically enough these messages
all dealt with ways of reducing the mail volume not SF.
As a consequence of these problems SF-LOVERS is on the brink of
being shut down along with any other experiments with ARPAnet wide
mailing lists. However, to solve these problems in a way that will
both guarantee safety and allow these lists to grow will take time,
coordination, and careful consideration. In order to buy the necessary
time and preserve SF-LOVERS I have chosen to temporarily impose drastic
measures to insure that there are no further problems. As of now all
mail submitted to SF-LOVERS will be accumulated in a file here at MIT.
I will then package and distribute the file to everyone on the list
once or twice a day when the 4 MIT systems are not heavily loaded. I
regret that this is even temporarily necessary. I emphasize however,
that this is only an interim solution.
There are basically three problems to be solved. First, the
amount of work involved in distribution must be reduced. Second, the
disk storage requirements for the mail must be reduced. Third, an
etiquette for this kind of discussion list should be evolved. I
welcome suggestions and discussion of how we can solve these problems
satisfactorily. I have already received many of them. In the next few
days I hope to compile these suggestions into a coherent form and
distribute them. However, I would like to recommend that SF-LOVERS be
turned back to primarily discussing SF, not how to support discussing
SF. Therefore I have set up another mailing list SAVE-LARGE-LISTS@AI
to discuss these problems. If you have sent me mail with a suggestion
in the last few days then you are on this list. If you want to join it
please send me mail. However, I would like to limit this list to just
a couple of people at each site if possible.
Lastly, I believe these problems are completely solvable. However,
if lists like this are to achieve their potential, the solution will
have to include action at all the sites, not just restructuring the
list here at MIT. Further many lists besides SF-LOVERS will benefit
from these changes. At the end of December I felt that the mail volume
would return to its September to November levels after the Sci-fi
movies died away. Instead it continued to grow. I have now begun to
wonder exactly what its potential for growth really is. Note that only
PARC and MIT have tried to fully develop their membership potential. I
think we have begun to glimpse one of the many interesting social
problems of the 1990's telematics society. Or perhaps that is only
science fiction....?

Enjoy,

R. DuWayne Duffey II
Inter-Temporal Telematics, Inc.
14 Snie 41 EC

Does anyone know what ever became of Roger Duffey? His most recent
posting dates to July 1981.
--
Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable. Please do not send me
HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 30, 2002, 4:07:34 PM1/30/02
to
A really long post, much of the more interesting stuff in which is
later on.

In article <a37r2b$atj$1...@panix2.panix.com>, Keith F. Lynch
<k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> > This is at least my fourth attempt to post this post - don't get me
> > started about Netscape right now - so I apologise if it comes off as
> > hastily written.
>
> You don't have any way of saving it if it doesn't post? You have to
> re-write it every time you try posting?

I could have copied it from the posting form at Google and saved it to
a text file someplace every so often, I suppose, but since I don't
normally get this kind of situation, this isn't part of my normal
procedure.

(Yes, honest, it does get more interesting later on...)

(Ironically, the copy of trn from which I was writing this was unable
to reconnect to the news server when I was done, so whadda ya know;
but *that* has happened to me before, so I *had* saved. Anyone know
why trn4 can't recover from this gracefully, though?)



> > I haven't done anything similar with respect to Matt Glickman, Gene
> > Spafford, Lauren Weinstein, Adam Buchsbaum, or other non-founding
> > Famous People.
>
> Are you only interested in Usenet?

Um, pretty much.

I would certainly *like* to see someone tackle the history of the
mailing lists to the 1980s (I don't see how anyone could even begin
to do so for the period after the List-of-Lists stopped being posted,
and once the explosion of participation really began). But my own
interest is in Usenet, and anyway the reason I'm doing this now is
that Google has opened up the Usenet archives now.

With regard to Usenet, I'm interested in which newsgroups had which
kinds of mailing list gateways (and when, thanks to whom, etc.). But
even this is a *relatively* peripheral interest, partly because it's
hard to research.

None of this is even my regular research, let alone my day job.

(But since I lost my [temp] day job largely by doing this, donations
would be gratefully accepted. Anyone willing should write me.
No, this does not mean I'm setting a price on my finishing the
project, only that I have *paid* a price for starting it.)

> See http://users.exis.net/~jnc/humor/lauren.digest,
> which was written in 1980, and purports to have been written by Lauren
> in 1988. It gives a fascinating snapshot of how people 22 years ago
> viewed the future of the net.

Neat!



> The earliest message from me in the Google newsgroup archives is in
> 1982. But I wasn't even aware of Usenet at the time, nor was I on it
> until perhaps 1987. Like many of the early messages, it was relayed
> from an ARPAnet/Internet email list.

This is why, in the post you followed up to, I was as careful as I
could be to distinguish mailing list gateway groups from posts that
were unequivocally made directly to Usenet.

As I mentioned in my last post to the thread that holds my actual
results (have you looked at that one yet?), Usenet as of May 1981
was still *mostly* gateway groups. This changed dramatically already
by the winter of 1982, occasioning much nervous concern.

(Why there are two threads: I tried to post the whole thread from
a newly installed version of trn, using a news server I hadn't
previously used, and screwed up in ways that required me to cancel
three copies of the start post before finally giving up and switching
to YA-NewsWatcher. One of those copies has turned out to be where
most of the discussion started from. This is arguably a good thing,
since the actual results posts are fairly intimidating I suppose,
although this subthread was about other reasons why those posts
aren't getting followups.)

(If the results thread has expired from your server, well, it's all
still at this free news server - you need to write the news-admin to
post, but I *think* reading is open - and the substantive posts are
also at my website, as plain text,

<http://stanley.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/history/> -

you want the "year-summaries" and "hierarchy-summaries" directories.)



> > Keith Lynch says he's kept every e-mail he ever got, since getting onto
> > the ARPAnet in ?1977,

> Thanks for the plug. Actually, I've been saving email for even longer
> than that. I was using email 28 years ago, though not on any network.

Well, ya got me beat. (I first used e-mail in, I think, 1978, maybe
1979, and first used network e-mail definitely in 1979. I wasn't on
any of the major networks until 1985, though, and that was UUCPnet/
Usenet. And I didn't start archiving *anything* until 1995, when
I returned to the nets after a nine-year absence.)

(By the by, I found you by finding an issue of the Amateur
Computerist, I think it was, in which you'd been interviewed;
I was looking for Tom Truscott, to write the post you followed up
to, and the same issue had an interview with him which is apparently
Ronda Hauben's, her source for the chapter the results thread refers
to. The whole interview does turn out to be worth reading.)



> > and which asserts that the first ! in an address in his archives was
> > in September 1980.
>
> Right. From menlo70!daul, relayed off Berkeley at 21:09:46-PDT on
> Wednesday, September 10th.

(Confirmed, for SF-LOVERS. See *way* below for how.)

I'm wondering how many lists you were subscribed to at that time.
In the thread with the actual results in it, the 1981 post lists
the Berkeley fa.* groups as of May 1981, which is some hint as to which
groups could've existed before September 1980, although not a really
reliable hint (since gateways and lists seem frequently to have
shut down, and since not all gateways seem to have been at Berkeley).

What I'm getting at is that I'd be interested in knowing whether
posts *from* Usenet really date only to September 1980, or it's just
a reflection of SF-LOVERS being relatively slow to a) be gatewayed
or b) attract posters. And I'd also be interested in knowing which
lists, of those you've archived, have Usenet posters when (since
this is essentially a way of reconstructing the history of those
lists as fa.* groups, to some extent; this interest becomes
substantially less starting from November 1982, which is when lists
of newsgroups began being regularly posted).

One difficulty here is that there's no guarantee that !'s were the
first way Usenet addresses were shown in gatewaying. For what
it's worth, though, Steve Bellovin is a known early Usenet poster
who posted a *whole lot* to the lists, and I'd be mildly surprised
if the ability to post to the lists from Usenet had existed for
more than a few weeks before he started doing so. (Early .sig:
"smb".) And anyway there's no reason to think !'s *weren't* used,
it's just that I wouldn't've expected a date as late as September.

All this is a lot of work to ask of you. Um, is there any chance
you'll be making any of your archives public? Ever?

> > Another interesting claim in (KL's) timeline is that moderation dates


> > only to February 1980 even on the ARPAnet (SF-LOVERS being the first
> > moderated list, ironically enough).
>
> I should have said January, simultaneous with digestification. In
> fact, it was a side effect of digestification, since there were not
> yet any automated digestifying tools. And it was SF-LOVERS and
> HUMAN-NETS both. As to why, see the appended message.

Thanks!



> Once again I renew my request for pre-1981 HUMAN-NETS archives.
> Surely I don't have the only ones? Thanks.

The List-of-Lists, many editions of which appeared on Usenet,
routinely named where one could find archives of the various
lists. One thing I'd like to do but haven't yet is go around
finding out how many of those archives really are gone. What
I'm hearing is that they *all* are, but I hope that's Yet Another
falsehood. (In particular, though, I'm not hearing good things
about the HUMAN-NETS archives. See the fa.* post in the results
thread for what Google has, until the renaming to mod.* in autumn
1985. There is a good chance that your archive is more complete
than Google's. See also below, showing that in 1996 a long-time
list-reader couldn't find HUMAN-NETS archives; but he was using
the name "HUMANETS" which may have given him problems.)

I've already spent hours writing this post and will not take
the time to revise that last paragraph, but I just went and
tried some slightly more intelligent digging, and here's what
I found anent HUMAN-NETS:

Charles McGrew, who appears to have been the last moderator of
HUMAN-NETS and who was certainly the longest-lived, has an
archive at <http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~cwm/NetStuff/Human-Nets/>.
It begins in May 1981 and has Newsgroups: lines throughout, which
initially had me thinking it derived from Toronto like Google's
archive, but it has an apparently full run in 1982, which Google
doesn't. His archive ends in fall 1986; Google's archive of
mod.human-nets ends January 23, 1987, and Google has no postings
to soc.human-nets ever (that weren't cross-posted), which may make
that the deadest group on record. (The group was finally
officially removed on May 19, 1991. This means comp.laser-printers
at least has now been dead longer; but I'm not sure there's ever
been a moderated group that was silent for the *first* four
years of its existence!)

In a 1982 list of lists, Roger Duffey was said to have the oldest
archives, which is not a hopeful sign (see below). They were
listed as being at MIT, which is a slightly more hopeful sign;
someone more familiar with MIT's FTP servers than I am might
be able to find them? (I already verified the unsurprising fact
that they aren't at rtfm.mit.edu.)

Don Erway was the moderator in May 1981 when the Google archives
open. He was Roger Duffey's successor as moderator. I find
that someone named "Duane D. Erway" and "Don Erway" has posted
a fair amount since April 1992; I haven't been able to establish
whether this is the same man. The postings all come from an
e-mail address whose website equivalent leads to a huge bookmarks
file which at least makes me *mildly* optimistic that it's the
same guy's... The Don Erway who moderated HUMAN-NETS appears
to have been fairly new in May 1981, but not completely new.

Mike Peeler may have been his successor. I haven't been able to
figure out which of several "Mike Peeler"s on the nets might
actually be him.

Mel Pleasant may have been *his* successor, and was definitely
Charles McGrew's predecessor. An RFC issued in, um, ?1996 lists
him as still being at Rutgers. He may have traveled in October
1996 as a consultant or employee of SGI. He was still listed
in November 1996 as moderator of comp.mail.maps, from Rutgers.
(The most recent postings at Google, however, from September
2000, show Stan Barber as moderator.) I can find nothing more
recent. This is particularly unfortunate given that in the
*last* List of Lists posted, archived, and referring to HUMAN-NETS,
the archive is shown as being at ARPAnet host RU-BLUE, filenames
RHYTHM:<PLEASANT.HUMAN-NETS>HUMNET.*, which suggests that Mel
Pleasant is relatively likely (assuming he's still living) to know
where they went. (But then these archives could just as easily be
Charles McGrew's source, since he was also at Rutgers at the time
and RU-BLUE could easily mean blue.rutgers.edu, analogous to McGrew's
e-mail address's red.rutgers.edu...)

> Here's the message announcing the "temporary" digestification of
> SF-LOVERS (which is still running, and still digestified, over 22
> years later). Also note the mention of the 1990s.

Holy cow, I hadn't realised it was still running! Surely it isn't
still fully gated from rasfw? (No. See way below.)

(My first few posts to rasfw resulted in occasional notes telling
me they'd gone to the gateway, but I haven't seen any such things
in a *long* time.) (This reflects badly on my posts. See way
below.)

(And it's really still running? Multiple indications point to its
having been dead since October or so. See way below.)

> Does anyone know what ever became of Roger Duffey? His most recent
> posting dates to July 1981.

He was still moderating fa.works (the WorkS list) in October 1981;
again, see the fa.* post. The Google archives don't show him
moderating any other fa.* group, which refers of course only to the
post-May 1981 period. His farewell to WorkS says "I will soon begin
a two year leave of absence from MIT to pursue research with a private
company".

I did a Google *web* search on "Roger Duffey" and one of the things
I found was an archive of the MSGGROUP mailing list from !!1975
to 1986, which according to the list's list-owner was its
entire history. Message #1911 is the reference to him, which
talks about moderation of mailing lists in general and is worth
a look. This archive is at

<http://www.tcm.org/msggroup/>. Note that tcm.org was The
Computer Museum, which apparently no longer exists; its holdings
have been split between the Museum of Science, whose web site
<http://www.mos.org/> makes no reference to these archives, and
The Computer Museum History Center, whose web site
<http://www.computerhistory.org/> claims that it is changing its
name to The Computer History Museum, and not only makes no reference
to these archives but offers no online archives at all. The
domain name appears to belong to the Museum of Science. This
strongly suggests to me that the MSGGROUP archive is yet ANOTHER
endangered archive, and someone with some disk space would be doing
a Good Deed by finding it another home before the MOS pulls the plug.

Oh, but good! Somebody already has!

<http://www.frostwarning.com/~quag7/archaeology.html>

(Which appears to offer the archive in a single file for anyone *else*
who wants it, and that might be a good idea because the page is
definitely outdated, never a good sign. Read on:)

Note that the same page lists an archive of SF-LOVERS back to
January 1980. But as of 1996, the archive reached back to the
list's beginning (in that incarnation) in, at latest, December
1979; see

<http://www.greatcircle.com/lists/list-managers/digest/list-managers.199601>

(which I'm currently having no luck reaching despite several work-
arounds; I looked at Google's copy at

<http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:m5r21J2-sX8C:www.greatcircle.com/lists/list-managers/digest/list-managers.199601+%22Roger+Duffey%22&hl=en>

but am hoping that greatcircle.com comes back online, since it may
archive other lists... Well, it finally dawned on me to ask Google
for the cached copy of www.greatcircle.com/lists/, and they do/did
archive other lists, but nothing of great historical interest. But
if greatcircle.com really doesn't seem likely to come back, someone
with a lot of patience might want to download the list-managers
archive from Google's cached copies before it's too late.)

At that time, the referenced archive was at sflovers.rutgers.edu.
This name still points to a computer, but I'm having no luck
connecting to it now. Oh, and this is where the frostwarning.com
link points as well, so maybe Quag7 is simply wrong about the dates.
Hmmm. Anyone know whether that archive remains reachable in some
other way?

Ah. Now *I* know: yes, it's at <http://www.sflovers.org/>. But
to find the digests archive, you have to follow two further links,
one of which explains that the digest is now composed mostly of
*selected* Usenet posts from rasf.*, to

<http://www.sflovers.org/digest/review.html>

and then enter a volume # and issue # as search terms. (You
can review TOCs for the volumes, but otherwise have to use the
search terms.) Furthermore, the search mechanism doesn't work.
When I searched for volume 1, issue 1, I got volume 10, issue 1;
when I searched for volume 01, issue 1, I got volume 26, issue
1! (I can understand that one can't search on terms, although
it would be nice to find out whether any of my own posts had made
it in recent years; but I can't understand why the only access to
the archive would be a broken search mechanism!) The page also
explains that the archive picks up from January 1980, i.e. when
the digest began, and not from 1979, even though we know that
Rutgers had at least some 1979 posts.

Argh.

Oh. Wait. There turns out also to be an ftp.sflovers.org, and
*some* volumes of the digest are easily available from it.
Unfortunately, only whole volumes *are* available, which means
you have to download megabytes at a time even if you know which
issue you want, which does not serve the site's non-profit
approach well. The welcome message says there's *also* an
email-FTP gateway (!), but I didn't try that and don't know if
it allows single-issue retrieval. I did, however, download
the advertised volume 1, and I am delighted to report that it
*DOES* begin with September, 1979. (The FTP server does not,
on the other hand, appear to offer volumes 3 through 9. And
for this I *did* try the e-mail approach, without luck. The
HTML version also cannot retrieve volume 3, at least. The
missing volumes cover January 1981 to June 1984.) One of the
first posts in volume 1 is actually someone inquiring whether
anyone has the disk space to archive the list; we *are* in
medias res there, but not terribly so.

I downloaded also volume 2, and that's where I found the first
posts from Berkeley, from Phil Karn in July 1980. He's also
the *only* poster from Berkeley (and not often at that) until
mid-August. So I'm now guessing that posting from Usenet
to the lists *was* possible before September, just nobody at
Berkeley except for Phil Karn actually knew about SF-LOVERS
then. If you have an archive of HUMAN-NETS for 1980 and it
shows more Berkeley posters but still no exclamation points
til September, that would blow a hole in that theory...

Anyway. Neither "Roger Duffey" nor "Roger Duffey" OR "Duwayne Duffey"
got me any luck in actually finding him. Nor does Google show any
posts with author searches on either of those names. I'm sorry,
but after 1982 (date of some papers that are easily found) he
basically vanishes. There's someone named "Roger Duffey" posting at
some medical sites in recent years, but I have no reason to conclude
anything about whether that's the same man.

End of this long and winding post. Near as I can tell, it's actually
a lot more cohesive than it looks while reading; at any rate, I've
been at this computer most of the past seven hours writing and
(mostly) researching it, so that's all.

(And why did anyone ever claim that cyber-stalking was *easy*, for
heaven's sake?)

Joe Bernstein

now going to eat and drink

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com

http://stanley.postilion.org/these-survive/

Aahz Maruch

unread,
Jan 30, 2002, 10:58:03 PM1/30/02
to
[p&e]

In article <3c586095$0$26394$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,


Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>Mike Peeler may have been his successor. I haven't been able to figure
>out which of several "Mike Peeler"s on the nets might actually be him.

90% likely to be zcon...@panix.com

(I know this Mike Peeler has been on the Net for more than a decade, and
I'd guess it's unlikely there was more than one back then.)


--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2002 by aa...@pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista

"I got the new SPORT-UTILITY Segway." --Tom Toles

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 31, 2002, 1:53:15 AM1/31/02
to
In article <a37d3o$jk$1...@panix2.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch <aa...@panix.com>
wrote:

> In article <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>,
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> >for some bizarre reason
> >rec.railroad seems to have more than its share of veterans.
>
> That's because rec.railroad is a bogus newsgroup that's kept alive *by*
> veterans who refused to accept the vote result for misc.transport.rail.

Well, OK, & thanks for the info, but what I meant was that a surprisingly
high share of total veterans known to me seem to have posted to it.
So Jay Denebeim's answer was more to the point. (Personally, I've
known a fair number of computer people, and somewhat fewer railfans,
but with little overlap; but I can sorta see the intrinsic geekishness
of railfandom, anyway.)

Also, rec.railroad was a gateway group, and I'd be willing to bet it
remains so. This means that a significant percentage of posters
might not give two hoots about the vote result for mtr; they're on
a mailing list. (A *really old* mailing list.)

> It's a sentiment that I would normally disapprove of, but m.t.r was
> another vote that was, er, railroaded through in the era of
> .misc-ification.
>
> If I were into railroads, I might well encourage my ISP to newgroup it
> here, despite the fact that it's normally a Big-8 strict constructionist.

Whereas I was delighted when I found that my newly chosen ISP (Tezcat)
*didn't* carry scij-k. (I would become less delighted some while later
when I found out what other variations there were, but some of the
others were also good: keeping miscified groups around, and also
allowing me to get sci.classics kept so I could redirect people after
the end of the eternal renaming. Suddenly I wonder how many people
there *still* are posting to sci.classics, and how I could find out...)

By the by, thanks for the confirm on Mike Peeler. Unfortunately, of
all the HUMAN-NETS moderators he's the one with the least a priori
likelihood of having archives older than Charles McGrew's, but hey...
Do you know him well enough to write and ask?

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
http://stanley.postilion.org/these-survive/

Jay Denebeim

unread,
Jan 31, 2002, 3:26:59 AM1/31/02
to
In article <3c58e9da$0$26399$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>So Jay Denebeim's answer was more to the point. (Personally, I've
>known a fair number of computer people, and somewhat fewer railfans,
>but with little overlap; but I can sorta see the intrinsic geekishness
>of railfandom, anyway.)

If you include model railroads there's a much larger overlap. Back
when I was hanging out there I saw a lot of SF types in the model
railroad group. FWIW there's some really cool computerish stuff about
them now. For instance, they've not got the technology to operate
several trains on the same track. Independently controllable. Way
cool.

Aahz Maruch

unread,
Jan 31, 2002, 5:31:40 AM1/31/02
to
In article <3c58e9da$0$26399$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>By the by, thanks for the confirm on Mike Peeler. Unfortunately, of
>all the HUMAN-NETS moderators he's the one with the least a priori
>likelihood of having archives older than Charles McGrew's, but hey...
>Do you know him well enough to write and ask?

Just ask him yourself; he's quite helpful. Feel free to use my name.

(I prefer to avoid middlemen in transactions.)


--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2002 by aa...@pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista

"I got the new SPORT-UTILITY Segway." --Tom Toles

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Jan 31, 2002, 8:38:27 AM1/31/02
to
In article <a3b6ec$1ou$1...@panix2.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch
<aa...@panix.com> wrote:

> In article <3c58e9da$0$26399$892e...@authen.puce.readfreenews.net>,
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

[Mike Peeler might have 1980 HUMAN-NETS archives]


> >Do you know him well enough to write and ask?
>
> Just ask him yourself; he's quite helpful. Feel free to use my name.
>
> (I prefer to avoid middlemen in transactions.)

OK, that's fair, but it was Keith Lynch's request, mostly.

If he doesn't show up again, I'll see if I'm interested in asking.

JLB

Keith F. Lynch

unread,
Jan 31, 2002, 9:24:17 PM1/31/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>> See http://users.exis.net/~jnc/humor/lauren.digest,
>> which was written in 1980, and purports to have been written by Lauren
>> in 1988. It gives a fascinating snapshot of how people 22 years ago
>> viewed the future of the net.

> Neat!

I especially like:

Date: 6 October 1988 1034-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: More packet quota!

I need more quota - 1.6M-bytes per day is not enough. How can
I answer my net mail?

1.6M was still an absurdly large amount in 1988. But today it is
indeed insufficient, as I often get more spam than that in a day.

> As I mentioned in my last post to the thread that holds my actual
> results (have you looked at that one yet?),

I don't think so. I only noticed your posting because you mentioned
a web page of mine in it. Yes, I use Google to search for all such
mentions.

> Usenet as of May 1981 was still *mostly* gateway groups. This
> changed dramatically already by the winter of 1982, occasioning much
> nervous concern.

What sort of concern? I know that there was plenty of prejudice
against Usenet on the ARPAnet. Here are three messages I sent on the
subject in 1985. (Note that I hadn't yet noticed that the ARPAnet had
turned into the Internet three years earlier):

Date: Thu, 12 Sep 85 20:53:36 EDT
From: Keith F. Lynch <K...@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Prejudice
To: AWa...@BLUE.RUTGERS.EDU
Cc: BAND...@MIT-MC.ARPA, DE...@MIT-MC.ARPA

I think it is time to establish a new constitutional amendment. The
Equal Nets Amendment. "No person's rights shall be abridged due to
race, creed, gender, color, or network." Here is a message you sent,
with reference to the Arpanet replaced by references to Whites, and
references to the Usenet replaced by references to Blacks. I did this
since most people are more sensitive to prejudice when it is in black
and white.

The other side of the coin is that although random Whites might be reading
this stuff, I do *not* want Blacks involved. I don't know if anyone has
created a Black gateway, but if you have, please use common sense and take
it down. Black involvement would more than triple the distribution and
raise the pinhead content by orders of magnitude. One reading of Black
news will show you why.

Slamming the door on all outsiders might well result in all of us ''inner''
'Kin becoming bored, or ''inbred''. We should allow for new blood, but
only from Whites and places where the White people figure heavily.

Down with netism!

Date: Thu, 12 Sep 85 21:57:39 EDT
From: Keith F. Lynch <K...@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Netism
To: ke...@seismo.CSS.GOV
Cc: BAND...@MIT-MC.ARPA

Date: Thu, 12 Sep 85 21:16:37 EDT
From: Keith Bostic <ke...@seismo.CSS.GOV>

Open question, Keith... did you mean that seriously?

Do I really think that Usenet should be mentioned in the Constitution? No.
Do I really think that it should be ILLEGAL (i.e. somebody goes to jail)
for a mailing list to not be gatewayed to some network? No.
Do I really think that people on the Usenet should be allowed on Bandykin?
Yes.

What if you lose your Arpanet account, but still have a Usenet account.
Should you be cut off?

Date: Thu, 12 Sep 85 23:56:45 EDT
From: Keith F. Lynch <K...@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Netism
To: ke...@seismo.CSS.GOV
Cc: BAND...@MIT-MC.ARPA

Date: Thu, 12 Sep 85 22:10:24 EDT
From: Keith Bostic <ke...@seismo.CSS.GOV>

> Do I really think that people on the Usenet should be allowed on
> Bandykin? Yes.

Pardon a little cynicism here, but just who
is going to pay for your overflowing generosity?

The argument I was replying to was not that we could not afford to
forward messages to Usenet, but that we SHOULD not, whether anyone is
paying for it or not, because everyone on the Usenet is a loser. It
was the 'loser' statement to which I objected.
I have long since given up on trying to decide who pays for all this
and why. The Arpanet, I suppose, is a partial return on my tax money.
The usenet? I dunno. University money, maybe? All I know is that
there is no shortage of gateways between any two sufficiently large
networks.
In fact, that seems to be a very general rule of systems of all sorts,
that any two sufficiently large systems of the same type will be
connected. For instance any paved road in America that is more
than a mile long is certain to connect with every other paved road
in America that is more than a mile long. Every phone that communicates
with at least 10 other phones is sure to communicate with all other
phones in the world that communicate with at least 10 other phones.
All bicycle trails connect. All airline routes connect. All circles
of close friends connect. All computer networks connect.

This was, of course, long before Usenet was simply absorbed into the
Internet.

> What I'm getting at is that I'd be interested in knowing whether
> posts *from* Usenet really date only to September 1980,

I can believe it. Usenet was only about a year old at the time, and
had very few users, right?

> One difficulty here is that there's no guarantee that !'s were the
> first way Usenet addresses were shown in gatewaying.

Usenet addresses were pretty unmistakable. On Usenet, hostnames and
usernames were always lowercase. On ARPAnet, hostnames and usernames
were always uppercase.

> All this is a lot of work to ask of you. Um, is there any chance
> you'll be making any of your archives public? Ever?

Much of the early stuff only exists in hardcopy. Maybe if I get a
scanner. But many of the lists I was on were at least partially
closed, and I'm not sure whether the participants would appreciate
having their postings resurrected at this late date.

For instance the Bandykin (later just Kin) list I quoted three of my
own messages from. Or the USER-ACCOUNTS list on MIT-MC, which even I
wasn't really supposed to be on. One especially memorable message
from that was from Doug Humphrey trying to get an account as DIGEX,
being turned down because he sounded like a business. At the time
DIGEX was just his nickname. But more than a decade later, he turned
it into a business (DIGEX.NET), which he eventually sold for millions.

Also, there was a tradition of applying for guest accounts using names
from the news. For instance shortly after Reagan was shot, someone
claiming to be John Hinckley applied for an account, giving in the
"reason" field "to impress Jodie Foster".

> The List-of-Lists, many editions of which appeared on Usenet,
> routinely named where one could find archives of the various lists.

Yes. They could be found on machines that no longer exist.

> Charles McGrew, who appears to have been the last moderator of
> HUMAN-NETS and who was certainly the longest-lived, has an archive
> at <http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~cwm/NetStuff/Human-Nets/>. It begins
> in May 1981 and has Newsgroups: lines throughout, which initially
> had me thinking it derived from Toronto like Google's archive, but
> it has an apparently full run in 1982, which Google doesn't.

Thanks. I didn't know about that.

> In a 1982 list of lists, Roger Duffey was said to have the oldest
> archives, which is not a hopeful sign (see below). They were listed

> as being at MIT, ...

Yes, on one of the ITS machines. That last one of which was shut down
in May 1990.

As you laboriously discovered, and I could have immediately told you,
the SF-LOVERS archives were hosted at Rutgers for many years, and were
recently moved to FTP.SFLOVERS.ORG.

> Holy cow, I hadn't realised it was still running!

I download a year's worth of archives each year. SF-LOVERS was still
running a year ago, the last time I did so. I tried downloading the
2001 archives last week, but they weren't available yet, at least not
a single file. But a month or two's delay isn't unusual. I suppose
it's possible that SF-LOVERS ended some time in the past year.

Saul Jaffe, who has been its moderator since 1983 (!) is the one to
ask. I'll do so.

> Surely it isn't still fully gated from rasfw?

It never was. It's always been a low volume (by today's standards)
list. And many submissions have been rejected, starting in January
1980 when it became moderated.

> And it's really still running? Multiple indications point to its
> having been dead since October or so.

I have no evidence otherwise.

I can't find anything newer than January 2001 on SFLOVERS.ORG, but as
you discovered, that site is badly screwed up. Hopefully this is just
because of their recent move from Rutgers.

> ... one of the things I found was an archive of the MSGGROUP mailing
> list from !!1975 to 1986, ...

I knew about that, too. The oldest message is from June 7, 1975.
I don't know of *anything* older on the net. (Except, of course,
material that didn't originate on the net, e.g. the works of
Aristotle.)

> This strongly suggests to me that the MSGGROUP archive is yet

> ANOTHER endangered archive, ...

I downloaded the whole thing eight years ago. I'm sure many others
have done the same. And that all copies of those messages will not
be lost for as long as our civilization endures.

> Oh, but good! Somebody already has!
> <http://www.frostwarning.com/~quag7/archaeology.html>

I see he also has archives of other old lists. But his SF-LOVERS link
just points to the defunct Rutgers copy of the archives.

> Note that the same page lists an archive of SF-LOVERS back to
> January 1980. But as of 1996, the archive reached back to the
> list's beginning (in that incarnation) in, at latest, December
> 1979;

The SF-LOVERS archives have always extended back to September 1979.
There was no change in that list until the digestification and
moderation began in mid-January 1980.

The SF-LOVERS archives were also (along with much else) on a CD-ROM
sold by Brad Templeton in 1993. Even as we speak, he's auctioning the
last few copies to benefit the EFF.

> <http://www.greatcircle.com/lists/list-managers/digest/list-managers.199601>
> (which I'm currently having no luck reaching ...

It works for me.

The first message in it which mentions SF-LOVERS also mentions
RISKS, and mistakenly says RISKS predates the Internet. RISKS
doesn't, having started in August 1985. (It does pre-date
modern URLs, as the 2nd issue says the first issue is archived
at "SRI-CSL:<RISKS>RISKS-1.1". Today RISKS archives are at
ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks and http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/.)

RISKS has been gatewayed to the comp.risks newsgroup since April 1987.

> There turns out also to be an ftp.sflovers.org, and *some* volumes
> of the digest are easily available from it. Unfortunately, only
> whole volumes *are* available, which means you have to download

> megabytes at a time even if you know which issue you want, ...

Yes, that's what I do. Disk space is so amazingly inexpensive these
days, there's no reason *not* to download the whole archive to your PC
if you have even the slightest interest.

Imagine how much faster and easier it would have been for you to write
your post if all the archives mentioned were on your own PC.

I hadn't noticed that some volumes are missing. I will talk to Saul
Jaffe. If necessary, I can provide them to him. I have everything
through the end of 2000.

> I downloaded also volume 2, and that's where I found the first posts
> from Berkeley, from Phil Karn in July 1980. He's also the *only*
> poster from Berkeley (and not often at that) until mid-August.
> So I'm now guessing that posting from Usenet to the lists *was*
> possible before September, just nobody at Berkeley except for
> Phil Karn actually knew about SF-LOVERS then.

Maybe so. Berkeley was one of the first gateways between ARPAnet
and Usenet. This was because it was one of the few machines on
both networks. So a post *from* Berkeley itself wasn't necessarily
being gatewayed.

The July 14th posting you mention was from "Phil Karn via Csvax.JDD at
BERKELEY".

Maybe that *was* relayed, using a pre-exclamation-point syntax, and
Phil wasn't actually at Berkeley. In August it was "Phil Karn via
CSVAX.UUCP at BERKELEY" and in November "Phil Karn (ihnss!karn @
berkeley)". I'll ask him. I'm assuming he's the same Phil Karn whose
web page is at http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/. His page was last
updated *yesterday*. That's an encouraging sign.

> If you have an archive of HUMAN-NETS for 1980 and it shows more
> Berkeley posters but still no exclamation points til September, that
> would blow a hole in that theory...

I'll check when my TUIT has fewer corners.

> I'm sorry, but after 1982 (date of some papers that are easily
> found) he basically vanishes.

Yes. That's one problem with exclusively online communications.
You never know what happened to someone.

At least Larry Lippman had offline friends who were also online, who
informed of his death ten years ago last month. One of the best
things about the Google extension is that now over a thousand of
his postings are available. He was (imho) the most informative and
entertaining person on Usenet in his day.

> (And why did anyone ever claim that cyber-stalking was *easy*, for
> heaven's sake?)

Usually one is cyber-stalking only *one* person, and they don't have a
twenty year head start on you. And if you're a cyber-stalker, you're
required to be obsessive, spending 18 hours a day on the harassment.
And your victim is required to be currently active online. It's
cheating to evade a cyber-stalker by giving up the net. Didn't you
read the manual?

Jay Denebeim

unread,
Jan 31, 2002, 10:47:05 PM1/31/02
to
In article <a3cu8h$oev$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

>RISKS has been gatewayed to the comp.risks newsgroup since April 1987.

IIRC there was a net.risks as well before the great renaming. That
was the first group I read much.

Thomas Galloway

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 5:52:09 PM2/1/02
to
In article <a3cu8h$oev$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>Much of the early stuff only exists in hardcopy. Maybe if I get a
>scanner. But many of the lists I was on were at least partially
>closed, and I'm not sure whether the participants would appreciate
>having their postings resurrected at this late date.
>
>For instance the Bandykin (later just Kin) list I quoted three of my
>own messages from. Or the USER-ACCOUNTS list on MIT-MC, which even I

I think it'd be a *very* bad idea to make Bandykin archives publically
available. A fair amount of personal stuff on that list which I'd think
people wouldn't necessarily want made public.

tyg t...@panix.com

Kai Henningsen

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 4:20:00 PM2/1/02
to
j...@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein) wrote on 28.01.02 in <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>:

> Um, the only time the Big 8 or their 3 predecessor hierarchies ever
> had checkgroups posted as *control* messages, to the best of my
> knowledge, is in mid-1985 when Gene Spafford was first trying the idea
> out. He apparently got a bunch of complaints by e-mail, and so when
> he started posting checkgroups again, a few months later, he only
> posted them as regular posts.

Untrue; I'm not sure about the current state, but at least a year or so
ago, tale posted *parts* of them as control messages (to be precise, for
those of the 8 hierarchies where there were no inet groups).

> The 1998-2000 checkgroups were definitely not posted as control
> messages.

I'm pretty certain I saw part-Big8 checkgroups around that time.


Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)

Kai Henningsen

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 4:47:00 PM2/1/02
to
gher...@gw.retro.com (George William Herbert) wrote on 28.01.02 in <a34k8d$nlr$1...@gw.retro.com>:

> On this specific point of how far back Tale goes,
> I have no better information. I just wouldn't conclude
> anything from just the Google archives of that period...

Well, it's rather unlikely that his 1988-02-14 post to news.misc (and
another to sci.med) was from a newbie - but it's the first Google finds
for me:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From: ta...@pawl5.pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Pseudonymous Postings
Keywords: mandatory
Message-ID: <3...@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Date: 15 Feb 88 05:35:31 GMT
References: <29...@dasys1.UUCP> <18...@mind.UUCP> <47...@netsys.UUCP>
Sender: ne...@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU
Reply-To: ta...@pawl.rpi.edu (Tale Laslingis)
Organization: RPI Public Access Workstation Lab - Troy, NY
Lines: 24


In article <47...@netsys.UUCP> wb8...@netsys.UUCP (David Lesher) writes:
>I think the solution to the various attacks/forgories/etc is
>simple.
>Have netnews strip off all names and addresses. Thus nobody
>could attack another by name, nor would anyone have any reason
>to defend a position with reverse flamage.

Blech. So now nobody has to stand up for anything they say, or those people
who elect to attach their names to things now get even more heavily/visciously
flamed by people who have an even greater anonymous profile.

And didn't you realize that it puts a TREMENDOUS cramp in e-mailing?
The e-mail generated by people reponding to USENET postings is FAR
greater than the number of postings themselves.

I hope you weren't serious about that idea. It's hard to take it that way.

*!*
"Those who find they have nothing to go out of their way for soon find they
have nothing at all." -- Tale Laslingis, during the Fourth History.

EMAIL: ta...@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts.rpi.edu@rpitsgw, ta...@pawl.rpi.edu
THE HORN: (518)276-7214, (201)383-9414 during academic recess.
DISCLAIMER: Who needs disclaimers when it's USENET policy?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
That doesn't sound like a newbie to me.

Philip Newton

unread,
Feb 2, 2002, 4:53:07 AM2/2/02
to
On 29 Jan 2002 11:32:03 -0800, j...@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein) wrote:

> I would guess that fair chunks of comp.* and rec.* also have a
> concentration. (Larry Wall, after all, still posts, doesn't he?

Not in comp.lang.perl.misc, at any rate. Or at least not more than, say,
once every two or three months, in my recollection.

From what I've heard on the group, he hasn't been seen there (except for
very occasional single posts) for several years... apparently due to s/n
problems (many newbies asking FAQs, for example).

Keith F. Lynch

unread,
Feb 2, 2002, 2:20:39 PM2/2/02
to
Thomas Galloway <t...@panix.com> wrote:
> I think it'd be a *very* bad idea to make Bandykin archives
> publically available.

Yes, that's what I just said.

It's not sheer chance that the three messages from that list that I
recently reposted here were all written by me.

Keith F. Lynch

unread,
Feb 2, 2002, 2:30:50 PM2/2/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> That said, yes, Henry Spencer is another example of someone who's
> been around longer'n tale. And I'm pretty sure I've seen him
> elsewhere on news.* relatively recently, though not here.

He is still a high volume poster in the sci.space.* groups. He also
often posts in the rec.arts.comics.*, sci.astro, and alt.sci.planetary
groups. He averages eight posts per day.

He's also a very high quality poster. There's supposedly a T shirt
for anyone who can catch him in a mistake.

But he does not post in the news.* groups.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Feb 2, 2002, 2:59:57 PM2/2/02
to
Despite the increasing volume of off-topic posts from Google, I'm
still glad they offer posting. For one thing, it means that people
using servers that actually *do* still accept cancels can follow up to
articles that get caught by rogue cancellers.

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote in message
news:<a3cu8h$oev$1...@panix2.panix.com>...

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> > As I mentioned in my last post to the thread that holds my actual
> > results (have you looked at that one yet?),
>
> I don't think so. I only noticed your posting because you mentioned
> a web page of mine in it. Yes, I use Google to search for all such
> mentions.

Kinda thought so. Well, it's none of my business whether you're
interested in Usenet, and specifically the sub-topic of newsgroup
creation, and still more specifically the sub-sub-topic of lists of
"official" newsgroups, for the period 1980-1986, but since you
obviously *are* interested in the history of the ARPAnet lists for
that period, and there's some overlap, I wanted to point you to it.
(Particularly given this awkward situation that most of the discussion
is in a different thread.)



> > Usenet as of May 1981 was still *mostly* gateway groups. This
> > changed dramatically already by the winter of 1982, occasioning much
> > nervous concern.
>
> What sort of concern?

It wasn't concern that the quality of Usenet was diminished by having
independent content, or anything like that. Rather, it was concern
that the quality of Usenet was diminished by having a different *kind*
of content from the ARPAnet lists.

At this point, the only non-ARPAnet groups I'm sure existed by May 11,
1981 are {NET|net}.general, .news, .v7bugs, .periphs. Maybe .test. I
may be forgetting one or two - I'm *NOT* going to spend seven hours
researching *this post! - but the point is, the list was *absurdly*
short. The vast majority of Usenet at that time was just gateways
with (mostly from!) ARPAnet. And the exceptions were mostly concerned
with computers - .general was the exception, and even then already
there were complaints about overuse of net.general.

(Overuse of net.general was THE standing complaint of the entire
history of the net.* hierarchy. The group was split at least four
times, to create net.misc, net.followup, net.announce, and
mod.general, in successive failed attempts to keep everyone from
posting to the group everyone was supposed to read. The creation of
net.news.group, this group's predecessor, was at least as much a split
of net.general as anything else. Now, for most of net.general's
history, such complaints had some legitimacy, since there were
alternative places to post less-important stuff; I'm not trying to
excuse my own mispost to net.general which Google thankfully didn't
archive, in 1985. But such complaints in May 1981 are intensely
ironic because they sound the same, but at that time there *weren't*
alternative places to post less-important stuff!)

Anyway. The list grew quickly. The archives do preserve the creation
of net.eunice in May 1981, but shortly thereafter we get the creation
of totally different kinds of groups; and this time without even the
excuse that since ARPAnet was getting away with it Usenet could too
(eg. fa.sf-lovers). net.games, for one, dates to the summer of 1981.
By the winter, you had things like net.jokes, net.flame, net.this and
that; and whole sub-hierarchies (the first two were net.bugs.* -
computer stuff - and net.sport.* - not - quickly followed by
net.games.* and net.rec.*). I strongly suspect 1981 was the first
September, although if posting to the gateways was really first
implemented in September 1980, maybe that year all the
rambunctiousness just went into scaring the ARPAnetters.

Kinds of concern? Loud complaints about too many newsgroups, one of
the reasons the concept of namespace arose. Increasing concern over
netiquette - although it took until the fall of 1982 for the first
"net etiquette" document actually to be written, which suggests that
it wasn't *that* urgent a concern. Concern over inappropriate uses of
the net's resources (which at that time consisted, dollar-wise, of a
combination of donations by, and theft from, institutions and
corporations, for the most part); in the summer USENIX of 1982 there
was an agreement to delete a newsgroup for off-colour jokes, for
example. (This promptly led to the discovery that you don't get rid
of traffic by getting rid of the space for it, which apparently nobody
had previously known?) There were probably more.

I would sum it up by saying that while in 1980 Usenet was advertised
as "the poor man's ARPAnet", the gateways had quickly turned it into
"the poor man's access to ARPAnet"; but over 1981, it turned back into
the first thing, and people were quite surprised that the "poor" men
had different interests from the rich ones.

> I know that there was plenty of prejudice
> against Usenet on the ARPAnet. Here are three messages I sent on the
> subject in 1985. (Note that I hadn't yet noticed that the ARPAnet had
> turned into the Internet three years earlier):

Um, don't worry. It was still officially ARPAnet where you were,
wasn't it? (And the Internet had begun in 1975, anyway, from what I
understand.)

> This was, of course, long before Usenet was simply absorbed into the
> Internet.

Which I believe it still technically isn't. I may be wrong, but I
*think* the UUCPnet still exists and still in places carries Usenet
traffic, although I don't know if there are any sites more than one
hop away from the Internet, which would be one good criterion for
judging whether this is a real difference from absorption.



> > What I'm getting at is that I'd be interested in knowing whether
> > posts *from* Usenet really date only to September 1980,
>
> I can believe it. Usenet was only about a year old at the time, and
> had very few users, right?

Well, hmmm.

The date it was created seems to be utterly lost. Nothing I've read
says anything other than "late in 1979", and the oldest preserved
messages from April and May 1980 are obviously in medias res.

It was advertised by flyers at the two USENIXs in 1980. All copies of
the first one - January? - are believed to be lost (several sources);
John Quarterman apparently had access to a copy of the second one -
June? - when he wrote <The Matrix> late in the decade. Quotes from
one or both turn up here and there.

More to the point, A News was actually distributed on disks provided
to attendees at the summer USENIX, which meant that anyone who could
arrange a feed could join. (The fact that it wasn't distributed at
the January one suggests that Usenet was started genuinely late in
1979, such that no software was ready for prime time by January.)

Now, supposing that a bunch of schools went right back that summer and
joined up, they still wouldn't have many posters until September,
right? Or anyway late August.

The catch is that corporations were joining too. In particular, AT&T
was already all over Usenet. So although I've just outlined a very
reasonable argument for your suggestion, I don't buy it.

> > One difficulty here is that there's no guarantee that !'s were the
> > first way Usenet addresses were shown in gatewaying.
>
> Usenet addresses were pretty unmistakable. On Usenet, hostnames and
> usernames were always lowercase. On ARPAnet, hostnames and usernames
> were always uppercase.

Ah. So the exclamation point wasn't your only criterion, in picking
out that September 10 post?

> > All this is a lot of work to ask of you. Um, is there any chance
> > you'll be making any of your archives public? Ever?
>
> Much of the early stuff only exists in hardcopy. Maybe if I get a
> scanner.

Sorry; let me rephrase that. "any chance any of your archives will
become public? Ever?" (For all I *know*, you could have written a
will directing their destruction, for example.)

> But many of the lists I was on were at least partially
> closed, and I'm not sure whether the participants would appreciate
> having their postings resurrected at this late date.

Well, yes. This is why I wrote "any of". Sizable parts of my own
e-mail archives are organised by mailing list, but other sizable parts
aren't; some of those lists are closed and some aren't; etc. For all
I could tell, your archives of 1980 could be one big blob, so that if
you made it public you'd be making your private e-mail public too.

> > In a 1982 list of lists, Roger Duffey was said to have the oldest
> > archives, which is not a hopeful sign (see below). They were listed
> > as being at MIT, ...
>
> Yes, on one of the ITS machines. That last one of which was shut down
> in May 1990.

Damn.

So I take it there's no hope via that route? I was figuring hey, this
is MIT, they seem to keep *everything*...

(I'm still not clear on what your question was aimed at. You *don't*
have pre-1981 HUMAN-NETS archives? - but that's not how you phrased
it. You *do* have them but don't want the work/privacy
issues/whatever of making them available? You have *incomplete* ones
and want to fill in the gaps? Note that as Aahz Maruch noted, Mike
Peeler is indeed the person at panix.com with login zconcept, so could
be written to.)

[SF-LOVERS]


> > And it's really still running? Multiple indications point to its
> > having been dead since October or so.
>
> I have no evidence otherwise.
>
> I can't find anything newer than January 2001 on SFLOVERS.ORG, but as
> you discovered, that site is badly screwed up. Hopefully this is just
> because of their recent move from Rutgers.

The site is very glossy and unreliable; I suspect but don't know that
someone was hired to "design" it.

The FTP site shows last-modified dates of October 2001 on lots and
lots of stuff. This is what leads me to posit an October date of
death. I didn't look at 2001 from the FTP side to see what the last
issue it held was.

> > ... one of the things I found was an archive of the MSGGROUP mailing
> > list from !!1975 to 1986, ...
>
> I knew about that, too. The oldest message is from June 7, 1975.
> I don't know of *anything* older on the net. (Except, of course,
> material that didn't originate on the net, e.g. the works of
> Aristotle.)

Well, the early posts suggest to me that mailing lists existed prior
to that but had not existed very long (at most months, I'd guess), and
were still a) not well defined, b) not well served by software and c)
not an especially obvious choice for people who wanted to discuss
things in a group. That whole piece of the discussion could be summed
up "Mailing lists find themselves". (I suppose that was, also, the
actual purpose of the list, no?)



> > This strongly suggests to me that the MSGGROUP archive is yet
> > ANOTHER endangered archive, ...
>
> I downloaded the whole thing eight years ago. I'm sure many others
> have done the same. And that all copies of those messages will not
> be lost for as long as our civilization endures.

Yeah, prob'ly so, one hopes. I actually had something in there about
how I didn't have the disk space any more, but deleted it after I'd
downloaded the first year of SF-LOVERS, knowing I would (as I did) end
up downloading it too.



> > Oh, but good! Somebody already has!
> > <http://www.frostwarning.com/~quag7/archaeology.html>
>
> I see he also has archives of other old lists. But his SF-LOVERS link
> just points to the defunct Rutgers copy of the archives.

Do you see anything else besides SPACE?

> > Note that the same page lists an archive of SF-LOVERS back to
> > January 1980. But as of 1996, the archive reached back to the
> > list's beginning (in that incarnation) in, at latest, December
> > 1979;
>
> The SF-LOVERS archives have always extended back to September 1979.
> There was no change in that list until the digestification and
> moderation began in mid-January 1980.

I suspect what it is, is that the archives of the SF-LOVERS *Digest*
only reach to January 1980 because the digest itself does. So
confused people think that the archives they're offering also date
only to January 1980, not realising that SF-LOVERS wasn't always a
digest. ? Whatever the reason, that January 1980 date for the
beginning of the archives is widely accepted in what I looked at while
looking for it.

> > <http://www.greatcircle.com/lists/list-managers/digest/list-managers.199601>
> > (which I'm currently having no luck reaching ...
>
> It works for me.

Good. (And this gives me a platform from which to confess the
boneheadedness of saying that most of the lists archived at
greatcircle.com didn't have "obvious historical interest", jeeze
louise, thought I'd outgrown that sort of idea *years* ago...)



> The first message in it which mentions SF-LOVERS also mentions
> RISKS, and mistakenly says RISKS predates the Internet. RISKS
> doesn't, having started in August 1985. (It does pre-date
> modern URLs, as the 2nd issue says the first issue is archived
> at "SRI-CSL:<RISKS>RISKS-1.1". Today RISKS archives are at
> ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks and http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/.)
>
> RISKS has been gatewayed to the comp.risks newsgroup since April 1987.

Well, yeah, but before that it was gatewayed to fa.risks in October
(September?) 1985, and to mod.risks in between. RISKS was gatewayed
almost from its start.



> > There turns out also to be an ftp.sflovers.org, and *some* volumes
> > of the digest are easily available from it. Unfortunately, only
> > whole volumes *are* available, which means you have to download
> > megabytes at a time even if you know which issue you want, ...
>
> Yes, that's what I do. Disk space is so amazingly inexpensive these
> days, there's no reason *not* to download the whole archive to your PC
> if you have even the slightest interest.

Except that it's very clear that sflovers.org is funded entirely by
the generosity of Saul Jaffe (disk space, domain name) and Panix
(bandwidth). Enough people downloading megabyte-sized files might
demand enough bandwidth from Panix to erode that generosity. Since
the Web site is set up in such a way that you *have* to specify which
issue you want, no matter how inconvenient this is, I don't understand
why the FTP site would avoid the same economising. Maybe the
assumption is that very few people know the difference between FTP and
the Web.

> Imagine how much faster and easier it would have been for you to write
> your post if all the archives mentioned were on your own PC.

Well, one reason it took me so long to write is that by the end of it,
most of them *were*, the exceptions being Google (of course) and the
list-owners list.



> I hadn't noticed that some volumes are missing. I will talk to Saul
> Jaffe. If necessary, I can provide them to him. I have everything
> through the end of 2000.

("everything" is such a promising word. You have stuff from before
September 1979?)



> > I downloaded also volume 2, and that's where I found the first posts
> > from Berkeley, from Phil Karn in July 1980. He's also the *only*
> > poster from Berkeley (and not often at that) until mid-August.
> > So I'm now guessing that posting from Usenet to the lists *was*
> > possible before September, just nobody at Berkeley except for
> > Phil Karn actually knew about SF-LOVERS then.
>
> Maybe so. Berkeley was one of the first gateways between ARPAnet
> and Usenet. This was because it was one of the few machines on
> both networks. So a post *from* Berkeley itself wasn't necessarily
> being gatewayed.
>
> The July 14th posting you mention was from "Phil Karn via Csvax.JDD at
> BERKELEY".
>
> Maybe that *was* relayed, using a pre-exclamation-point syntax, and
> Phil wasn't actually at Berkeley. In August it was "Phil Karn via
> CSVAX.UUCP at BERKELEY" and in November "Phil Karn (ihnss!karn @
> berkeley)". I'll ask him. I'm assuming he's the same Phil Karn whose
> web page is at http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/. His page was last
> updated *yesterday*. That's an encouraging sign.

Ronda Hauben's chapter on early Usenet goes into some detail about how
the gateways were set up, and there's more such detail in the
Usenet.Hist archives, her main source for this (I think). Basically,
there were different machines on the two networks, and I *think* they
were in different departments; the people who set up the gateways got
permission to string cables between them.

So what I'm getting at is that it's perfectly possible that Phil Karn
was at the ARPAnet machine, with Berkeley's ARPAnet crowd, and found
this neat list called SF-LOVERS, but that he didn't mention it to
anyone (maybe he was aware of the previous incarnation that Sen.
Proxmire had shut down), and it took until later for someone who was
involved with the *Usenet* machine to find out and start waving the
right magic wands.

[Roger DuWayne Duffey II]


> > I'm sorry, but after 1982 (date of some papers that are easily
> > found) he basically vanishes.
>
> Yes. That's one problem with exclusively online communications.
> You never know what happened to someone.

Um, keep in mind that he did leave traces. We know he was at MIT, and
I *think* somewhere it's made clear in what capacity. This enables
further inquiries. It'd be easiest were he an undergrad - alumni
associations can put people in touch - and I gather he wasn't; but if
he was a grad student, his department might have some way of digging
up info, and so on.

(Or there's always soc.net-people... :-)

> > (And why did anyone ever claim that cyber-stalking was *easy*, for
> > heaven's sake?)
>
> Usually one is cyber-stalking only *one* person, and they don't have a
> twenty year head start on you. And if you're a cyber-stalker, you're
> required to be obsessive, spending 18 hours a day on the harassment.
> And your victim is required to be currently active online. It's
> cheating to evade a cyber-stalker by giving up the net. Didn't you
> read the manual?

Now, now. Usually one is cyber-stalking an entire suburb that was
foolish enough to put its housing records online, in a county that was
foolish enough to put its entire judicial records online, in a state
that was foolish enough to put its motor vehicle records online, etc.,
etc. And usually, within mere minutes, you can determine the natal
birth charts and morning walk routines of all of your stalkees. The
newspapers tell me this, so I know it must be so.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com

<http://these-survive.postilion.org/newsgroups/history/>
(and yes, I know that's the third URL I've used for this project in
this thread; but I think it's the keeper)

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 8:18:39 AM2/3/02
to
In article <8I07Q...@khms.westfalen.de>,
Kai Henningsen <kaih=8I07Q...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:

[tale's first post]


> Well, it's rather unlikely that his 1988-02-14 post to news.misc (and
> another to sci.med) was from a newbie - but it's the first Google finds
> for me:

[headers and quote snipped]



> Blech. So now nobody has to stand up for anything they say, or those people
> who elect to attach their names to things now get even more heavily/visciously
> flamed by people who have an even greater anonymous profile.
>
> And didn't you realize that it puts a TREMENDOUS cramp in e-mailing?
> The e-mail generated by people reponding to USENET postings is FAR
> greater than the number of postings themselves.
>
> I hope you weren't serious about that idea. It's hard to take it that way.
>
> *!*
> "Those who find they have nothing to go out of their way for soon find they
> have nothing at all." -- Tale Laslingis, during the Fourth History.

[rest of .sig snipped]

On the other hand, that doesn't sound like an old hand to *me*. Note
the highly non-standard .sig (.sig-delimiters *did* already exist by
then, didn't they?). Someone in his first year or two, with significant
experience already, but not yet above replying to posts like the one he
quoted, would be my guess.

(On a separate note, more clues as to where "tale" comes from, yay!

(And no, I hadn't actually *read* the posts I cited in my previous,
why do you ask? I was just interested in their dates...)

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 8:22:10 AM2/3/02
to
In article <8I07Q...@khms.westfalen.de>,
Kai Henningsen <kaih=8I07Q...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:

> j...@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein) wrote on 28.01.02 in
> <dbc8daca.02012...@posting.google.com>:
>
> > Um, the only time the Big 8 or their 3 predecessor hierarchies ever
> > had checkgroups posted as *control* messages, to the best of my
> > knowledge, is in mid-1985 when Gene Spafford was first trying the idea
> > out. He apparently got a bunch of complaints by e-mail, and so when
> > he started posting checkgroups again, a few months later, he only
> > posted them as regular posts.
>
> Untrue; I'm not sure about the current state, but at least a year or so
> ago, tale posted *parts* of them as control messages (to be precise, for
> those of the 8 hierarchies where there were no inet groups).

Thanks. I knew when I posted that I'd seen some hint of that from Russ
Allbery, but it hadn't been clear, and I knew that complete checkgroups
hadn't been posted that way. So I went ahead and posted what I did,
which I now see was too definitely worded.



> > The 1998-2000 checkgroups were definitely not posted as control
> > messages.
>
> I'm pretty certain I saw part-Big8 checkgroups around that time.

Here, on the other hand, I think I was actually correct: what I *meant*
by "the 1998-2000 checkgroups", at least, was the public posts (non-
control) that listed the entire Big 8 in one gigantic gulp.

Is that why they stopped being posted? Because the part- checkgroups
were being done the right way, and it didn't seem worth doing the
gigantic gulps any more?

Russ Allbery

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 12:34:04 PM2/3/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> writes:

> Here, on the other hand, I think I was actually correct: what I *meant*
> by "the 1998-2000 checkgroups", at least, was the public posts (non-
> control) that listed the entire Big 8 in one gigantic gulp.

> Is that why they stopped being posted? Because the part- checkgroups
> were being done the right way, and it didn't seem worth doing the
> gigantic gulps any more?

More likely some other random script broke, or was for some reason turned
off and then never got turned back on again.

--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

ba...@dmcom.net

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 12:41:36 PM2/3/02
to
Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> writes:
>

>
> > Is that why they stopped being posted? Because the part- checkgroups
> > were being done the right way, and it didn't seem worth doing the
> > gigantic gulps any more?
>
> More likely some other random script broke, or was for some reason turned
> off and then never got turned back on again.
>

Last time I looked at check group archive it had not been updated for
passed groups. Certainly a reason not to post it until updated.
Though as you say could be script broke someplace doing the updates.

--

news:alt.pagan FAQ at http://www.dmcom.net/bard/altpag.txt
news:alt.religion.wicca FAQ at http://www.dmcom.net/bard/arwfaq2.txt
news:news.groups FAQ at http://www.dmcom.net/bard/ngfaq.txt

Keith F. Lynch

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 12:19:07 AM2/4/02
to
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> ... if posting to the gateways was really first implemented in

> September 1980, maybe that year all the rambunctiousness just went
> into scaring the ARPAnetters.

I just wrote to Phil Karn, and he confirmed that he wrote the July 14
1980 message that appears in the SF-LOVERS archives, and that he wrote
in on Usenet. He was already aware of SF-LOVERS, of the ARPAnet, and
of course of Usenet.

>> Here are three messages I sent on the subject in 1985. (Note that
>> I hadn't yet noticed that the ARPAnet had turned into the Internet
>> three years earlier):

> Um, don't worry. It was still officially ARPAnet where you were,
> wasn't it?

Perhaps you are right. The last .ARPA suffixes didn't disappear from
email addresses until February 1990. (And in fact they're still around
if you know where to look.)

> (And the Internet had begun in 1975, anyway, from what I
> understand.)

No. The ARPAnet began in 1969. The Internet began when they switched
from NCP to TCP/IP in 1982. NCP only allowed for 255 hosts, as their
equivalent of IP addresses had just a single octet. On ARPAnet email
addresses had @ signs but no dots. On Internet, email addresses all
ended with .ARPA or .MIL. Until 1985, when .EDU, .GOV, and of course
the well known .COM first appeared, along with two letter country
codes such as .UK. (I didn't see .NET until 1986 or .ORG until 1987.
And almost nobody has ever seen the obscure .INT.)

>> This was, of course, long before Usenet was simply absorbed into
>> the Internet.

> Which I believe it still technically isn't. I may be wrong, but I
> *think* the UUCPnet still exists and still in places carries Usenet

> traffic, ...

Perhaps you're right. I just checked, and I last saw one (at least in
a message I saved) just last August.

> It was advertised by flyers at the two USENIXs in 1980. All copies
> of the first one - January? - are believed to be lost (several

> sources); ...

Too bad I wasn't there. I never throw away flyers. The person who
printed them didn't keep a copy for himself?

How many were printed? If it was more than a handful, it's hard to
imagine one will never turn up.

> Sorry; let me rephrase that. "any chance any of your archives will
> become public? Ever?" (For all I *know*, you could have written a
> will directing their destruction, for example.)

I have no such will.

> For all I could tell, your archives of 1980 could be one big blob,
> so that if you made it public you'd be making your private e-mail
> public too.

Some of it is, yes. Others are not.

I have located a big chunk of 1980 HUMAN-NETS which I printed in
April 1980. Before leaving work for the weekend, I dialed a 300 bps
printing terminal at work into a local TIP, and made a mental note of
which port it was on. When I got home, I dialed into the same TIP,
and directed the terminal on that port to connect to one of the ITS
machines at MIT. Perhaps MIT-DMS, ARPAnet host 77. (Security? What
security? It was only a military network, after all. Who needs
security?) I then connected to the same ITS site myself, located
the not-logged-in job that was coming from the appropriate TIP port,
slaved it, logged it in, and issued the ^R command. (The command to
view a file, TYPE on DOS and VMS, and cat on Unix, was ^R on ITS,
which was much less verbose than Unix. Many commands were single
characters. Many of them you didn't even need to press RETURN after
typing.) The archive file would then start filling the fanfold
paper. And a few hours (or days) at 300 bps can yield a reasonable
amount of text.

> So I take it there's no hope via that route? I was figuring hey,
> this is MIT, they seem to keep *everything*...

Of course there is hope. There is an ITS-LOVERS list out there
somewhere. Someone could ask them about locating the appropriate
backup tapes, and maybe finding some hardware somewhere that can
read them.

> You *don't* have pre-1981 HUMAN-NETS archives?

Yes I do. And as far as I can tell, nobody else does.

> You have *incomplete* ones and want to fill in the gaps?

Yes. Not that I can see any prospect of filling in those gaps.

> Note that as Aahz Maruch noted, Mike Peeler is indeed the person at
> panix.com with login zconcept, so could be written to.

I will do so.

As for SF-LOVERS, I wrote to Saul Jaffe, and he tells me that it's
been inactive since January of last year. I made him aware of the
problems with the new ftp site.

>>> <http://www.frostwarning.com/~quag7/archaeology.html>

>> I see he also has archives of other old lists. But his SF-LOVERS
>> link just points to the defunct Rutgers copy of the archives.

> Do you see anything else besides SPACE?

Nothing else that's specifically an old mailing list (or a newsgroup).

>> Yes, that's what I do. Disk space is so amazingly inexpensive these
>> days, there's no reason *not* to download the whole archive to your PC
>> if you have even the slightest interest.

> Except that it's very clear that sflovers.org is funded entirely by
> the generosity of Saul Jaffe (disk space, domain name) and Panix
> (bandwidth). Enough people downloading megabyte-sized files might
> demand enough bandwidth from Panix to erode that generosity.

I doubt that will be a concern unless tens of thousands of people try
downloading at once.

A whole year of SF-LOVERS sounds like a lot. And it *is* a lot when
you sit down to read it all. But in bandwidth or disk space it's only
equal to about a dozen full-screen images, or a tiny fraction of a
movie or a typical Microsoft downloadable bug fix. Lost in the noise.

> Since the Web site is set up in such a way that you *have* to
> specify which issue you want, no matter how inconvenient this is, I
> don't understand why the FTP site would avoid the same economising.

I suspect they were produced by two different people.

> ("everything" is such a promising word. You have stuff from before
> September 1979?)

Apparently not. I just checked my grubbiest most faded thermal paper
printouts, from, I think, December 1979. They begin with the exact
same September message. Which is just as well, since the terminal was
uppercase only, and who wants to read that?

> Usually one is cyber-stalking an entire suburb that was foolish
> enough to put its housing records online, in a county that was
> foolish enough to put its entire judicial records online, in a state
> that was foolish enough to put its motor vehicle records online,
> etc., etc. And usually, within mere minutes, you can determine the
> natal birth charts and morning walk routines of all of your stalkees.

I'm not concerned. I don't own a house, and I don't have a drivers
license. Or a non-drivers license, either. (What a bizarre concept
*that* is.)

As for judicial records, I've only had one scrape with the law, and I
emblazon that across my web pages for everyone to see. I hope lots of
people read that, and learn from it, and are spared the grief I went
through.

> The newspapers tell me this, so I know it must be so.

I find newspapers tend to be very accurate. Except when writing on
subjects I know something about.

> Despite the increasing volume of off-topic posts from Google, I'm
> still glad they offer posting. For one thing, it means that people
> using servers that actually *do* still accept cancels can follow up
> to articles that get caught by rogue cancellers.

Was my article caught by a rogue canceler? I wouldn't know, since my
ISP no longer honors cancels, due to rogue cancelers.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 2:19:06 PM2/6/02
to
In article <a3l5kb$m0o$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> > ... if posting to the gateways was really first implemented in
> > September 1980, maybe that year all the rambunctiousness just went
> > into scaring the ARPAnetters.
>
> I just wrote to Phil Karn, and he confirmed that he wrote the July 14
> 1980 message that appears in the SF-LOVERS archives, and that he wrote
> in on Usenet. He was already aware of SF-LOVERS, of the ARPAnet, and
> of course of Usenet.

Good. I much prefer the earlier date.

(By the way, Phil Karn was one of two people to originate the idea
of sub-hierarchies, more or less simultaneously, November 29, 1981.
The other was Paul Lustgarten, who then proceeded to create what may
have been the first third-level group, net.auto.vw, by cross-posting
to it December 2, 1981. My results post gave credit for third-level
groups to Mark Horton's posting of December 10, but it appears that
most of the ones mentioned therein had in fact already been created.)

The earlier date does not, of course, actually invalidate my suggestion
that the September 1980 troublemakers (if any) were too busy making
trouble on mailing lists to make trouble also by creating new groups.
It just means they weren't the first Usenet people to post to the
lists.



> > (And the Internet had begun in 1975, anyway, from what I
> > understand.)
>
> No. The ARPAnet began in 1969. The Internet began when they switched
> from NCP to TCP/IP in 1982. NCP only allowed for 255 hosts, as their
> equivalent of IP addresses had just a single octet. On ARPAnet email
> addresses had @ signs but no dots. On Internet, email addresses all
> ended with .ARPA or .MIL. Until 1985, when .EDU, .GOV, and of course
> the well known .COM first appeared, along with two letter country
> codes such as .UK. (I didn't see .NET until 1986 or .ORG until 1987.
> And almost nobody has ever seen the obscure .INT.)

(Long quote coming; any reader who doesn't care about this please
skip to the next quote from Keith Lynch.)

I wasn't there for any of this, but here's what Janet Abbate says
about it in her <Inventing the Internet>, pp. 131 to 133:

"The initial version of TCP was specified in 1974. Bolt, Beranek and
Newman had an implementation of TCP for the TENEX operating system
completed in February of 1975, though it was not reported to be
debugged until November. BBN also built its first experimental gateway
in 1975, connecting an in-house research network to the ARPANET.
Stanford University implemented TCP during 1975, and in November the
BBN and Stanford groups set up an experimental TCP connection between
their sites. The early tests revealed a number of deficiencies in
the design, forcing the Internet group to revise the TCP specification
(McKenzie 1991a).

"The BBN group proposed testing TCP over the satellite network, and
they began installing experimental gateways at BBN (in 1975), at
University College London (in November of 1976), and at the Norwegian
Defense Research Establishment (in June of 1977) (Travers 1991). As
they conducted tests over these links, the Stanford and University
College London researchers discovered that badly programmed
implementations of TCP could drastically degrade the network's
performance (Bennett and Hinchley 1978, p. 406). ... By late 1977,
however, the test sites were ready to try out the new protocols,
and ARPA demonstrated its first multi-network connection. Experimenters
sent packets from a van on a California freeway through PRNET to an
ARPANET gateway, then through the ARPANET to a SATNET gateway on the
East Coast, over SATNET to Europe, and finally back through the
ARPANET to California ....

"The successful three-way interconnection of the ARPANET, PRNET, and
SATNET represented the beginning of the Internet as an operational
system. ... After the demonstration, a number of new defense and
research networks joined ARPA's evolving Internet, including the
Defense Communications Agency's Experimental Data Network, the
Army's Fort Bragg packet radio network, various Ethernet LANs at
Xerox PARC, an experimental packet radio network at BBN, the network
of MIT's Laboratory of Computer Science, and the British Post Office's
Experimental Packet Switching System (Cerf and Kirstein 1978, p. 302)."

Bibliography:

Bennett, Christopher J., and Andrew J. Hinchley. 1978. "Measurements
of the Transmission Control Protocol." <Computer Networks> 2: 396-408.

Cerf, Vinton G., and Peter T. Kirstein. 1978. "Issues in Packet-Network
Interconnection." <Proceedings of the IEEE> 66 (11): 1386-1408.

McKenzie, Alex. 1991a. Email to Michael Hennebe, 20 May. McKenzie
box 2, Bolt, Beranek and Newman library.

Travers, Ginny. 1991. Email to Alex McKenzie, 22 May. McKenzie box
2, Bolt, Beranek and Newman library.

Note that the latter two references, which underpin my 1975 date,
are probably post-facto reminiscences, and as I've found by doing
the newsgroup-creation chronology, such reminiscences are frequently
wrong, especially with regard to things like dates. So 1977 might
be a better safe choice; I chose 1975 because *if* those reminiscences
(?) got the date right, that's the point at which connections between
networks were first handled by TCP, which strikes me as a legitimate
functional definition of "Internet". (TCP was later split into TCP
and IP, in 1978. Abbate p. 130, citing p. 179 of Danny Cohen, 1978,
"On Interconnection of Computer Networks", in Proceedings of Interlinking
of Computer Networks, Bonas, France. [sic])

> > It was advertised by flyers at the two USENIXs in 1980. All copies
> > of the first one - January? - are believed to be lost (several
> > sources); ...
>
> Too bad I wasn't there. I never throw away flyers. The person who
> printed them didn't keep a copy for himself?
>
> How many were printed? If it was more than a handful, it's hard to
> imagine one will never turn up.

John Quarterman's <The Matrix>, which I tend to find unreliable,
says:

Ellis et al. 1980. Ellis, James, Truscott, Tom, and Daniel, Stephen,
"Invitation to Join a General Access UNIX Network," USENIX Association,
Boulder, CO, January 1980. About 40 copies of this flyer were
distributed; none still exist.

Daniel et al. 1980. Daniel, Stephen, Ellis, James, and Truscott, Tom,
"USENET - A General Access UNIX Network," Duke University, Durham, NC,
Summer 1980. This is a slightly modified copy of the original flyer
of January 1980.

This is on p. 272.

Now, I've been looking over the Usenet.Hist mailing list archives
since you wrote that, and finding there that Bruce Jones was claiming
(on a mailing list where Steve Bellovin and Tom Truscott were active
contributors, and where at later dates so were Jim Ellis and Stephen
Daniel) to have "the original" invitation. He said he'd type it into
his FTP archive rather than scan it. This unfortunately is not one
of the items Henry Edward Hardy ended up preserving in plaintext,
*nor* was it ever available in the HTML version of Bruce Jones's
stuff at <http://communication.ucsd.edu/>. But if it could be
found, presumably the title would settle the question of which
version it was.

(By the way, it *appears* that Hardy's copy of the Usenet.Hist
*mailing list* archives is complete except for maybe five posts,
not at the end but in the middle. The UCSD copy confuses matters
by saying the list lived years longer than it really did; the last
post is 1993, not 1997.)

URLs in the start post of the thread with the results, or at my
website as <http://these-survive.postilion.org/newsgroups/history/start-post>.



> I have located a big chunk of 1980 HUMAN-NETS which I printed in
> April 1980. Before leaving work for the weekend, I dialed a 300 bps
> printing terminal at work into a local TIP, and made a mental note of
> which port it was on. When I got home, I dialed into the same TIP,
> and directed the terminal on that port to connect to one of the ITS
> machines at MIT. Perhaps MIT-DMS, ARPAnet host 77. (Security? What
> security? It was only a military network, after all. Who needs
> security?) I then connected to the same ITS site myself, located
> the not-logged-in job that was coming from the appropriate TIP port,
> slaved it, logged it in, and issued the ^R command. (The command to
> view a file, TYPE on DOS and VMS, and cat on Unix, was ^R on ITS,
> which was much less verbose than Unix. Many commands were single
> characters. Many of them you didn't even need to press RETURN after
> typing.) The archive file would then start filling the fanfold
> paper. And a few hours (or days) at 300 bps can yield a reasonable
> amount of text.

So this, then, *is* your 1980 HUMAN-NETS archive? Sigh. (Not to
insult you, but finding out that it's both hard copy and limited
to stuff from April or before is somewhat disappointing.)



> > So I take it there's no hope via that route? I was figuring hey,
> > this is MIT, they seem to keep *everything*...
>
> Of course there is hope. There is an ITS-LOVERS list out there
> somewhere. Someone could ask them about locating the appropriate
> backup tapes, and maybe finding some hardware somewhere that can
> read them.

Hmmm. You want to try this, or are you encouraging me to? Note
that tomorrow I'll be cutting off my home net access, which makes
things in general somewhat harder to do.

(For what it's worth, two ITS's contents are available, in abridged
form, at <http://www.its.os.org/>, courtesy of Alan Bawden, whose
address is available from a page linked thereto. I don't see
HUMAN-NETS in either, unfortunately. It's *possible* that he
left it out for fear of copyright violations, but since he is
making several other lists' archives available, I kinda doubt it.)



> > Note that as Aahz Maruch noted, Mike Peeler is indeed the person at
> > panix.com with login zconcept, so could be written to.
>
> I will do so.

Any results?

(And did you ever write to the Don Erway whose address is known?
I haven't been writing anybody about this myself, FYI.)



> As for SF-LOVERS, I wrote to Saul Jaffe, and he tells me that it's
> been inactive since January of last year. I made him aware of the
> problems with the new ftp site.

Speaking of which, it would make me a smidgen happier if I could
get volumes 3 and 4 onto my hard drive before taking my net
connect down. If you see this in time, please feel free to let
me know via e-mail whether this is doable from your copies. Thanks.



> > Since the Web site is set up in such a way that you *have* to
> > specify which issue you want, no matter how inconvenient this is, I
> > don't understand why the FTP site would avoid the same economising.
>
> I suspect they were produced by two different people.

Indeed it's hard to imagine the person who produced the Web site being
willing to *touch* an FTP site...



> > The newspapers tell me this, so I know it must be so.
>
> I find newspapers tend to be very accurate. Except when writing on
> subjects I know something about.

I shouldn't be so harsh - I actually used to do journalism myself.
But I was floored at the contrast between my difficulties and the
scare stories I read. (I tried cyber-stalking Matt Glickman last
night and ran into yet more trouble. Two probably-false positives,
no definite matches. Snarl.)



> > Despite the increasing volume of off-topic posts from Google, I'm
> > still glad they offer posting. For one thing, it means that people
> > using servers that actually *do* still accept cancels can follow up
> > to articles that get caught by rogue cancellers.
>
> Was my article caught by a rogue canceler? I wouldn't know, since my
> ISP no longer honors cancels, due to rogue cancelers.

Yep, it must've been. At least, this news server doesn't seem to suffer
from bad propagation at all often (news.* is the only place I ever
see holes in thread trees), which strongly suggests it was rogue
cancelled.

Some rogue-cancelled articles here get resurrected; I'm not sure why
yours didn't.

Joe Bernstein

unread,
Feb 17, 2002, 10:18:20 AM2/17/02
to
This post documents the creation of groups in the net.* hierarchy that
were listed in lists of newsgroups by the end of 1982. (It includes
those NET.* groups that were renamed to net.*, too. I've now searched
the A-News Archive and determined that the last posts to NET.* names
preserved there date to September 12, 1981, while the first posts
to net.* names preserved there appear to date to May 26, 1981.)

It is thus an *incomplete* study of newsgroup creation in the early
years of Usenet. I have not covered groups proposed but not created,
nor the (possibly larger!) set of groups created but not listed.
Perhaps the majority of NET.* or net.* groups with surviving posts
from the spring and summer of 1981 never actually made it onto the
lists which were first to be compiled that autumn.

In addition, I've excluded fa.* groups, whose creation operated under
quite different rules (basically, you created an fa.* group by
creating a gateway, and weren't expected to ask anyone's permission;
something similar carried over later to mod.* and inet groups). I've
similarly excluded the NET.* groups presumed to have been some fa.*
groups' precursors.

I've put the groups in order by the earliest date referenced for each
(disregarding bogus dates for posts). The entry for each group
derives from the entries for it in the hierarchy summaries I posted
on NET.* and net.* last month; the single biggest change, other than
adding what info I have on the group's creation, is removal of talk
about the renaming of NET.* to net.*.

Joe Bernstein

Order in this post: general, v7bugs, news, periphs, unix-wizards,
eunice, info-terms, 2bsd-bugs, test, all, games, columbia, space,
ham-radio, applice, sources, vwrabbit, auto, aviation, mail, ucds,
chess, rec, auto.vw, jokes, rumor, games.rogue, sport, sport.football,
sport.baseball, bugs.2bsd, bugs.4bsd, bugs.v7, cycle, sport.hockey,
suicide, trivia, rec.bridge, games.trivia, bugs.uucp, rec.boat,
rec.ski, lsi, movies, news.b, bugs, bugs.u3, jokes.q, rec.scuba,
music, misc, news.group, games.frp, taxes, oa, lan, micro, news.map,
news.directory, news.newsite, flame, travel, sf-lovers, micro.zx,
adm.site, records, cse, cooks, math, wanted, info-micro, games.pacman,
video, followup, wines, dcom, games.dip, audio, usenix, lang.apl,
rec.skydive, rec.photo, lang, lang.lisp, rec.birds, works, nlang, cms,
games.emp, railroad, jobs, research, tv, tv.sctv, rec.caves, jokes.d,
micro.432, games.pbm, micro.68k, wobegon, notes, poems, physics,
startrek, micro.pc, singles, invest, rec.coins, news.config,
games.video, usoft.s, usoft, micro.atari, lang.pascal, lang.c, arch,
lang.ada, social, politics, lang.st80, lang.prolog, bugs.usg.

Order of oldest evidence of the group's actual existence:
(Asterisk indicates that I'm not confident it wasn't created earlier.)

April 1980 - *general
May 1980 - *v7bugs
June 1980 - *news
July 1980 -
August 1980 -
September 1980 -
October 1980 -
November 1980 -
December 1980 -
January 1981 -
February 1981 -
March 1981 -
April 1981 - *periphs
May 1981 - *unix-wizards, eunice
June 1981 - *info-terms
July 1981 - 2bsd-bugs, *test, all, games
September 1981 - columbia, space
October 1981 - ham-radio, applic, *sources, vwrabbit
November 1981 - aviation, ucds, chess
December 1981 - auto.vw, jokes, rumor, games.rogue, sport.football,
sport.baseball, sport.hockey, *suicide, bugs.4bsd, cycle,
bugs.2bsd, bugs.v7, games.trivia, bugs.uucp, rec.ski,
movies, news.b, jokes.q, rec.bridge, rec.scuba, lsi,
*bugs, music
January 1982 - *auto, taxes, games.frp, lan, oa, flame, news.group,
news.map, news.newsite, sf-lovers, travel, micro,
news.directory, records, micro.zx, cooks, *info-micro
February 1982 - adm.site, *misc, *cse, math, video, games.pacman,
followup, wines
March 1982 - *trivia, *usenix, dcom, *wanted, lang.apl, lang.lisp,
rec.photo
April 1982 - works, rec.birds, cms, games.dip, games.emp, railroad
May 1982 - jobs, *rec.skydive, research, *audio, tv, tv.sctv
June 1982 - *nlang, rec.caves, *sport, jokes.d, micro.432
July 1982 - wobegon, micro.68k, notes, games.pbm
August 1982 - physics, startrek, poems, micro.pc
September 1982 - singles, invest, rec.coins, news.config, *lang, mail
October 1982 - games.video, usoft, usoft.s, lang.c, lang.pascal, arch,
*rec.boat
November 1982 - lang.ada, micro.atari, social, politics, *bugs.u3,
lang.prolog
December 1982 - lang.st80, *rec

(net.bugs.usg is not provably older than 1983. net.bizarre, which
was not listed in the lists until 1985, also has archived posts
back to 1983, by the way.)

NET.general
net.general
This was undoubtedly the first NET.* newsgroup, and the earliest
post surviving that I know of is dated April 26, 1980 (see the
Usenet.Hist archive).
NET.general was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News
distribution of around June 5, 1980.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Usenet news of general interest
Description line (10/16/1986): *Important*, timely announcements
of worldwide interest. (Note the description of net.misc.)
Renamed to misc.misc (representing a merger with net.followup,
net.misc, and, technically, net.suicide).

NET.v7bugs
net.v7bugs
The earliest surviving posts to NET.v7bugs are a spate of posts by
Mark Horton dated May 18, 1980.
NET.v7bugs was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News
distribution of around June 5, 1980.
Listed November 29, 1981 only.
Since the November 29, 1981 list contained no description lines,
none survive for this newsgroup.
Renamed to net.bugs.v7 on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.

NET.news
net.news
The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to NET.news dated May 16,
1980, but this has proven to be a bogus date, for message-ID
Aucbonyx.118; note that message-ID Aucbonyx.119 has date
June 17, 1981.
NET.news was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News
distribution of around June 5, 1980. Several sources supply a
list of the three earliest newsgroups which doesn't include
NET.news, but they're wrong.
No post earlier than May 13, 1981 appears to be archived anywhere.
Listed November 29, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): News about netnews
Double-listed January 26 to March 9, and "November 20", 1982 for
reasons unknown (each listing had a different newsgroup line, but
the lines were complementary and may have been intended as a
single two-line description).
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussions of USENET itself.
Renamed to news.misc.

NET.periphs
net.periphs
Archived April 30, 1981 to ...
There is no indication in surviving April and May, 1981 posts that
this was a new group.
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Hardware peripherals
Description line (11/1/1986): Peripheral devices.
Renamed to comp.periphs.

NET.unix-wizards
net.unix-wizards
The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to FA.unix-wizards dated
April 7, 1981. This is a bogus date, for message-ID Acincy.151;
the real date should be around July 3 (the date of message-ID
Acincy.150). The group was fa.unix-wizards.
Renamed to fa.unix-wizards on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Renamed from fa.unix-wizards, probably by Andrew Knutsen,
beginning about December 24, 1981. In any event, posts to this
name (as the lowercasing of fa.unix-wizards' old name,
NET.unix-wizards) are archived in fits and starts from May 13,
1981 to December 22, 1981.
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): ARPANET mailing list for UNIX
Wizards. Anything and everything relating to UNIX is discussed
here. This list is gatewayed to the ARPANET mailing list but
appears like a regular newsgroup to USENET.
In the lists dated March 19 and "November 20", 1982, listed as a
gatewayed newsgroup.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussions, bug reports, and fixes
on and for UNIX. Not for the weak of heart.
(This was one of the two last surviving two-line descriptions.)
Renamed to comp.unix.wizards.

NET.eunice
net.eunice
Proposed May 27, 1981 by Jim McGinness (as a PS) and by Bill
Mitchell (as a full post). It isn't clear whether Bill Mitchell
had seen Jim McGinness's post.
May have been created later that day by Mark Horton posting to it.
Listed November 29, 1981 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): The Eunice Unix emulator for VMS
Description line (11/1/1986): The SRI Eunice system.
Renamed to comp.os.eunice.

NET.info-terms
net.info-terms
Archived June 10, 1981 to ...
Whether or not that post accidentally created the group, the
name almost certainly originated as NET.info-terms, the
previous name of fa.info-terms. (That post was a cross-
post, believe it or not, which may explain why it was
posted rather than mailed; its author, Bill Shannon, must
have known how to post to fa.* groups.) Mark Horton posted
a reference to it as a bogus group on December 10, 1981,
in a post where he also suggested compiling a list of
newsgroups.
No later than June, 1982, however, it developed traffic.
Removal proposed November 20, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum.
Listed November 21, 1982.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info on terminals.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as
duplicative of fa.info-terms.
May have been re-created December 6, 1982 by Dave Taylor.
Reported as existing again by Adam Buchsbaum, December 14, 1982.
Listed January 23, 1983 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): All sorts of terminals.
Renamed to comp.terminals.

NET.2bsd-bugs
net.2bsd-bugs
Created July 10, 1981 by Mark Horton. I find no discussion
archived.
Listed on November 29, 1981 only.
Since the November 29, 1981 list contained no description lines,
none survive for this newsgroup.
Renamed to net.bugs.2bsd on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.

net.test
Sometimes falsely said to have been one of the first three
newsgroups. There is no evidence that NET.test ever existed
known to me, but it probably did, all things considered.
Archived July 10, 1981; ...
Listed December 16, 1981 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Test messages, not interesting.
Description line (10/16/1986): For testing of network software.
Very boring.
Renamed to misc.test.

NET.ALL
net.all
Created July 14, 1981 by Ernie Harkins. No discussion of this
creation is archived.
Listed on December 16, 1981 only.
Description line (12/16/1981): All usenet-wide news groups
The 12/16/1981 list was written by Mark Horton, who as late as the
1983 RFC 850 was using "all" as a sort of equivalent of "*". In
this context, "net.all" probably meant "The net.* hierarchy".
Since net.all did not appear in Mark Horton's related December 23
"list", I'm inclined to think it wasn't meant to be seen as a
group in the December 16 list.
Created December 10, 1982 by Tom Ballister, who may have been trying
to spam a series of announcements about replacing machines at the
site he ran. This creation was met with much denunciation because
the group's name broke all kinds of software rules.

net.games
Proposed July 30, 1981 by Peter Langston, apparently to replace
a previous suggestion of net.empire whose history is not archived.
Probably created a few minutes later by Peter Langston. This would
appear, therefore, to have been the first net.* group that survived
to become "official" with a specific topic that wasn't about
computers; but note that much of its early traffic had to do with
computer games.
Listed November 29, 1981 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): Computer games of the /usr/games
type
Description line (12/1/1986): Games and computer games.
Renamed to rec.games.misc.

net.columbia
May have been created September 16, 1981 under the name Columbia,
and then renamed to net.columbia that day by Adam Buchsbaum.
I find no prior discussion and I don't know whether Adam
Buchsbaum was the creator.
This would be the first net.* group that survived to become "official"
with a specific topic that was *unequivocally* not about computers.
(?Re-)created September 17, 1981, by Adam Buchsbaum.
Listed November 29, 1981 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): News about the space program
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (10/16/1986): The space shuttle and the STS
program.
Renamed to sci.space.shuttle.
Note: Despite its disliked name and unorthodox creation, this
turned out to be a quite successful newsgroup.

net.space
Created September 23, 1981 by Steve Bellovin during a debate over
whether net.columbia should have some other name. No further
posts to it are archived for some time to come.
Re-suggested January 6, 1982 by Andew Knutsen.
Re-created January 12, 1982 by him (his own post to create it is
dated some hours later than a post sent by Stuart Cracraft, which
however was gatewayed, and I believe Andrew Knutsen at that time
controlled the relevant gateway...).
Listed February 3, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (2/3/1982): Space programs and research,
gatewayed to fa.space
In the March 19, 1982 list, listed as a gatewayed group.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (10/16/1986): Space, space programs, space
related research, etc.
Renamed to sci.space.

net.ham-radio
Announced October 8, 1981 by Jim Kutsch. I find no discussion.
Archived October 8, 1981 to ...
Listed November 29, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Ham radio
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (12/1/1986): Amateur Radio practices, contests,
events, rules, etc.
Renamed to rec.ham-radio.

net.applic
Created October 11, 1981 by Scott Baden. This ostensibly followed
his proposal, but no proposal is archived; there is archived a
post of his dated September 27, 1982, which could be alleged to
hint at the possibility of some such newsgroup someday existing,
if you read it generously. Re-announced by him November 13, 1981.
Listed November 29, 1981 to December 15, 1983 without
interruption.
Archived December 15, 1981 to April 6, 1982; July 5, 1982; October
6 and 23, 1982; August 16, 1983; September 22, 1983; October 25
to 26, 1983; February 3, 1984. (I omitted all cross-posts.)
Description line (12/16/1981): Applicative programming languages
Description line (12/15/1983): Applicative language and related
architecture.
Proposed for rmgrouping December 16, 1983 by Chuq Von Rospach.
Rmgrouped on or near December 28, 1983 by Chuq Von Rospach.
Apparently re-created some days before November 18, 1984, on
which date Gene Spafford apparently rmgrouped it again.

net.sources
Referred to as already existing in an October 27, 1981 post by
Mark Horton. This group appears not normally to have been
archived, which makes it problematic to determine when it was
created. The oldest archived post is a cross-post January 10,
1982.
Listed January 26, 1982 to April 1, 1987 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): A place for sources and the
distribution of material in large volume. More for software
distribution that for general info.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to April 1, 1987, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (4/1/1987): For the posting of software packages
& documentation.
Renamed to (moderated) comp.sources.misc.
Listed May 3, 1987 as "obsolete".

net.vwrabbit
Archived October 27 to December 15, 1981; June 9, 1982; March 22,
1983. The October 27, 1981 post, by Robert Henry, expresses
gladness that there's interest in creating a VW Rabbit
newsgroup, but no such interest is archived, so this may simply
be a rhetorical dodge to justify a post creating the group
(which would be my analysis of several other examples too).
Listed November 29, 1981 only.
Since the November 29, 1981 list contained no description lines,
none survive for this newsgroup.
Renamed to net.auto.vw on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.

net.auto
Proposed October 28, 1981 by Berry Kercheval.
Subsequently discussed in the context of renaming net.vwrabbit.
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.auto.all) to December 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Car owner discussions/queries
Archived January 2, 1982 to ...
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): Automobiles, automotive products
and laws.
Renamed to rec.autos.

net.aviation
Proposed (as net.airheads) November 5, 1981 by Graham Ross.
Created November 10, 1981 by Andrew Koenig.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Aviation topics
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): Aviation rules, means, and methods.
Renamed to rec.aviation.

net.mail
Suggested November 19, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Proposed September 21, 1982 by Mark Horton. (Interestingly, this
like the prior occasion was prompted by someone else's
suggestion of something else.)
Created September 28, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on the
proposed new mail standards.
Description line (11/1/1986): Proposed new mail/network
standards.
Renamed to comp.mail.uucp.

net.ucds
Possibly renamed from net.draw on or near November 19, 1981 by
Andy Tannenbaum.
Archived December 3, 1981 to ...
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 15, 1983 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): VLSI draw software system.
Description line (12/15/1983): The UNIX circuit design system.

net.chess
Proposed November 22, 1981 by Stuart Cracraft.
Created November 25, 1981 by him.
Listed December 16, 1981 to February 3, 1982, and then November 21,
1982 to August 15, 1985, during each interval without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Computer chess
Description line (8/15/1985): Chess & computer chess.
Apparently renamed to net.games.chess.
Notes: I have no explanation for its absence from three lists in
1982, but will note that a renaming to net.games.chess, or merger
with net.games, was more or less constantly being urged by various
people, from before the group's creation until its demise.

net.rec
Suggested November 29, 1981 by Dave Curry.
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.rec.all) to December 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Participant sports (recreation)
Archived December 7, 1982 to ...
Description line (12/1/1986): Recreational/participant sports.
Renamed to rec.misc.
Note: It is not at all clear to me that the group existed before
December 7, 1982, but there's no sign that the first archived
posting is to a new group. It was common before the Great
Renaming for namespace nodes to be listed as newsgroups whether
or not they really existed (cf. for example mod.religion).

net.auto.vw
Probably created December 2, 1981 by Paul Lustgarten's posting
to it. Lustgarten had been one of the first to propose sub-
hierarchies, three days earlier.
Archived December 2, 1981; January 2 to February 5, 1982; May 14
to August 19, 1982; November 15 to 29, 1982.
Renamed from net.vwrabbit on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 21, 1982 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Volkswagen Rabbit
Rmgrouping proposed November 20, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as "too
specific" and not "used much".
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum.

net.jokes
Proposed December 2, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Apparently created by Mark Horton, roughly one minute later.
With a light bulb joke.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): The latest good joke you heard
Description line (12/1/1986): Jokes and the like. May be
somewhat offensive.
Renamed to rec.humor.

net.rumor
Proposed December 2, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Apparently created about forty-five minutes later by an
intentionally anonymous poster. (This prompted, four days
later, Matt Glickman's comment about security that has
since become a .sig-quote.)
Listed December 16, 1981 to September 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Rumors about software, hardware,
etc.
Description line (9/16/1986): For the posting of rumors.
Renamed to talk.rumors.

net.games.rogue
Probably created December 3, 1981 by Peter Langston. I find no
discussion related, but the idea of hierarchical newsgroups
had only been proposed days earlier; this group's creator may therefore
have been waiting only for this idea to create it.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): That wonderful game
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion and hints about Rogue.
Renamed to rec.games.rogue.

net.sport
Proposed *as a hierarchy* December 6, 1981 by Matt Glickman.
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.sport.all) to December 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): All spectator sports mailing lists
Archived June 15, 1982 to ...
Description line (12/1/1986): Spectator sports.
Renamed to rec.sport.misc.
Note: It is not at all clear to me that the group existed before
June 15, 1982, but there's no sign that the first archived
posting is to a new group. It was common before the Great
Renaming for namespace nodes to be listed as newsgroups whether
or not they really existed (cf. for example mod.religion).
Amusingly, the June 15, 1982 posting is a proposal *for* a new
subgroup on cricket, the sport which then dominated posts to this
group for the next month.

net.sport.football
Created December 6, 1981 by Matt Glickman.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Football
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about football.
Renamed to rec.sport.football.

net.sport.baseball
Apparently created December 7, 1981 by Adam Buchsbaum.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Baseball
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about baseball.
Renamed to rec.sport.baseball.

net.bugs.2bsd
Proposed December 8, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Renamed from net.2bsd-bugs on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Archived December 11, 1981 to ...
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Berkeley pdp-11 distribution
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UNIX* version 2BSD
related bugs.
(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)
Renamed to comp.bugs.2bsd.

net.bugs.4bsd
Proposed December 8, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Archived December 10, 1981 to ... (The December 10 post may have
created the group, depending on what the date header means.)
Renamed from net.4bsd-bugs on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton. (net.4bsd-bugs is not on any newsgroup list in my data
set, which is why it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it
existed.)
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Berkeley VAX distribution
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UNIX version 4BSD
related bugs.
(And no, I don't know why UNIX here is *not* asterisked.)
Renamed to comp.bugs.4bsd.

net.bugs.v7
Proposed December 8, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Renamed from net.v7bugs on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark
Horton.
Archived December 11, 1981 to ...
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Version 7 bugs
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UNIX V7 related bugs.
Renamed to comp.bugs.misc (representing a merger with net.bugs and
net.bugs.uucp).

net.cycle
Proposed as net.motorcycle December 8, 1981 by Ken. (Note that
net.motorcycle and net.mc were both also created; neither appears
in this document because neither ever appeared on a newsgroup list
in my dataset; I know they existed.)
Created on or near December 10, 1981 by Mark Horton. This appears
to be the first archived reference to this name.
Listed December 16, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (12/16/1981): Motorcycle topics
Description line (12/1/1986): Motorcycles and related products
and laws.
Renamed to rec.motorcycles.

net.sport.hockey
Possibly created December 8, 1981 by Rob Williams.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Hockey
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about hockey.
Renamed to rec.sport.hockey.

net.suicide
Created December 8, 1981 by Rob Pike. The initial post appears to
have been a joke. Unsurprisingly, there is no prior discussion
archived; surprisingly, I also see little discussion following.
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on suicide.
Description line (10/16/1986): Suicide, laws, ethics, and its
causes and effects (!).
Renamed to misc.misc (technically, representing a merger with
net.followup, net.general, and net.misc; realistically,
representing the removal of the group).
Notes: This is effectively the first example of removing a group
by renaming it to misc.misc. One could say the same of the other
three groups, I suppose, but both net.followup and net.misc had
been created in what amounted to (failed) splits of net.general,
so I don't see their re-merger as a meaningful example of group
removal; in contrast, net.suicide had led an entirely independent
existence until this point.

net.trivia
Proposed December 10, 1981 by Dave Curry. (On this see also
net.games.trivia, below.)
Archived March 2, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Trivia questions and answers.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as
duplicative of net.games.trivia.
Note: While it probably was accidentally created by someone
trying to post to net.games.trivia, it definitely took on a
life of its own.

net.rec.bridge
Suggested (as net.games.bridge) December 11, 1981 by Bob Fabrizio.
Created December 17, 1981 by him.
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Subgroup of net.rec - contract
bridge.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in bridge.
Renamed to rec.games.bridge.

net.games.trivia
Created December 12, 1981 by Dave Curry. I find no discussion
related. See on this also net.trivia, above.
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Trivia contests and results.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about trivia.
Renamed to rec.games.trivia.

net.bugs.uucp
Presumably did not exist before December 10, 1981, when Mark
Horton created the sub-hierarchy net.bugs.*.
Archived December 14, 1981; June 11, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for UUCP related bugs.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of UUCP related bugs.
Renamed to comp.bugs.misc (representing a merger with net.bugs and
net.bugs.v7).

net.rec.boat
Suggested (without a name) December 14, 1981 by John Winterton.
Suggested January 18, 1982 by him.
Listed March 19, 1982 to December 1, 1986, interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line (3/19/1982): boating (sail and motor???)
Archived October 29, 1982 to ... The first October 29 post is
by Jeff Smits, and is clearly meant to awaken the group, and
succeeded. What is not clear is whether there had been any
prior traffic.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in boating.
Renamed to rec.boats.

net.rec.ski
Archived December 14, 1981 to ...
Renamed from net.ski on or near December 16, 1981 by Mark Horton.
(net.ski is not on any newsgroup list in my data set, which is why
it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it existed.)
The date being after the archive beginning date reflects the
following sequence: December 10, Mark Horton posted a list of
name changes including net.sport.ski and net.sport.scuba.
December 12, Geoff Peck posted a correction to net.rec.ski and
net.rec.scuba. December 16, Mark Horton posted saying that it
appeared people were waiting for confirmation from him, and giving
his "blessing" to these names. For net.rec.scuba, this produces
a comprehensible sequence; net.rec.ski confuses the matter.
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Skiing (formerly net.ski)
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in skiing.
Renamed to rec.skiing.

net.lsi
Proposed December 15, 1981 by Hal Chambers. No discussion is
archived.
Created December 18, 1981 by him.
Archived December 18, 1981; May 6, 1982; November 1, 1982; January
16, 1983; April 1 to May 25, 1983; July 17, 1983; September 9,
1983 to ...
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Large Scale Integrated Circuit
discussions.
Description line (11/1/1986): Large scale integrated circuits.
Renamed to comp.lsi.

net.movies
Created December 15, 1981 by Stuart Cracraft. No prior discussion
is archived; discussion did promptly follow, but concerned the
content of posts on the new group, not its right to exist.
Listed December 23, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/23/1981): Movie reviews
Description line (12/1/1986): Reviews and discussions of movies.
Renamed to rec.arts.movies.

net.news.b
Created December 15, 1981 by Matt Glickman to replace a mailing
list.
Listed December 16, 1981 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Version B news
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about B news software.
Renamed to news.software.b.

net.bugs
It isn't clear whether this group was ever intended to exist as
a group rather than as a node. Its creation as a group was not,
far as I can tell, proposed.
Listed December 16, 1981 (as net.bugs.all) to November 1, 1986
without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Bug reports on various software
Archived December 23, 1981; March 28, 1982 to ...
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): General bug reports and fixes.
Renamed to comp.bugs.misc (representing a merger with
net.bugs.uucp and net.bugs.v7).

net.bugs.u3
Proposed December 16, 1981 by Mark Horton.
Listed December 16 to December 23, 1981 only.
Description line (12/16/1981): UNIX 3.0
Only one post is archived, November 24, 1982, cross-posted.
Removed November 27, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, thinking it was a
bogus group.
He suggested net.bugs.usg to replace it on November 28, 1982.

net.jokes.q
Proposed December 16, 1981 by Andy Tannenbaum.
Created December 16, 1981, apparently by Matt Glickman.
Listed December 23, 1981 only.
Description line (12/23/1981): We drop this newsgroup
(No, I'm not making this up.)
Apparently its renaming to ug.jokes was agreed at a USENIX
in Santa Monica shortly before July 2, 1982. On July 2,
1982, Mark Horton posted a strongly worded call for this
renaming to be carried out. That is also the date of
the last archived post, apparently.
ug.jokes is archived from July 4 to October 14, 1982.
Controversy over this renaming was rife for the rest of
1982, and the group became a canonical example of how
removing a group does not force the traffic to go away.

net.rec.scuba
Renamed from net.scuba on or near December 16, 1981 by Mark
Horton. (net.scuba is not on any newsgroup list in my data set,
which is why it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it
existed.)
Listed December 16, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/16/1981): Diving (formerly net.scuba)
Archived December 17, 1981 to ...
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in SCUBA
diving.
Renamed to rec.scuba.

net.music
Proposed December 18, 1981 by Linda Seltzer. I find no
discussion archived.
Created December 23, 1981 by her, citing thirteen people who had
written in support of the idea.
Listed December 23, 1981 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/23/1981): What is this group about, anyway?
(No, I'm not making that up.)
Description line (12/1/1986): Music lovers' group.
Renamed to rec.music.misc.

net.misc
Proposed December 19, 1981 by Matt Glickman as a split of
net.general. Discussion occurred in January 1982.
Announced January 17, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Apparently first posted to February 4, 1982; but there are
references to its existing before then, so I'm not sure this
isn't a gap in the archives (which do preserve statements
that nobody ever posted to the group through late January).
Listed January 26, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Miscellaneous discussions that
start in net.general but are not permanent enough for their own
newsgroup.
Description line (10/16/1986): Various discussions too
short-lived for other groups. Also items of a general nature not
important enough for net.general or mod.announce.
Renamed to misc.misc (representing a merger with net.followup,
net.general, and, technically, net.suicide).

net.news.group
Proposed as net.names December 26, 1981 by Jerry Schwarz. (He
had proposed a net.groups, similar in purpose to the
net.newsgroups that Curt Stephens later proposed, on June 14,
1981! Obviously a far-sighted person.)
Proposed as net.news.groups January 13, 1982 by Jerry Schwarz.
Announced January 15, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Archived January 15, 1982 to ...
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): for discussions about proposed new
newsgroups,
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussions and lists of newsgroups
(Sound familiar, anyone?)
Renamed to news.groups.

net.games.frp
Proposed December 30, 1981 by Nick Landsberg.
Created January 12, 1982 by Nick Landsberg.
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (January 26, 1982): Subgroup net.games - fantasy
role playing games
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about Fantasy Role
Playing games.
Renamed to rec.games.frp.

net.taxes
Proposed January 5, 1982 by Bill Laubenheimer (citing net.suicide
and arguing the aesthetic necessity of covering "the other sure
thing"!).
Probably created January 11, 1982 by him.
Listed January 26, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Tax advice and queries.
Description line (10/16/1986): Tax laws and advice.
Renamed to misc.taxes.

net.oa
Proposed as net.wordproc January 8, 1982 by Michael Shiloh.
Created January 16, 1982 by Peter Langston, I think but am
not sure. The post was cross-posted between net.news,
net.oa, and net.ao, at a time when the name for the new group
was still being debated, and was closely followed by complaints
that it now had two names (because net.ao had been created by
Michael Shiloh on January 13, ironically with a post
complaining that "this group", net.ao, was misnamed because
the name should be net.ao!).
Listed January 26 to November 21, 1982 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Office Automation/Word Processing
interest group.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on office
automation.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for over four months.

net.lan
Proposed January 9, 1982 by Martin Levy. Applause followed.
Created January 13, 1982 by him.
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Local area network interest group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Local area network hardware and
software.
Renamed to comp.dcom.lans.

net.micro
Proposed as net.pc January 12, 1982 by Aron Shtull-Trauring.
Discussion followed.
Created January 21, 1982 by Aron Shtull-Trauring.
Listed March 19, 1982 to November 1, 1986, interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line (3/19/1982): micro-computers, see also
fa.info-micro.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (11/1/1986): Micro computers of all kinds.
Renamed to comp.sys.misc.
Note: My previous assertions that the A News Archive contained
a post to {NET|net}.micro dated January 21, 1981 appear to have
been based on an incorrect recording of the date. I've found no
such post in a copy of the A News files which I obtained from
David Wiseman.

net.news.map
Proposed as net.usenet January 12, 1982 by Bill Jolitz.
Announced January 15, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Created January 15, 1982 by Mark Horton, I believe.
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): for discussions about maps of
newsites.
Description line (12/1/1984): Postings of maps.
Apparently split into (moderated) mod.map, mod.map.news, and
mod.map.uucp.

net.news.directory
Proposed as net.dir January 13, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Announced January 15, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Created January 20, 1982.
Listed January 26 to November 21, 1982 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): to post all or part of the USENET
directory,
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for the USENET Directory.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for over four months.

net.news.newsite
Proposed as net.newsite January 13, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Announced January 15, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Archived January 15, 1982 to ...
Listed January 26, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): to announce a new site.
Description line (11/1/1986): Postings of new site announcements.
Renamed to news.newsites.

net.flame
Created January 15, 1982 by Kipp Hickman. Angry discussion
followed.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 15, 1985 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): For flaming on any topic.

net.travel
Proposed January 15, 1982 by Michael Hawley. (This proposal is
the first archived post to net.news.group, by the way.) Some
discussion followed.
Apparently created January 18, 1982 by Mikey Olson posting his
opinion on the net.travel idea *to* net.travel. (Thus breaking
the group's chance to have been the first group created by an
entirely official procedure, ah well.)
Listed January 26, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Requests, suggestions, and opinions
about traveling
Description line (12/1/1986): Traveling all over the world.
Renamed to rec.travel.

net.sf-lovers
May have been created January 16, 1982 by a post by Peter Langston.
Listed March 19, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line (3/19/1982): Science Fiction Lovers - undigested
from fa.sf-lovers
In the March 19, 1982 list, listed as a gatewayed newsgroup. This
was probably, at that time, false, to judge from numerous comments
on the state of the gateway at this time in the archives. (See
below on net.works for more info.)
Significant traffic is archived beginning April 16, 1982, apparently
during a shutdown of the fa.sf-lovers gateway.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (12/1/1986): Science fiction lovers' newsgroup.
Renamed to rec.arts.sf-lovers.

net.micro.zx
Archived January 21, 1982 to ...
There is some evidence that this group did not yet exist by
January 19, 1982, and Mel Haas, the author of the January 21
post, may have been creating the group (he is the only one
to have referred to this name previously, in the aforementioned
January 19 post).
Listed November 21, 1982 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for zx's.
Description line (7/15/1985): Discussion about zx's.

net.adm.site
Announced January 20, 1982 by Brad Templeton.
Created February 1, 1982 by him.
Archived February 1 to 8, 1982; May 8, 1982; July 5 to 25, 1982;
December 12 to 23, 1982; March 9, 1983; June 20 to 22, 1983;
August 10, 1983; November 17, 1983; December 7, 1983 to January 23,
1984 (the majority of total archived posts, I think); roughly one
posting per month February to October, 1984.
Listed November 21, 1982 to September 15, 1984 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Automatic maintenance of the
USENET directory. Currently not used.
Description line (9/15/1984): Automatic maintenance of the USENET
directory -- currently experimental.
Rmgroup proposed September 22, 1984 by Gene Spafford.
Note: Brad Templeton's idea for net.adm.* was, in essence, what
turned out to be control.*. It was, however, apparently ahead
of its time, and net.adm.site, the only group to be created in
the sub-hierarchy, became well known for breaking software.

net.records
Created January 20, 1982 by Tim Thompson, who had been intending
to *propose* the group instead. Discussion followed.
Listed January 26, 1982 to March 1, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (1/26/1982): Info and opinions about records
(and tapes ?).
Description line (3/1/1984): Records, both new and old, of all
musical varieties.

net.cse
Proposed January 25, 1982 by Geo Swan.
Archived February 8, 1982 to ...
Listed March 19, 1982, and then November 21, 1982 to November 1,
1986 interrupted only November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (3/19/1982): Computer Science Education
Description line (11/1/1986): Computer science education.
Renamed to comp.edu.

net.cooks
Proposed January 27, 1982 by Steve. Discussion followed.
Created January 29, 1982 by him.
Listed February 3, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (2/3/1982): Interest group - food, cooking,
cookbooks, and recipes.
Description line (12/1/1986): Food, cooking, cookbooks, and
recipes.
Renamed to rec.food.cooking.

net.math
Proposed January 29, 1982 by John Winterton. One favourable
comment is archived.
Created February 8, 1982 by him.
Listed March 19, 1982 to October 16, 1986, interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line (3/19/1982): mathematical discussions (eg. what
is lim x->0 log(x)-log(x))
Description line (10/16/1986): Mathematical discussions and
puzzles.
Renamed to sci.math.

net.wanted
Proposed (as net.ads) January 29, 1982 by Michael Maiten.
Archived March 16, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Requests for things that are
needed, e.g. device drivers, pointers to people, etc.
Description line (10/16/1986): Requests for things that are
needed.
Renamed to misc.wanted.

net.info-micro
Archived January 30, 1982 to ...
The January 30, 1982 post may have accidentally created the
group; there is no earlier reference to that name, and the
next several references are snide remarks about the name
being a mistake, *not* posts to the group. The poster was
Ben Goldfarb.
Removal proposed November 20, 1982 by Greg Woods and,
probably independently, by Adam Buchsbaum.
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info on micro computers.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as
duplicative of net.micro.

net.games.pacman
Proposed February 9, 1982 by Mark Horton. I find no discussion
archived.
Created February 16 to 17, 1982 by him.
Archived February 17 to April 23, 1982 (most of the archived
traffic); August 12 and 15, 1982; November 30 and December
10, 1982; January 29, 1983; June 27, 1983; October 24 to 26,
1983.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 15, 1983.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Pacman.

net.video
Proposed February 10, 1982 (and earlier in an article probably
eaten by a crash) by Walt Morris. Discussion followed.
Created February 11, 1982 by Phil Gunsul, jumping the gun with
a flame.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on video and
video components.
Description line (12/1/1986): Video and video components.
Renamed to rec.video.

net.followup
Created February 17, 1982 by Mark Horton, posting a test message
to verify that the code forcing followups from net.general into
net.followup worked properly. I find no prior discussion
archived, but since this newsgroup was created to implement
a software feature, it could have been discussed in those terms
without my finding anything.
Listed March 19, 1982, and then November 21, 1982 to October 16,
1986 interrupted only November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (3/19/1982): follow-up articles to those posted
in net.general
Description line (10/16/1986): Followups to articles in
net.general.
Renamed to misc.misc (representing a merger with net.general,
net.misc, and, technically, net.suicide).

net.wines
Proposed as net.cooks.wine February 18, 1982 by Charles Wetherell.
Discussion (generally favourable) followed.
Created February 27, 1982 by him.
Listed March 9, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only December
5, 1982.
Description line (3/9/1982): Info and reccomendations about wines
and alcoholic beverages.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for a month and a half and "MAYBE too specific".
Obviously, this rmgroup didn't take, but I don't have details
yet.
Description line (12/1/1986): Wines and spirits.
Renamed to rec.food.drink.

net.dcom
Proposed February 24, 1982 by Steve Taylor. Discussion followed.
Created March 9, 1982 by Steve Taylor.
Listed March 9, 1982 to November 1, 1986 interrupted only November
1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (3/9/1982): data communication -
modems,multiplexers,port selectors etc.
Description line (11/1/1986): Data communications hardware and
software.
Renamed to comp.dcom.modems.

net.games.dip
Suggested March 2, 1982 by Steve Knight as a home for a PBM
Diplomacy game he aimed to start.
Proposed March 7, 1982 by him.
Proposal abandoned March 27, 1982 by him, in posting his
announcement of the game's players, etc., which also said
the game would begin April 24.
Created April 25 to 26, 1982 by him (apparently complaints
from net.games readers had led him to reconsider).
Archived April 26, May 16, June 19, and August 15, 1982
(apparently this would be four of the seven installments
of the game's progress that Knight posted to this group).
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Diplomacy.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for three months.

net.audio
Proposed March 3, 1982 by Steve Falco.
Discussion followed, with Rich Rosen acting as proponent.
Archived May 27, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on audio.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (12/1/1986): High fidelity audio.
Renamed to rec.audio.

net.usenix
I find nothing in the archives concerning this group's creation.
Archived March 3, 1982; ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on the USENIX
Association.
Description line (11/1/1986): USENIX Association events and
announcements.
Renamed to comp.org.usenix.

net.lang.apl
Proposed without a name March 11, 1982 by Greg Johnson. Much
applause followed.
Created March 24, 1982 by George Otto.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for APL.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about APL.
Renamed to comp.lang.apl.

net.rec.skydive
I can find nothing archived about this group's creation.
Listed March 19, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
"November 20, 1982".
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line (3/19/1982): (net.rec.skydive) sky diving
(The duplication of the name in the description line has to do
with the fact that early newsgroup names were required to be
unique in their first 14 characters, so some newsgroup lists,
like this one, allocated only 14 characters for listing those
names.)
Archived May 13, 1982; July 24, 1982; August 13 to 21, 1982;
September 17, 1982 to ...
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in skydiving.
Renamed to rec.skydiving.

net.rec.photo
Proposed March 20, 1982 by Neal Fildes.
Archived March 29, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for photography.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in
photography.
Renamed to rec.photo.

net.lang
Suggested March 25, 1982 by Matt Bishop.
Archived September 22, 1982 to ... As usual with groups whose
names were also nodes, it's not clear whether the group existed
*as a newsgroup* before the oldest archived post.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Discussions on computer languages.
Description line (11/1/1986): Different computer languages.
Renamed to comp.lang.misc.

net.lang.lisp
Created March 27, 1982 by John Foderaro, apparently as a renaming
of net.lisp (which is not in this post because it's not on any
list in my dataset; I know it existed).
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for LISP.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about LISP.
Renamed to comp.lang.lisp.

net.rec.birds
Proposed March 29, 1982 by Andy Rubaszek. No discussion is
archived.
Created April 14, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for bird watching.
Description line (12/1/1986): Hobbyists interested in bird
watching.
Renamed to rec.birds.

net.works
Created April 6, 1982 by Mel Pleasant, then the moderator of
the WorkS mailing list, as a gateway of that list. This was
at a time when the existing gateway to fa.works was shut down;
several ARPAnet list moderators had apparently shut their
gateways at that time to protest Berkeley's decision to stop
forwarding Usenet-side posts to them. Irritated discussion
followed.
Listed November 21, 1982 to June 19, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on
workstations.
Description line (6/19/1986): Assorted workstations.

net.nlang
The hierarchy was proposed April 15, 1982 by Ken Arnold as
net.natl.
Announced May 31, 1982 by Mark Horton.
May have been created as late as June 2, 1982 by Scott Deerwester.
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Discussions on ''natural
languages''
Description line (10/16/1986): Natural languages, cultures,
heritages, etc.
Renamed to sci.lang.

net.cms
Proposed (without a name) April 17, 1982 by Cliff Frost.
Created April 24, 1982 by him, in a post including the responses he
got to the proposal, which I read as a 7-2 vote.
Archived April 24 to July 29, 1982; September 8, 1982; November 17,
1982.
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on CMS, an
IBM 370 OS.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as not
having been used "very much".

net.games.emp
Announced April 30, 1982 by Rusty Wright. No immediately previous
*or* subsequent discussion is archived.
Probably created some minutes later by Rusty Wright. (Google's
presentation date says May 3, 1982, but original format date is
April 30.)
Listed "November 20, 1982" to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Note that the date of the November 20, 1982 list is unreliable:
it dates to sometime after March 9, 1982 and before the posting
date of November 20, 1982.
Description line ("11/20/1982"): Subgroup net.games - empire
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion and hints about Empire.
Renamed to rec.games.empire.

net.railroad
Announced April 30, 1982 by Michael Maiten as a replacement for
fa.railroad, which was in one of its silent periods. (On this
see also net.sf-lovers and especially net.works, above.)
Probably created April 30, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info on railroads.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to November 1, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (12/1/1986): Real and model train fans'
newsgroup.
Renamed to rec.railroad.

net.jobs
Proposed May 4, 1982 by Alan Watt.
Announced May 4, 1982 by Mark Horton, saying that there had been
previous discussion (presumably off-Usenet).
Created May 4, 1982 by Mark Horton, less than five hours after
Alan Watt's proposal.
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Job announcements, requests, etc.
Renamed to misc.jobs.

net.research
Proposed May 5, 1982 by Stephen Perelgut. Discussion followed,
summarised May 13, 1982 by him.
Possibly created May 17, 1982 by him.
Archived May 17, 1982; June 28, 1982; August 4, 1982 (a cross-post
with net.general).
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on research
and computer research.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for three months.
Listed April 2, 1983 to October 16, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (4/2/1983): Research and computer research.
Renamed to sci.research.

net.tv
Suggested May 14, 1982 by Andrew Knutsen.
Created May 27, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on the boob
tube.
Description line (12/1/1986): The boob tube, its history, and
past and current shows.
Renamed to rec.arts.tv.

net.tv.sctv
Created May 27, 1982 by Andrew Knutsen, in an apparent attempt to
rename net.sctv. This attempt was not successful.
(net.sctv is not on any newsgroup list in my data set, which is
why it isn't listed in this set of posts; I know it existed.
However, in this case there's an added difficulty; although its
creation was obviously very controversial at the time, only a
few fragments of that controversy seem to have been archived,
and those include neither the proposal for, if any, nor the
creation of, the newsgroup.)
Listed November 21, 1982 only.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for SCTV.
Rmgrouped on or near December 5, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum, as having
been unused for over four months and "much too specific".

net.rec.caves
Proposed May 28, 1982 by Jim Johnston (better known at the time
as rabbit!jj)
Created June 6, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to July 15, 1984 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for caving.

net.jokes.d
Suggested June 11, 1982 by Wm Leler and (more forcefully) Rick
Kiessig.
Archived June 16, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for discussions on the
content on net.jokes.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussions on the content of
net.jokes articles
Renamed to rec.humor.d.

net.micro.432
Announced June 29, 1982 by Roy Campbell. This announcement is
presented as following a proposal, but I find no previous
discussion, and much surprise at the existence of the group.
Archived June 30 to August 4, 1982; November 2, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to August 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for 432's.
Description line (8/1/1985): Discussion about Intel 432's.

net.games.pbm
Proposed July 9, 1982 by Philip Wing. No discussion seems to
have followed; he reported trouble getting the group created
on July 13, 1982.
Archived July 31, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 interrupted only
November 1, 1985 (by an editing error).
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Play by Mail games.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about Play by Mail
games.
Renamed to rec.games.pbm.

net.micro.68k
Proposed July 11, 1982 by Rick Kiessig. Discussion followed.
Created July 20, 1982 by Rick Kiessig.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for 68k's.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about 68k's.
Renamed to comp.sys.m68k.

net.wobegon
Announced and created July 16, 1982 by Dave Yost. In the wake of
net.sctv, this became a famous example of how not to create a
newsgroup, but (perhaps due to the oft-alleged rabidness of its
posters) this one actually survived.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on that radio
show.
Description line (12/1/1986): "A Prairie Home Companion" radio
show discussion.
Renamed to rec.arts.wobegon.

net.notes
Created July 21, 1982 by Ray Essick. I find no discussion.
Listed November 21, 1982 to August 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): For the notesfile software from
the University of Illinois.
Description line (8/15/1985): Notesfile software from the
University of Illinois.
Apparently renamed to net.news.notes.

net.poems
Proposed July 27, 1982 by Mark Ingram.
Created August 11, 1982 by him, reporting "12 positive and 1
negative responses".
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): For the posting of poems.
Renamed to rec.arts.poems.

net.physics
Suggested August 1, 1982 by Doug Lerner.
Proposed August 5, 1982 by him. He reported "about 10 positive and
0 negative responses" August 7, 1982.
Announced August 8, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Archived August 8, 1982 to ...
Listed "November 20, 1982" to October 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between March 9 and November 20,
1982.
Description line ("11/20/1982"): Information and discussion of
physics.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (10/16/1986): Physical laws, properties, etc.
Renamed to sci.physics.

net.startrek
Proposed August 6, 1982 by Roger Noe.
Created August 10, 1982 by him, reporting "of nearly one hundred
replies received in almost three days, only one has been at all
negative".
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on Star Trek.
Description line (12/1/1986): Star Trek, the TV show and the
movies.
Renamed to rec.arts.startrek.

net.micro.pc
Proposed (without a name) August 10, 1982 by Glenn Wesley, as a
gateway for the INFO-PC mailing list.
Created August 20, 1982 by Glenn Wesley.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for personal computers.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about IBM personal
computers.
Renamed to comp.sys.ibm.pc.

net.singles
Created September 1, 1982 by Carl Yaffey. He cites response to a
previous post proposing the group, but neither that post nor any
subsequent discussion is archived.
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986.
Description line (11/21/1982): Newsgroup for single people, their
activities, etc.
Renamed to soc.singles.

net.invest
Proposed September 2, 1982 by Bob Gilbert. I find no discussion.
Created September 7, 1982 by him.
Listed "November 20, 1982" to October 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Note that the actual date of the list posted November 20, 1982
is at an undetermined time between September 7 and November 20,
1982.
Description line ("11/20/1982"): Information and discussion about
investments.
Description line (10/16/1986): Investments and the handling of
money.
Renamed to misc.invest.

net.rec.coins
Proposed September 3, 1982 by Bob Gilbert.
Created September 7, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to July 15, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for coin collecting.
Description line (7/15/1985): Hobbyists interested in coin
collecting.

net.news.config
Proposed September 6, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Announced September 9, 1982 by Mark Horton.
Archived September 11, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for posting of computer
down times and network interruptions.
Description line (11/1/1986): Postings of system down times and
interruptions.
Renamed to news.config.

net.games.video
Proposed September 8, 1982 by Ned Horvath. I find no discussion.
Archived October 6, 1982 to ...
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for video games.
Description line (12/1/1986): Discussion about video games.
Renamed to rec.games.video.

net.usoft.s
A post September 12, 1982 by Aron Shtull-Trauring could be read
as hinting at the creation of a newsgroup on this topic.
Created October 12, 1982 by him. I find no discussion archived.
Listed November 21, 1982 to December 15, 1983 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for the S Statistical
Package.

net.usoft
Created October 12, 1982 by Aron Shtull-Trauring. I find no
discussion archived.
Listed November 21, 1982 to August 1, 1985 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Info and discussions on general
software packages.
Description line (8/1/1985): Universal (public domain) software
packages.

net.micro.atari
Proposed October 19, 1982 by Glenn Reid. Discussion followed.
Created November 8, 1982 by cca!rtc (whose name I can't find).
Listed November 21, 1982 to February 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for Atari's.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to June 2, 1986 (yes, after its removal), listed as a gatewayed
unmoderated newsgroup.
Description line (2/16/1986): Discussion about Atari micros.
Apparently split into net.micro.atari8 and net.micro.atari16.

net.lang.pascal
Proposed October 20, 1982 by Phil Ngai. I find no discussion.
Created October 21, 1982 by Phil Ngai.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for PASCAL.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Pascal.
Renamed to comp.lang.pascal.

net.lang.c
Created October 21, 1982; it's difficult to tell who created it,
since the Google archives for this period preserve lots of posts
from the following week or so, and use as presentation dates a
weird Date: header that seems to show date received rather than
date posted (Posted: header). Jerry Schwarz announced it
October 21, 1982, saying he had earlier proposed it (which I
don't find); one person who thought he was making an early
posting to the group was Phil Karn.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for C.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about C.
Renamed to comp.lang.c.

net.arch
Proposed October 23, 1982 by Jon Solworth.
Created October 27, 1982 by Jon Solworth.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Computer architecture.
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Renamed to comp.arch.

net.lang.ada
Proposed October 28, 1982 by Aron Shtull-Trauring. Discussion
followed.
Created November 1, 1982 by Aron Shtull-Trauring.
Listed November 21, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Subgroup for ADA.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Ada*.
(The asterisk referred to a trademark.)
Renamed to comp.lang.ada.

net.social
Proposed November 5, 1982 by Andy Tannenbaum.
Created November 9, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to October 16, 1986.
Description line (11/21/1982): Like net.singles, but for
everyone.
Renamed to soc.misc.

net.politics
Proposed as net.poli-sci November 9, 1982 by John Pierce.
Discussion followed.
Created November 13, 1982 by him.
Listed November 21, 1982 to September 16, 1986 without
interruption.
Description line (11/21/1982): Discussions on politics. Could
get hot.
Description line (9/16/1986): Political discussions. Could get
hot.
Renamed to talk.politics.misc (representing a merger with
net.politics.terror).

net.lang.st80
Proposed (without a name) November 15, 1982 by Mike Rutenberg.
One favorable post followed.
Apparently created circa December 1, 1982 with a control message
which may not be archived.
Listed December 5, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/5/1982): Subgroup for Smalltalk 80.
Archived February 25, 1983 to ...
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about Smalltalk 80.
Renamed to comp.lang.smalltalk.

net.lang.prolog
Proposed November 23, 1982 by Bruce Smith.
Created November 29, 1982 by him.
Listed December 5, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/5/1982): Subgroup for PROLOG.
In each surviving List of Active Newsgroups from November 1, 1985
to October 16, 1986, listed as a gatewayed unmoderated group.
Description line (11/1/1986): Discussion about PROLOG.
Renamed to comp.lang.prolog.

net.bugs.usg
Proposed November 28, 1982 by Adam Buchsbaum to replace
net.bugs.u3 and net.bugs.u4, which he had rmgrouped thinking
them bogus.
Listed December 5, 1982 to November 1, 1986 without interruption.
Description line (12/5/1982): Subgroup for USG (System III, IV,
etc.) bugs.
Archived February 8, 1983 to ...
Double-listed November 1, 1985 through an editing error.
Description line (11/1/1986): Reports of USG (System III, V,
etc.) bugs.
Renamed to comp.bugs.sys5.

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