ANNOUNCEMENT: Status of INET groups
news.announce.newgroups Moderation Team
longer be considered distinct and will instead become ordinary Big 8
groups. If you do not know what an INET group is, then you should feel
free to ignore this announcement. It is very unlikely that this will
result in any change in the newsgroups that are carried by your news
server.
Technical background for the curious:
Many years ago, some newsgroups were created in the same hierarchies as
some of the Big 8 hierarchies, primarily comp.*, but without following the
normal Big 8 newsgroup creation procedure. These newsgroups were
technically a separate set of newsgroups, called INET groups, and posts to
those groups were supposed to have a different Distribution header. Some
sites chose not to carry them.
Since then, some of these groups have gone through a normal RFD process
and been "promoted" to standard Big 8 groups, but others have not. Two
lists of Big 8 newsgroups were posted for many years, one containing the
INET groups and one omitting them. This has made it impossible to issue
standard Usenet checkgroups control messages, since the checkgroups
control message has no way of expressing two differing group lists in the
same hierarchy. This, in turn, has made it harder for news administrators
to verify that they're carrying the complete list of current Big 8 groups
(the function fulfilled by checkgroups control messages).
No new INET groups are being created or have been created in some time,
and every site we're familiar with has chosen to just carry all of the
INET groups as well as the regular Big 8 groups. The only canonical list
of Big 8 groups that has been available for the past year or so, the
active group list on ftp.isc.org, has included the INET groups. In short,
the distinction no longer seems to serve any purpose, particularly
compared to the advantages of issuing checkgroups control messages.
Therefore, future Big 8 checkgroups control messages will include INET
groups.
Jonathan Grobe
>The upcoming checkgroups will include INET groups. INET groups will no
>longer be considered distinct and will instead become ordinary Big 8
>groups.
Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of
the INET groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that
a substantial number of the INET groups are dead.
Apparently the n.a.n. Moderation Team is not concerned
about this.
--
Jonathan Grobe Books
Browse our inventory of thousands of used books at:
http://showcase.netins.net/web/grobe
Todd Michel McComb
>Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of the
>INET groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that a substantial
>number of the INET groups are dead.
The dead group issue continues to be high on our list. We prefer
to treat it as a unity, and set aside the INET issue. The INET
groups do not make much of an impact on the overall dead group issue.
Hopefully something will be done on the dead group front in the
next few months.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
ba...@dmcom.net
>
> In article <10345581...@isc.org>, news.announce.newgroups Moderation Team wrote:
> >The upcoming checkgroups will include INET groups. INET groups will no
> >longer be considered distinct and will instead become ordinary Big 8
> >groups.
>
> Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of
> the INET groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that
> a substantial number of the INET groups are dead.
>
> Apparently the n.a.n. Moderation Team is not concerned
> about this.
>
With a more active moderation team, it might be posible to impliment
removal of low traffic groups. A topic that has been discussed for
years that Tale has not commented on. IIRC Russ had intended to offer a
plan about 6 months (*) on how to deal with low traffic groups. Two
checkgroup messages does not make much sense, the last one I saw (over
two years ago) did flag inet as Inet groups that a sys admin could
filter out.
I am not concerned about one control message if flags are in place.
--
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
Want a new group FAQs http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/ncreate.html
Russ Allbery
> Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of the INET
> groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that a substantial number of
> the INET groups are dead.
> Apparently the n.a.n. Moderation Team is not concerned about this.
Yup.
We talked about it and decided that it was splitting hairs unnecessarily.
The telling factor as far as I was concerned is that I couldn't find any
sites that intentionally had made the choice to not carry the INET groups
knowing what that meant, which means that while some of the groups are
dead, everyone's carrying them anyway. So acknowledging that fact causes
no change in the current status quo.
We also wanted to post a checkgroups. Given the choice between adding a
few dead groups at some sites and removing quite a few active groups at
many sites, the former seemed the obvious best choice, and adding a few
more dead groups is really pretty insignificant compared to the advantages
of having a real checkgroups control message finally.
The infrastructure needs some work, but as soon as that's stable and we
can start looking at changes to rules or new rules, I expect that the
existing, patiently waiting proposals for better ways of removing unused
newsgroups will be high on the priority list of things to consider.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
nucleus
Now, since Russ Allbery is a maintainer of INN news server,
one of the most widely used news servers in the world,
you can imagine what kind of "automation" is going to be
wired into this giant totalitarian scam.
Graham Drabble
>Hopefully something will be done on the dead group front in the
>next few months.
I stopped doing any work on the RFD because this changeover was promised. If
people want I will write a new draft and post it once I get full access back
(moved to uni and don't yet have my own machine and old files).
--
Graham Drabble
Russ Allbery
> Don't count on them from a few tier 1 telco servers. And do us all
> a favor. If you want us to accept different sigs, ask us. Privately
> first.
That post made no sense at all, so if you want someone to do something
other than ignore it, you might want to explain what you're talking about.
nucleus
>Boo Phatty <boo@phatty> writes:
>> Don't count on them from a few tier 1 telco servers. And do us all
>> a favor. If you want us to accept different sigs, ask us. Privately
>> first.
>That post made no sense at all, so if you want someone to do something
>other than ignore it, you might want to explain what you're talking about.
Simple.
You are but a self-appointed gang of totalitarian dictators,
passing power EXACTLY like in ANY totalitarian or fascist system.
The fuss you have been creating on big-8 about this
"democracy" cover up scam and your so called votes is but
a criminal enterprise and perversion of the most fundamental
principles of democracy.
And now, once Russ Allbery became a fuehrer of big-8
himself, he holds all the aces on his hands.
He LITERALLY "owns" big-8 now on any and all practical levels.
1. He holds to secret key to PGP sign ANY and ALL
control messages. Why did these perverts even invented
this PGP signed paranoya? Is it some kind of a secret
military enterprise or merely a public service
to FACILITATE discussions for the entire planet Earth?
2. He writes these dictates he calls "official" guidelines
and can put ANYTHING he wants in it. He NEVER consulted
with public and never conducted ANY kind of "vote"
on the contents of those dictates.
He can change ANY of those dictates at will
without ANY consultation with the users of usenet,
and they AUTOMATICALLY become the "usenet law",
perverted as it is.
So, they are PURE grade dictates indeed.
3. He maintains INN news server code and was working
on it for years, putting the most perverse censorship,
control and domination tricks into it and now
this puppy is all ready for the next phase in this
global domination scheme of theirs.
Rest assured, with the forthcoming releases of INN,
the entire big-8 will be converted into a TOTALLY
automated system of global censorship of discussions.
News admins won't even be able to do anything with
their own servers unless they totally disable
ANY and ALL control messages and checkgroups
processing abilities.
Now, since very few news admins participate in this
giant scam and vast majority of them do not even
read the news.* hierarchy, they won't even know
this "new system" is already operating on their
own servers. So, for all practical purposes,
the global news distribution system becomes a
fully automated totalitarian system.
He can do ANYTHING he pleases to ANY of the groups,
present, past or future and no one can do anything
about it. He can can dial anything he wants from his
terminal and convert ANY group from any status to any
other. That is the powers of herr fuehrer indeed.
There has been no discussion or "voting" on this
totalitarian "power passing" scam.
It was all conducted behind the scenes
via private email messages.
Everyone was just informed that the "power" was
passed just like in any totalitarian system.
Now, this so called "moderation team"
consists of some of the most blatant fascists
and perverts in the entire history of usenet
and even before the usenet was born.
Todd McComb is one of the most perverted fascists
there ever was. He was on of the "czars" on totally
fascist scam of Usenet 2, these very totalitarian
dictators were trying to install instead of usenet.
His own picture on Usenet 2 "mugs" page is all too
revealing. He put red horns on his head and the
expression on his face is of the most profound evil.
This idiot is a worshipper of the beast, whose sign
is 666 indeed.
Piranha, the transvestide pervert,
confused of his/her own identity,
is one of the most blatant, power hungry
perverts there is, was or can EVER be.
What they conspired behind the scenes at this junction
is an equivalent of a Trilatral Commision,
the "rulers" of the world.
Go consult alt.freemasonry to see what this is
REALLY all about.
The whole big-8 is a fraud.
It was fraud when it was conceived.
And it will remain fraud for as long,
as there exists a secret key to PGP signed
messages, that is used to AUTOMATICALLY configure
the news servers wordwide.
These people are but criminals.
Finally, here is a quote by Brad Templeton,
one of the people instrumental during the creation
and evolution of the entire news distribution system
even before the usenet was born.
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: b...@templetons.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: USENET - it is over
References: <3A9353AB...@worldnet.att.net> <3C195139...@sfo.com>
<9vbl5t$4i3$1...@panix3.panix.com> <9vejea$spf$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad
Originator: br...@news.netfunny.com (Brad Templeton)
Message-ID: <wc7T7.10286$Kg2.1212411@rwcrnsc51>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:10:04 GMT
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:10:04 GMT
------------------------ Quote Begin --------------------
[...]
As is the voting, which was just a fraud to make people shut up once
they lost a vote. (In those days, the debates would get long and
the person pushing for a group nobody else wanted would never go
away and admit defeat. Voting with the silly '100 more' rule
was not to create democracy, but to end the debate.)
--
Would you expect a product called "Windows" to give you privacy and security?
http://www.templetons.com/brad/
----------------------- End of Quote --------------------
Henrietta K. Thomas
wrote, in news.groups:
>Boo Phatty <boo@phatty> writes:
>
>> Don't count on them from a few tier 1 telco servers. And do us all
>> a favor. If you want us to accept different sigs, ask us. Privately
>> first.
>
>That post made no sense at all, so if you want someone to do something
>other than ignore it, you might want to explain what you're talking about.
Looks to me like it's a veiled threat to do to Big 8 what he claims to
be doing to US -- block traffic from any server he has any connection
with unless you get his permission in advance to step into Tale's shoes.
Henrietta
Russ Allbery
> Looks to me like it's a veiled threat to do to Big 8 what he claims to
> be doing to US -- block traffic from any server he has any connection
> with unless you get his permission in advance to step into Tale's shoes.
That would surprise me, since that would be rather silly and I have a hard
time imagining why he'd think I'd care one way or the other. But
regardless, if it was a veiled threat, it was way too veiled for me, thus
robbing it of whatever point it was intended to carry.
Jim Riley
>In article <10345581...@isc.org>, news.announce.newgroups Moderation Team wrote:
>>The upcoming checkgroups will include INET groups. INET groups will no
>>longer be considered distinct and will instead become ordinary Big 8
>>groups.
>Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of
>the INET groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that
>a substantial number of the INET groups are dead.
This may be conflating a couple of arguments.
Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
interest, and since some Inet groups *had* gone through an RFD/CFV to
convert, there is a sense that the remaining Inet groups would not be
able to garner enough support to be converted, or at least should not
be converted unless they do demonstrate that support.
There is (was?) a commonly held belief that almost all of the dead
groups were either Inet groups or moderated groups such as the source
or binaries groups), and that either (1) since the cause of the groups
being dead was recognized, that they could be ignored; or (2) that the
problem could be handled by convincing the more high-traffic Inet
groups to convert, or having the moderators relinquish their control.
While a relatively large share of the Inet groups are low traffic
(57%), as are a relatively large share of the moderated groups (32%),
in fact, most of the low-traffic groups are unmoderated, non-Inet
groups (57%).
In essence what you are saying is that we should not increase the
total number of groups by 3% because it would result in a 10% increase
in the number of dead groups.
>Apparently the n.a.n. Moderation Team is not concerned
>about this.
To the contrary, treating the Inet groups as extraordinary has
resulted in not producing an authoritative list of Big 8 groups in
several years. Remember that this list form the underlying basis for
the existence of news.groups. Keeping them separate has not led to
addressing the issue of dead groups, whether Inet or not.
The (former) Inet groups are as follows:
comp.ai.edu
comp.ai.vision
comp.dcom.lans.hyperchannel
comp.edu.composition
comp.lang.asm370
comp.lang.clu
comp.lang.forth.mac
comp.lang.icon
comp.lang.idl
comp.lang.lisp.franz
comp.lang.lisp.x
comp.lang.rexx
comp.lang.scheme.c
comp.lsi.cad
comp.mail.multi-media
comp.networks.noctools.announce
comp.networks.noctools.bugs
comp.networks.noctools.d
comp.networks.noctools.submissions
comp.networks.noctools.tools
comp.networks.noctools.wanted
comp.org.isoc.interest
comp.os.aos
comp.os.cpm.amethyst
comp.os.msdos.4dos
comp.os.rsts
comp.os.v
comp.periphs.printers
comp.protocols.iso.dev-environ
comp.protocols.iso.x400
comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
comp.protocols.pcnet
comp.protocols.snmp
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
comp.protocols.time.ntp
comp.security.announce
comp.soft-sys.andrew
comp.soft-sys.nextstep
comp.std.announce
comp.sys.cdc
comp.sys.handhelds [1]
comp.sys.intel.ipsc310
comp.sys.northstar
comp.sys.super
comp.sys.ti.explorer
comp.sys.zenith
comp.terminals.bitgraph
comp.terminals.tty5620
comp.theory
comp.theory.cell-automata
comp.theory.dynamic-sys
comp.theory.self-org-sys
comp.unix.cray
comp.unix.solaris
comp.windows.x.motif
rec.games.vectrex
sci.bio.technology
sci.math.num-analysis
sci.philosophy.meta
[1] Approval of conversion of comp.sys.handhelds from Inet to the
regular Big 8 was approved in 1991, as part of a split of
comp.sys.handhelds. The split-off groups were added to the Big 8
list, but not the original group.
--
Jim Riley
John David Galt
> Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of
> the INET groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that
> a substantial number of the INET groups are dead.
Can you name some that are dead? If so, let's vote on removing them!
Jonathan Grobe
Jim Riley has been posting lists of low traffic groups.
Jim, could you post your list of the low traffic INET groups?
nucleus
>Henrietta K Thomas <hk...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> Looks to me like it's a veiled threat to do to Big 8 what he claims to
>> be doing to US -- block traffic from any server he has any connection
>> with unless you get his permission in advance to step into Tale's shoes.
>That would surprise me, since that would be rather silly and I have a hard
>time imagining why he'd think I'd care one way or the other.
Impressive.
> But
>regardless, if it was a veiled threat, it was way too veiled for me,
VERY Impressive.
>thus
>robbing it of whatever point it was intended to carry.
Zeig heil!
nucleus
>On 14 Oct 2002 03:14:06 GMT, gr...@netins.net (Jonathan Grobe) wrote:
>
>>In article <10345581...@isc.org>, news.announce.newgroups Moderation Team
> wrote:
>
>>>The upcoming checkgroups will include INET groups. INET groups will no
>>>longer be considered distinct and will instead become ordinary Big 8
>>>groups.
>
>>Previously one of the strongest objections to the merger of
>>the INET groups into the the Big 8 list was the fact that
>>a substantial number of the INET groups are dead.
>
>This may be conflating a couple of arguments.
>
>Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
>interest,
Well, they were created BEFORE this totalitarian scam,
you see.
>and since some Inet groups *had* gone through an RFD/CFV to
>convert,
Pecause people were deluded to believe that this global
totalitarian scam is a democratic process, pervert.
>there is a sense that the remaining Inet groups would not be
>able to garner enough support to be converted,
Converted into what?
From what?
What are you fabricating here?
>or at least should not
>be converted unless they do demonstrate that support.
What "support" are you fabricating?
This whole thing is but a giant fraud
on a GLOBAL scale.
Here:
------------------------ Quote Begin --------------------
[...]
http://www.templetons.com/brad/
>There is (was?) a commonly held belief that almost all of the dead
Todd Michel McComb
Boo Phatty <boo@phatty> wrote:
>I mean, technically speaking, any server can carry, or not carry,
>anything that they want to.
That's absolutely true. It's always been true that individual
servers can make their own decisions, and I consider that part of
the glory of the system. We like to believe that we provide a
valuable service, and I think many people would agree. Critics
aside, we -- and everyone else involved -- do our best with the
proposals.
In terms of this announcement, of course there wasn't much choice.
Regardless of what anyone thinks, Tale is not going to be available.
For the most part, the announcement merely acknowledges the status
quo. Tale was willing to agree to things within certain parameters,
and that's what we have. There was not a lot of choice to this
point in the process, but we do have the flexibility to make some
different decisions now, and we hope to make the process both more
accommodating and more robust.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
James Logajan
Why the sudden rush?
You realize that such attempts will generate more shouting and hand
wringing relative to the alleged benefit than is worthwhile. Unless, of
course, that is your motive. :-(
Joe Bernstein
<jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
> Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
> interest,
Point of order.
When most of the inet groups were first created, in late May or early
June of 1987, demonstration of interest was not a universally-recognised
condition of group creation. The first publicly posted guidelines for
newsgroup creation in the Big 7 were still months in the future. All
the evidence at the time was, in fact, that the Big 7 would never grow
again; the Backbone Cabal had allowed essentially no increase in the
number of unmoderated groups for several years, but the way the renaming
of mod.* was handled was evidence that they had also become disillusioned
with moderation as a panacea.
Furthermore, and this is important, the rationale for the creation of
the inet groups *WAS* demonstration of interest. What Erik Fair did,
at that time and to a lesser extent thereafter, was create a newsgroup
for each widely-accepted ARPAnet/Internet mailing list, using the logic
that it made more sense to have one copy on every server than to mail
one copy to every subscriber.
Notice, please, that this is *precisely* the same logic that the Big 8
newsgroup creation system put in place later has used to this day. I
think it's basically impossible to believe that the Big 8 system got
this logic from anyplace else than the rationale Fair gave for inet,
although (since that rationale had been stated less clearly in prior
years) he may not deserve sole credit.
I haven't confirmed this by detailed study of the group creations [1],
so don't know how widely practised this was, but the original group
creation guidelines written by Gene Spafford explicitly said that
a very active mailing list was adequate evidence of traffic, and in
that case a vote could be skipped. A *lot* of inet groups were
promoted in 1987, and I'm fairly sure this was how most of them were.
In a nutshell. I have a strong disdain for Erik Fair's general high-
handedness, which he demonstrated a number of times in the 1980s (but
which I suppose could have changed since). I think the way he created
problems for the Big 8 by making inet, ignored those problems as long
as he was still interested, and then walked away entirely when he lost
interest, is appalling. I think it's possible that we would have
been better off had inet never happened.
But it's also possible not. Had inet never happened, would the Big 7
have grown again, or would alt.* have exploded even sooner and worse
than it ultimately did instead? Had inet never happened, would the
Big 7 / Big 8 logic for newsgroup creation have been stumbled upon,
or would the single best argument for uniform newsgroup lists never
have been found? Heck, for that matter, had inet never happened,
would the *useful* groups in its list - even late creations like
comp.security.announce - have made it into Usenet?
Joe Bernstein
[1] Jim Riley, you seem to be better at studying group creations than
I am. I can send you lists of the groups created in 1987, 1988, and
1989, if you want; I've gotten that far in my lists-checking. If you
already have this information, never mind. Among the 1988-1989 groups
hardly any are promotions from inet; in 1987 I have several confirmed
examples - maybe a dozen? - and strongly suspect more. (It's hard to
be sure without checking group by group because Fair didn't bother to
post a list of inet groups until the end of 1987.)
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://these-survive.postilion.org/>
Russ Allbery
> Exactly. That's why I don't worry too much about saying stupid stuff to
> you. I'm surprised you're even responding because I figured the same
> thing about you i.e. not carying one way or another. :)
Oh, I was mostly just responding in case the underlying point was
something that I needed to think about. Like, say, the signature on the
checkgroups not verifying for you or something, since I couldn't figure
out what you meant by using a different signature. :)
nucleus
>Today, Tue, 15 Oct 2002 03:43:35 GMT, Boo "Two Buddha" Phatty read a post
> from
> nuc...@invalid.you.are (nucleus) , and determined that in the
>interest
> of skiiers world wide he would respond:
>Hey, baboon.
Boo, be nice. You are but a nice guy, aren't ya?
>AUK is THAT way. -->
Oh.
Gimme your definition of AUK.
>Do you actually think someone running a large news server would
>deliberately fuck up the works?
Depends on what you mean I guess.
As far as I know, this big-8 scam has been about
the biggest calamity in news distribution system,
primarily because of this "big-8 excuse", used
by news admins, which translates into
"as long, as I carry big-8, I don't have to bother
with alt.*".
They made the whole process so painfull,
that they have basically killed big-8.
So many people gave up on new groups and moved
to other places, it is hard to imagine.
So, alt does not get propagation because of this
excuse and all this big-8 scam is PURE grade
totalitarian deceit system, supporting these
power hungry perverts that gorge on torturing
those "clueless" during the RFD and CFV scam.
This so called voting scam is but fraud.
The numbers of 100 "yes" votes over "no"
are purely arbitrary.
The very idea of "no" vote is to merely
defeat ANY group by news groupies "voting"
as a block, at the very least.
This scam of big-8 prevented creation of some
of the most important groups and allowed
takeover of comp.ai hierarchy, one of the oldest
non censored groups on record by self-admitted
fascist, David Kinny, who went as far,
as to create the blacklist and a whitelist,
which is PURE grade fascism.
Regardless of the information provided to these
power hungry perverts, comp.ai was literally
suffocated and converted into a bulletin board
for advertizements. Discussions virtually ceased.
At this time, at least 15% of big-8 is "moderated",
in some cases preventing the non censored versions
of the groups from being created.
> Think, son. Think.
Well...
It depends on what kind of "family values"
you are programmed with.
Yes, you probably want an easy "solution" to your
problems and may even support this whole scam,
for whatever reason.
In that case, I am not talking to you.
Sure, if you'd rather support this fraud,
and that is EXACTLY what it is, then...
Well, then there is very lil that can be done indeed.
One more time:
Here is a quote by Brad Templeton,
one of the people instrumental during the creation
and evolution of the entire news distribution system
even before the usenet was born.
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: b...@templetons.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: USENET - it is over
References: <3A9353AB...@worldnet.att.net> <3C195139...@sfo.com>
<9vbl5t$4i3$1...@panix3.panix.com> <9vejea$spf$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad
Originator: br...@news.netfunny.com (Brad Templeton)
Message-ID: <wc7T7.10286$Kg2.1212411@rwcrnsc51>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:10:04 GMT
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:10:04 GMT
------------------------ Quote Begin --------------------
[...]
As is the voting, which was just a fraud to make people shut up once
they lost a vote. (In those days, the debates would get long and
the person pushing for a group nobody else wanted would never go
away and admit defeat. Voting with the silly '100 more' rule
was not to create democracy, but to end the debate.)
--
Would you expect a product called "Windows" to give you privacy and security?
http://www.templetons.com/brad/
----------------------- End of Quote --------------------
>[ Hint: Economic impact ]
Denis McKeon
Joe Bernstein wrote:
>In article <aofias$h5k$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>, Jim Riley
><jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>> Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
>> interest,
>
>Point of order.
>
>When most of the inet groups were first created, in late May or early
>June of 1987, demonstration of interest was not a universally-recognised
>condition of group creation. The first publicly posted guidelines for
>newsgroup creation in the Big 7 were still months in the future. All
>the evidence at the time was, in fact, that the Big 7 would never grow
>again; the Backbone Cabal had allowed essentially no increase in the
>number of unmoderated groups for several years, but the way the renaming
>of mod.* was handled was evidence that they had also become disillusioned
>with moderation as a panacea.
Although I didn't follow it closely at the time, I have the impression
that mod.* was melded out of its own top-level and into the new regular
Usenet hierarchies because of a perception that the mod.* naming convention
was no longer needed to differentiate presumably high-signal/low-traffic
groups (mod.*) from presumably low-signal/high-traffic groups (net.*).
In other words, sites with high bandwidth costs that might have, for
example, previously gotten much of mod.* and some net.* groups by request
could then get all of comp.* and sci.*, exclude talk.* and misc.*, and
get some of soc.* and rec.* by request - at least in theory.
I may be botching the chronology of the top-level creations, or perhaps
indulging in retro-revisionism from my own point of view, but I believe
that the new naming convention drove the choice of renaming mod.* and not
the success or failure of moderation, panacea or not. IMHO, of course.
Re the original topic - great news that the de-facto acceptance of INET
groups has been accepted by the new powers-that-be - good work, good
luck, and best wishes, folks.
--
Denis McKeon
Jim Riley
>In article <aofias$h5k$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>, Jim Riley
><jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>> Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
>> interest,
>
>Point of order.
Examples of counter-evidence with respect to demonstration of
interest.
Message-ID: <bnews.cbosgd.2329>
Newsgroups: net.news.group
From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Tue Jun 1 00:52:24 1982
Subject: official policy on creation of new newsgroups
From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.music
Subject: Yet Another Rogue Group -- net.music.guitar
Message-ID: <12...@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 08:58:37 EDT
>When most of the inet groups were first created, in late May or early
>June of 1987, demonstration of interest was not a universally-recognised
>condition of group creation. The first publicly posted guidelines for
>newsgroup creation in the Big 7 were still months in the future. All
>the evidence at the time was, in fact, that the Big 7 would never grow
>again; the Backbone Cabal had allowed essentially no increase in the
>number of unmoderated groups for several years, but the way the renaming
>of mod.* was handled was evidence that they had also become disillusioned
>with moderation as a panacea.
>
>Furthermore, and this is important, the rationale for the creation of
>the inet groups *WAS* demonstration of interest. What Erik Fair did,
>at that time and to a lesser extent thereafter, was create a newsgroup
>for each widely-accepted ARPAnet/Internet mailing list, using the logic
>that it made more sense to have one copy on every server than to mail
>one copy to every subscriber.
It is not clear that Erik Fair limited himself to widely-accepted
mailing lists. See for example, and the thread that follows.
From: sp...@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Promoting "inet" to "world"
Message-ID: <59...@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 89 02:36:11 GMT
>Notice, please, that this is *precisely* the same logic that the Big 8
>newsgroup creation system put in place later has used to this day. I
>think it's basically impossible to believe that the Big 8 system got
>this logic from anyplace else than the rationale Fair gave for inet,
>although (since that rationale had been stated less clearly in prior
>years) he may not deserve sole credit.
I don't see the 1988 Guidelines as being original at all, but merely
an evolution of standards that existed nearly from the beginning of
Usenet.
>I haven't confirmed this by detailed study of the group creations [1],
>so don't know how widely practised this was, but the original group
>creation guidelines written by Gene Spafford explicitly said that
>a very active mailing list was adequate evidence of traffic, and in
>that case a vote could be skipped. A *lot* of inet groups were
>promoted in 1987, and I'm fairly sure this was how most of them were.
Identifying a need for a newsgroup has tended to become less obviously
a part of the process, because it is not a formal part of the process.
Over time, there has been a tendency to equate the interest level
shown by the CFV as proving the need for the group.
>[1] Jim Riley, you seem to be better at studying group creations than
>I am. I can send you lists of the groups created in 1987, 1988, and
>1989, if you want; I've gotten that far in my lists-checking. If you
>already have this information, never mind. Among the 1988-1989 groups
>hardly any are promotions from inet; in 1987 I have several confirmed
>examples - maybe a dozen? - and strongly suspect more. (It's hard to
>be sure without checking group by group because Fair didn't bother to
>post a list of inet groups until the end of 1987.)
There is a list from 1989 by Spaf of inet groups when he proposed
merging them into the regular Big 8.
From: sp...@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Promoting "inet" to "world"
Message-ID: <59...@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 89 02:36:11 GMT
Comparing Spaf's list from 1989 to current groups, you have:
Converted to regular Big 8.
comp.editors
comp.lang.visual
news.software.nntp
soc.culture.esperanto
Converted to regular Big 8 as part of reorganization or renaming.
comp.music was split. rec.mag.fsfnet was renamed to rec.mag.dargon
and unmoderated.
comp.music
rec.mag.fsfnet
Converted to regular Big 8 (as item in re-organization), but status
not noted on later lists.
comp.sys.handhelds
Removed in 1991 because of inactivity.
comp.dcom.lans.v2lni
comp.protocols.pup
Groups still in existence.
comp.ai.edu
comp.ai.vision
comp.dcom.lans.hyperchannel
comp.edu.composition
comp.lang.asm370
comp.lang.clu
comp.lang.forth.mac
comp.lang.icon
comp.lang.idl
comp.lang.lisp.franz
comp.lang.lisp.x
comp.lang.rexx
comp.lang.scheme.c
comp.lsi.cad
comp.mail.multi-media
comp.os.aos
comp.os.cpm.amethyst
comp.os.rsts
comp.os.v
comp.periphs.printers
comp.protocols.iso.dev-environ
comp.protocols.iso.x400
comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
comp.protocols.pcnet
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
comp.sys.cdc
comp.sys.intel.ipsc310
comp.sys.northstar
comp.sys.super
comp.sys.ti.explorer
comp.sys.zenith
comp.terminals.bitgraph
comp.terminals.tty5620
comp.theory
comp.theory.cell-automata
comp.theory.dynamic-sys
comp.theory.self-org-sys
comp.unix.cray
rec.games.vectrex
sci.bio.technology
sci.math.num-analysis
sci.philosophy.meta
Inet Groups created since January 1989.
comp.networks.noctools.announce (1993)
comp.networks.noctools.bugs (1993)
comp.networks.noctools.d (1993)
comp.networks.noctools.submissions (1993)
comp.networks.noctools.tools (1993)
comp.networks.noctools.wanted (1993)
comp.org.isoc.interest (1993)
comp.os.msdos.4dos (1992)
comp.protocols.snmp (1991)
comp.protocols.time.ntp (1990)
comp.security.announce (1989)
comp.soft-sys.andrew (1989*)
comp.soft-sys.nextstep (1992)
comp.std.announce (1991)
comp.unix.solaris (1992)
comp.windows.x.motif (1990)
*There was an attempt in 1989 to create a regular Big 8 group dealing
with CMU's Andrew. There were issues about the name, (e.g.
c.soft-sys.andrew, c.sys.andrew, c.software.andrew, c.andrew, etc.),
and apparently an automated Yes voting system at CMU. I'm not sure if
the Inet group was created in response to the these problems, or
whether it already existed, it was decided not to push forard after
the problems occured.
OK, I found a list of gated newsgroups from December 1987, including
those in the Inet distribution.
From: fa...@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,news.misc
Subject: Re: inet newsgroups
Message-ID: <22...@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 22 Dec 87 03:03:38 GMT
Fair's 1987 list has 3 groups that were not in Spaf's 1989 list; and
Spaf's 1989 list has one group that was not in Fair's 1987 list.
comp.arch.parallel-sym
This group appears in Spaf's August 1988 list, but is removed by
December. Earlier in 1988, someone had asked what the difference
between comp.arch.parallel (which was being renamed from
comp.arch.hypercube) and the by-then inactive Inet group
comp.arch.parallel-sym. It appears that this group was simply
de-listed.
This was removed at the same time as comp.arch.parallel-sym. Earlier
in 1988 there had been a suggestion that discussion of Novell Netware
could use this group rather comp.dcom.lans. During the early 1990's
this group regularly showed up on lists of groups with bogus traffic.
It was not mentioned at the time comp.sys.novell was created in 1990
(comp.sys.novell was re-organized as comp.os.netware.* in 1995).
soc.psychology
Approved as a regular Big 8. The proponent said that Fair had agreed
to cross-distribution of the Big 8 and Inet traffic.
comp.lang.scheme.c
This shows up as a Inet group in August 1988, when Spaf first listed
the Inet groups. This appears to be very near the time it was
created/gated.
So between December 1987 and January 1989 you had 2 groups dropped (or
perhaps they were erroneously listed in 1987), one new Inet group
added, and one converted.
--
Jim Riley
nucleus
>Today, Tue, 15 Oct 2002 05:12:15 GMT, Boo "Two Buddha" Phatty read a post
> from
> nuc...@invalid.you.are (nucleus) , and determined that in the
>interest
> of skiiers world wide he would respond:
>>In article <0a5nquc87pfmummbi...@4ax.com>, boo@phatty wrote:
>>>Today, Tue, 15 Oct 2002 03:43:35 GMT, Boo "Two Buddha" Phatty read a post
>>> from
>>> nuc...@invalid.you.are (nucleus) , and determined that in the
>>>interest
>>> of skiiers world wide he would respond:
>>>>In article <ylzntgo...@windlord.stanford.edu>, Russ Allbery
>>>><r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>[ SNIP }
>>>>Zeig heil!
Fits nicely with your snip, ain't it?
>>>Hey, baboon.
Zeig heil, oh pure blooded elite,
sucking ass of the dead rat!
>>Boo, be nice. You are but a nice guy, aren't ya?
>Hell ya.
I like that.
Actually, at this point,
I could just as well say:
"Well, in that case, the hell with ya, suckazoid".
But Ima weallly nice peison, you see.
I service any kind of lice.
Well, mostly. With some rare exceptions.
Come, suck on my ass, boo.
It is so full of sweet, sweet blood.
>>>AUK is THAT way. -->
>>Oh.
>>Gimme your definition of AUK.
>alt.usenet.kooks
Boo, this one is gonna costya.
I promise, you idiot, using Buddha
like it was some kind of a puppet of a dull.
You wish to reduce this most critical issue
of global and UNCENSORED distribution of ideas
to the level of a "kook"?
Ok, you'd have to define that one also,
boobie.
>>>Do you actually think someone running a large news server would
>>>deliberately fuck up the works?
>>Depends on what you mean I guess.
>Not really. The biggest point you're missing is that these are
>private systems and we can do whatever we want with them.
Boo, I've heard this sucky argument so many times,
it isn't even interesting. I don't even want to puke
any more when I see it.
It is but boring to the point of obscene.
Are you telling me that all these "private" systems,
financed out of the pockets of your customers,
is but YOUR "private" toys, you sucky conman,
having enough arrogance to use the name of
nothing less than Buddha?
One more time: I as a customer finance all the toys,
you conmen have in your pile.
You, conmen advertise usenet to be a part of the package
of "services" you offer, but if I ask you what DO you
guarantee in terms of performance,
what would be the answer, booboo?
Well, about the ONLY thing you guarantee
is a connection to a black hole you interpret
to be Internet.
Why?
Well, because you do not guarantee ANY performance
essentially.
You do not guarantee even email delivery or do you?
You do not guarantee usenet performance.
You do not guarantee IRC.
What DO you guarantee and what is it you are getting
my hard earned money for?
Just to piss me in the eye?
Booooooo.
I fuck what you think, boobie.
You are but a speck on my screen,
an idiot, having enough guts and idiocy
to use Buddha as some kind of a puppet toy
while ignoring the simpliest of facts
that I as a customer put the bread on your
table and give you all the toys you've got.
Boo, better get lost from my screen
and in a hurry.
This aint a profitable enter-sucking-price
for the idiots of your grade.
>>As far as I know, this big-8 scam has been about
>>the biggest calamity in news distribution system,
>>primarily because of this "big-8 excuse", used
>>by news admins, which translates into
>>"as long, as I carry big-8, I don't have to bother
>>with alt.*".
>Not at all. Alt.* is a no mans land, anarchy. It's been called
>anarcy for as long as I remember.
Are you a TOTAL idiot?
Well then.
Get ready for your face to get exposed for what
it trully is and join these fascists, known as "rulers".
Btw, why did you get into this
with all the sucking sounds you made so far?
You want a "piece of the action", booboo?
Or what IS it that you want?
You want to claim that you are not but a speck
on the screen?
Yes, Russ is not an idiot indeed
and that is what he toldya.
"Look boo, I give a dead flying chicken
about what kind of sucking sounds you make here.
Because you don't count for ANYTHING."
Git it, boobie?
He just pissed into your face
and you did not even notice,
you idiot.
You are going to make too much of a sucking sounds,
better believe, you ARE going to loose what you are
afraid of loosing.
Do you have fear in your heart,
oh Buddha manipulator?
>>They made the whole process so painfull,
>>that they have basically killed big-8.
>>So many people gave up on new groups and moved
>>to other places, it is hard to imagine.
>For good reason. Somsone has to pay for machine(s),
I pay for those machines, you conman.
I as a customer "own" all of your sucking
entreprises, stock, gun and barrel.
Sure, in the suckitalist system, on the paper,
it is all YOUR "property", but you are but in
delusion.
You do not realize where that bread
on your table comes from.
Zo...
Your notion of reality is but delusion indeed.
That is why you engage in these delusions of
grandior excersizes and are trying to dick fight
with Russ, who does not even know who you are
on the first place, I bet.
>resources, people, and bandwidth. I prefer to pay
>for something with some value.
Are you the "owner", or but some sucky news admin?
>>So, alt does not get propagation because of this
>>excuse and all this big-8 scam is PURE grade
>>totalitarian deceit system, supporting these
>>power hungry perverts that gorge on torturing
>>those "clueless" during the RFD and CFV scam.
>So?
So you suck, idiot.
You are promoting totalitarism and give a flying
dead chicken about the most sacred document of
your own land, the constitution.
You certainly do not give a fuck about democracy
as such. Otherwise, you'd be standing on your tip toes
to defend those values.
Are you telling me that because of your chase
of a paper god of money, forever running away
from that fear of "survival",
you are programmed with,
you are willing to swap democracy
for totalitarism?
You want NWO, the New World Order
as pronounced by those worshippers of the beast,
whose sign is 666?
Then get ready.
You will get it indeed.
Even at this junction,
you are but a mere number
in the giant computer,
ran by big brother watching,
just as that eye on the top of a pyramid
on that seal of illuminati
on the back of that one dollar bill,
sitting in your own vallet
and waiting until you, idiot,
wake up to reality
and smell the shit you have created
and are promoting here
this very moment.
Ever heard?
You suck, boo.
You are but a lil louse,
not to insult that very louse.
>[ snip ]
>>Regardless of the information provided to these
>>power hungry perverts, comp.ai was literally
>>suffocated and converted into a bulletin board
>>for advertizements. Discussions virtually ceased.
>>At this time, at least 15% of big-8 is "moderated",
>>in some cases preventing the non censored versions
>>of the groups from being created.
>So you WANT a moderated group? Come back with a good
>RFD.
Huh?
How many active neurons you gots
in that CPU between your ears?
Bout 2?
Moderation IS totalitarism.
Can you make just the most primitive leap of logic
and bridge the gap between 2 + 2 and 4?
>>> Think, son. Think.
>>Well...
>>It depends on what kind of "family values"
>>you are programmed with.
>>Yes, you probably want an easy "solution" to your
>>problems and may even support this whole scam,
>>for whatever reason.
>>In that case, I am not talking to you.
>Fine by me. Shall I chalk you up to "Yet Another Kook"?
Sure. But first you suck full time.
Then we'll see what bin to throw you into.
>[ SNIP - Brad's gone. Things change ]
Brad isn't gone.
Do you want to see him?
Actually, talking about Brad, from what I have seen,
he is about the only one with a pretty functioning
brain among all of "old-timers".
The rest of them are simply ass lickers
of DA system, the plain and ordinary,
fully brainless bio-robots,
programed literally to the state of oblivion,
driven by the fear of "survival",
gathering in herds,
preferrably in the middle,
hoping to gain "security" that way.
Anothewords...
Get the drift, boo?
I though you were a nice guy.
George William Herbert
>Someone put a second ice cube in my Macallans as I was typing.
Ice? _Macallans_???
Barbarian...
-george
Joe Bernstein
<jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
> On 15 Oct 2002 04:39:32 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <aofias$h5k$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>, Jim Riley
> ><jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
> >> interest,
> >
> >Point of order.
[I then went on to say that when most of the inet groups were created,
in late May or early June 1987, demonstration of interest was not a
universally recognised criterion for newsgroup creation. I went on
to explain what I meant by this, but that's not relevant to dealing
with what Jim Riley typed in *before* quoting my saying that:]
> Examples of counter-evidence with respect to demonstration of
> interest.
>
> Message-ID: <bnews.cbosgd.2329>
> Newsgroups: net.news.group
> From: cbosgd!mark
> Date: Tue Jun 1 00:52:24 1982
> Subject: official policy on creation of new newsgroups
I'm curious where you see any evidence in this that a demonstration
of interest is called for. The relevant sentence, I think, is "Once
a consensus is reached, the person who originally proposed it should
make a yes/no decision on the newsgroup and a name, announce it to
net.general, and create it." I don't buy this as requiring a
demonstration of interest; it calls for a consensus.
It's worth mentioning, as a by the by here, that Mark Horton (the
poster of that post) was probably the originator of the backbone
mailing list and of the backbone as a concept. (There's a dispute
between him and Gene Spafford about this, recorded in the Usenet.Hist
mailing list's archive. My take on it is that Spafford tended to
forget, over time, that he hadn't originated things that he took over
from other people, as witness the way Adam Buchsbaum's name was
gradually written out of the history of Usenet. So I'm inclined to
believe Horton's version.) Thus this sentence appears to me to mean
that at this date, the backbone admins had *not* yet taken over
administration of newsgroup creation. I'm strongly inclined to think
they did so no earlier than Spafford's taking over the lists of
newsgroups (which didn't yet exist in mid-1982, and which he took over
in August 1984). Rmgroups that look backbone-ish to me pervade 1985,
but I haven't investigated them in detail; the well-publicised rmgroups
that made the backbone's control famous didn't occur until autumn 1985.
> From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
> Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.music
> Subject: Yet Another Rogue Group -- net.music.guitar
> Message-ID: <12...@gatech.CSNET>
> Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 08:58:37 EDT
Oh, hey: that date brings us to this group.
And here we *do* find a clearly written procedure. It even has
voting. Fascinating. I had tended to assume that since very few
groups were created in net.* from 1985 to the Great Renaming, there
couldn't have been votes; and I noted a little discussion archived
in news.groups's early days that seemed to indicate the voting
procedure being worked out. Either the disdain for unmoderated
groups was *much* wider spread in Usenet's Golden Age than I would
have thought, though, or the backbone admins really were stomping on
voted groups left, right and center. I wonder which. Well, that
stage of my research is a long way off.
In any event, I do concede that this procedure does call for a
demonstration of interest, both by doing what we would do today
through writing a Rationale, *and* by holding a vote.
> >Furthermore, and this is important, the rationale for the creation of
> >the inet groups *WAS* demonstration of interest. What Erik Fair did,
> >at that time and to a lesser extent thereafter, was create a newsgroup
> >for each widely-accepted ARPAnet/Internet mailing list, using the logic
> >that it made more sense to have one copy on every server than to mail
> >one copy to every subscriber.
>
> It is not clear that Erik Fair limited himself to widely-accepted
> mailing lists. See for example, and the thread that follows.
Note please that the thread in question is nearly two years after the
initial creation.
At some point, it would obviously be worthwhile to check the inet
groups of 1987 against the ARPAnet List of Lists. I guess what I should
have written is "What Erik Fair said he did", and left it at that.
But frankly, my impression is that Fair simply used inet as a tool
to do whatever he wanted to do *after* 1987; he quite obviously did
not continue his initial manifesto of one newsgroup per mailing
list (thank God), but he never stated (that I know of) any other
overall logic to the inet distribution.
Thanks for the pointer.
> >Notice, please, that this is *precisely* the same logic that the Big 8
> >newsgroup creation system put in place later has used to this day. I
> >think it's basically impossible to believe that the Big 8 system got
> >this logic from anyplace else than the rationale Fair gave for inet,
> >although (since that rationale had been stated less clearly in prior
> >years) he may not deserve sole credit.
>
> I don't see the 1988 Guidelines as being original at all, but merely
> an evolution of standards that existed nearly from the beginning of
> Usenet.
Spafford was posting guidelines starting in late 1987. Which 1988
guidelines do you mean?
I think his text in late 1987 is clearly descended from the post you
pointed me to above, from 1985. I'll have to look in a great deal
more detail for such posts. I'm afraid all I did thus far is chain
back through news.announce.newusers, taking advantage of Spafford's
tendency to think that most of the things he auto-posted were of
interest to newbies.
I have posted in the past that a thread archived from December 1981
contains in capsule all of the systems the "official" hierarchies
have used to date: Wm Leler with the early days anarchy, Mark
Horton with the Backbone Cabal, and Steve Bellovin with Big 8-style
voting, more or less. I do think the *standards* have been evolving
steadily. But look: the raw total of unmoderated groups in the
official lists was 173 at the end of 1984, 176 at the end of 1985,
and 184 at the end of 1986. This compares to strong growth in each
year 1981 (as best I can tell) through 1984, weak growth in 1987,
and strong growth in 1988, 1989, and as far as I know 1990-1998.
I think it's reasonable to assume that the change in 1985 and 1986,
as well as part of 1987, was the Backbone Cabal's control, and I
think it's reasonable to ask why, after two and a half years of
basically requiring an rmgroup as the price of a new unmoderated
group, the Backbone Cabal started relaxing its grip. The three things
I see as having contributed to this are, in chronological order:
1) the taking-stock of mod.* that came about when mod.* was due for
renaming (a number of mod.* groups were unmoderated while they
were renamed, and unmoderations continued for two years thereafter);
2) the creation of alt.* by 'rogue' backbone admins;
3) the creation of inet by a non-'rogue' backbone admin.
Basically, I think the backbone admins found themselves backed into
a corner. Moderation could no longer be defended as the perfect cure
for all that ailed Usenet, since moderators were disappearing all over
the place; and more and more of their own membership were demonstrating
disagreement with the no-new-unmoderated-groups policy.
In this situation, though, the admins could, in my opinion, pretty much
write their own ticket. They *didn't have* to say "We'll create it
if you hold a vote". If that was already quasi-traditional, then I
suppose their saying it made them look better, but if they'd chosen
something else, they might have gotten away with it, for as long as
they got away with what they did choose.
The short version of what I'm trying to say here is that 1985 and
1986 were an interruption, and I don't think it's ever historically
sound to assume that a process interrupted will just continue where
it left off. So I think we still have to account for the fact that
in 1987 we got voting guidelines, and I have multiple reasons (one
obviously being the mailing-list exception) for thinking that this
development owed a *lot* to the embrace of demonstration of interest,
as a rationale, by one of the most high-handed and arrogant of the
backbone admins.
> >I haven't confirmed this by detailed study of the group creations [1],
> >so don't know how widely practised this was, but the original group
> >creation guidelines written by Gene Spafford explicitly said that
> >a very active mailing list was adequate evidence of traffic, and in
> >that case a vote could be skipped. A *lot* of inet groups were
> >promoted in 1987, and I'm fairly sure this was how most of them were.
>
> Identifying a need for a newsgroup has tended to become less obviously
> a part of the process, because it is not a formal part of the process.
The Rationale is its fossil. Formality has taken a toll on things
like that that aren't really formal. I suppose if we switched to
these Justification things that alt.config is now asking for, we
could formalise it.
> >Among the 1988-1989 groups
> >hardly any are promotions from inet; in 1987 I have several confirmed
> >examples - maybe a dozen? - and strongly suspect more. (It's hard to
> >be sure without checking group by group because Fair didn't bother to
> >post a list of inet groups until the end of 1987.)
>
> There is a list from 1989 by Spaf of inet groups when he proposed
> merging them into the regular Big 8.
1989 is easy; he was posting lists of inet in the "Alternative
Newsgroup Hierarchies" posts starting in I think September 1988.
1987 is hard because *nobody* posted a full list of inet groups that
is archived before Erik Fair's year-end list, which you note:
> OK, I found a list of gated newsgroups from December 1987, including
> those in the Inet distribution.
Every time people complained about inet in 1987, they asked for an
Offishul List Of inet Groups so they could include/exclude them
the way they wanted to. Erik Fair, for whatever bizarre reason of
his own, went *on and on* arguing with his attackers, even specifying
*how many* groups he'd created, but never posting such a list. It's
really crazy-making to me, especially since the archives from that
period are high-backbone-compliant Toronto, and aren't going to tell
me directly which groups he created when.
Finally at year's end he seems to have gotten over his snit, but
even then, it would have been too simple to post a list of inet
groups, so he posted a complete list of gateways at Berkeley. This
had as one amusing effect a real showing-up of Gene Spafford, whose
list of gatewayed Big 7 groups was thoroughly tattered by that point
(it included only one *fifth* of the groups Fair listed! and claimed
that most of *those* gateways were unreliable to boot!). Spafford
did not use it to update his list.
But Fair did, oh by the way, note within that list which groups were
Big 7 and which were inet. He got three of them wrong, as I gather
you noticed in your breakdown. Anyway, Spafford, not in his 1/1/1988
but in his 1/15/1988 checkgroups, then started doing separate
checkgroups with or without inet; and in September 1988 (I think)
started listing inet groups in the "Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies"
list.
Joe Bernstein
Joe Bernstein
turns one sentence from that into several sentences. Read this one
if you care about this particular point, but otherwise you may not
want to bother.
In article <aog9an$ims$1...@iruka.swcp.com>, Denis McKeon
<Dmc...@swcp.com> wrote:
> In <3dab9c04$0$184$892e...@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net>
> Joe Bernstein wrote:
> >the Backbone Cabal had allowed essentially no increase in the
> >number of unmoderated groups for several years, but the way the renaming
> >of mod.* was handled was evidence that they had also become disillusioned
> >with moderation as a panacea.
> but I believe
> that the new naming convention drove the choice of renaming mod.* and not
> the success or failure of moderation, panacea or not.
There wasn't universal agreement that mod.* should be renamed From
The Very Beginning, but I think *most* of the major announcements
about the Great Renaming took this for granted. Note that very
early on, moderated groups were created in the Big 7 - news.lists
appeared the minute the renaming of net.* (except net.sources*)
was finished, and misc.handicap and rec.arts.movies.reviews were
not much later.
What I was talking about wasn't the *fact* that mod.* was renamed,
but the *way* it was renamed. Two things stand out in my mind about
this - 1) Erik Fair screwed up the gateways in the process (I really
do dislike what I see of Erik Fair's 1980s work...) by switching
them weeks ahead of the posted schedule to the new names; and,
what matters to my point here,
2) about 1/6th of the existing moderated groups in Usenet were
*unmoderated* when they were renamed.
When you consider that most of the backbone admins who'd said
anything about the matter were on record as thinking that
moderation was the One Hope of Usenet, and when you consider that nearly
all of the net growth in Usenet for *over two years* had been in
moderated groups, this is a *really striking* shift. And it wasn't
final, either: through the rest of 1987 and most of 1988,
unmoderations continued all over comp.*.
Joe Bernstein
Jim Riley
[Since I've inserted a lot of references to other messages, I've
repeated the above introduction when quoting Joe Bernstein]
>In article <aogtao$jmb$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>, Jim Riley
><jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>> On 15 Oct 2002 04:39:32 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <aofias$h5k$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>, Jim Riley
>> ><jim...@pipeline.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Since the Inet groups were created without a demonstration of
>> >> interest,
>> >
>> >Point of order.
>[I then went on to say that when most of the inet groups were created,
>in late May or early June 1987, demonstration of interest was not a
>universally recognised criterion for newsgroup creation. I went on
>to explain what I meant by this, but that's not relevant to dealing
>with what Jim Riley typed in *before* quoting my saying that:]
>
>> Examples of counter-evidence with respect to demonstration of
>> interest.
>>
>> Message-ID: <bnews.cbosgd.2329>
>> Newsgroups: net.news.group
>> From: cbosgd!mark
>> Date: Tue Jun 1 00:52:24 1982
>> Subject: official policy on creation of new newsgroups
On 17 Oct 2002 04:30:21 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>I'm curious where you see any evidence in this that a demonstration
>of interest is called for. The relevant sentence, I think, is "Once
>a consensus is reached, the person who originally proposed it should
>make a yes/no decision on the newsgroup and a name, announce it to
>net.general, and create it." I don't buy this as requiring a
>demonstration of interest; it calls for a consensus.
I think that the 'consensus' included whether the group was needed.
But I'll see if I can find something else.
Throughout 1983, there were quite a few new groups being created.
In some cases, the "discussion" was mostly of the form, "I vote YES on
net.rec.disc", for example. (This group was created, then removed so
it is not the direct predecessor of the current rec.sport.disc).
There were complaints about groups being created, and then not having
any traffic. There was a proposal to remove groups that received less
than 2 messages/week.
From: ste...@shark.UUCP (Steve Biedermann)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Newsgroup wars
Message-ID: <2...@shark.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Jan-84 01:53:07 EST
This argues that "votes" should not be used, but that actual traffic
should be present before creating a new group. This occured at the
time when proposals were made to split off net.religion.jewish
(renamed to net.culture.jewish during the GR), and to split net.music.
There were quite a few proposals at this time for restructuring of
newsgroups into more of a hierarchy. This anticipated that the top
level hierarchy (e.g. 'net.' would be stripped off and become the
distribution).
From: a...@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: On Proposing New Groups
Message-ID: <26...@alice.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Feb-84 10:34:44 EST
This is worth reading the whole thread. Adams Buchsbaum argues for
not creating a group unless discussion already exists. Werner Uhrig
argues that in some cases this is impossible because the existing
groups may not be suitable. Chuq Von Rospach agrees to a certain
extent, but argues that if there was really interest in discussing a
topic, the participants could take over a quiet group.
From: a...@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Abuse of net.news.group
Message-ID: <26...@alice.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 3-Mar-84 14:38:49 EST
This says that votes should not occur in net.news.group but should
take place by email. Voting is not defined.
From: a...@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Forget About Newsgroup Restructuring
Message-ID: <26...@alice.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Mar-84 06:51:32 EST
And here he argues that groups should be when there is traffic, and
for neat ideas, and dead groups should be removed.
From: wo...@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Newsgroup Births and Deaths: Here we go again (and again
....)
Message-ID: <9...@hao.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-May-84 16:07:46 EDT
| 5) (more flames) ORGANIZE THE CREATION OF NEWSGROUPS. While this may sound
| like USENET, Inc., that isn't what I am suggesting. I'm not sure exactly
| what it is I *am* suggesting here, I'd just like to get the creative
| juices flowing. I would like to see some small group of people,
| maybe just one at a time, be responsible for creating and deleting
| newsgroups. Maybe we could elect a Newsgroup monitor with voting by
| Email?
From: rid...@ut-sally.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Posted to net.sources: newsgroup description hack to vnews
Message-ID: <2...@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-May-84 00:44:47 EDT
Not really anything to do with group creation, but this is about a
news hack to get the short description (from Adam Buschbaum's
proto-checkgroups) and to display it.
From: chu...@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news
Subject: If I see one more yes vote, I'll whimper!
Message-ID: <9...@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-May-84 10:32:29 EDT
This is a proposal for a steering committee - and says "This absurd
business of 'voting' on new topics has GOT to stop." Probably worth
scanning the whole thread.
From: ma...@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news
Subject: Re: If I see one more yes vote, I'll whimper!
Message-ID: <13...@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-May-84 21:41:44 EDT
This is in the follow-up thread to the previous message. Horton says
that the idea behind voting was that they should go to the person
proposing the group, and that it was the only way to determine whether
there was interest in the proposed group.
From: l...@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: major restructuring and idea for group coordinators
Message-ID: <74...@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Jun-84 16:38:29 EDT
Vaguely related, proposes that groups have "coordinators" to watch
over them. The coordinator would have had a role that combines the
role of Usenet II czars and us.* hosts. net.news.group would be used
only for discussion of truly new groups.
Message-ID: <bnews.hao.428>
Newsgroups: net.music,net.news.group
From: hao!woods
Date: Fri Feb 11 06:10:03 1983 [***]
Subject: net.music.gdead
Is this the first results posting?
In light of groups like net.wobegon, surely the following list
demonstrates that there are sufficient DeadHeads on the network to
form our own group.
[***] This date is correct. Through the serendipity of Google's
cross-threading, Greg Wood's posting above is mixed in with a
discussion of a new Dead group that resulted in the following
From: r...@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.news.group
Subject: Results of poll on Grateful Dead subgroup
Message-ID: <11...@opus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Apr-85 03:05:41 EST
Announces a 47:10 in favor of net.music.gdead
From: su...@ut-ngp.UUCP (Sunil Trivedi)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Abuse of net.general [MCI ad]
Message-ID: <15...@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 6-Apr-85 20:54:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1571
A Spam sighting?
From: fa...@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Getting rid of fa.* (and moving it to mod.*)
Message-ID: <10...@dual.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-May-85 02:28:14 EDT
A proposal to rename fa.* to mod.*
From: use...@gatech.CSNET
Newsgroups: mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
Subject: List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 1 July 1985)
Message-ID: <4...@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 00:39:09 EDT
|mod.rec Discussions on pasttimes (not currently active)
| mod.rec.guns Discussions about firearms
Interesting in that the creation of mod.rec.guns also resulted in the
creation of mod.rec, at least as a place-holder. A scan through the
other hierarchies shows that there was always a parent group when
there were sub-groups. A recurring debate was what conditions
warranted creation of a sub-group.
From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups:
net.news.group,net.movies.sw,net.women.only,net.micro.zx,net.rec.coins,net.rec.disc,net.mail.msggroup
Subject: Removing newsgroups
Message-ID: <5...@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Mon, 15-Jul-85 12:08:59 EDT
|Time to clean out some deadwood, folks. I intend to apply the same
|criteria we use for creating new groups to these old, unused ones:
|there must be a clearly demonstrated need not filled by another group,
|AND a sufficient volume of postings to warrant a separate group.
A proposal to remove some low-traffic groups - see Newsgroups list.
From: g...@rayssd.UUCP (Gregory M. Paris)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: how many does it take?
Message-ID: <8...@rayssd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Jul-85 17:35:31 EDT
This asks what is the standard for removal of a group (net.flame in
this instance):
If it takes a respectable amount of positive response to
initially create a group, how much response does it take to remove
one?
From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.bizarre
Subject: Re: The return of net.bizarre.
Message-ID: <6...@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 11:03:18 EDT
This was in response to a poll favoring re-creation of net.bizarre.
| For the information of our readers, the procedure is:
|
| 1) Propose a new group in "net.news.group" and related, existing groups
| 2) Poll the readership for comments
| 3) Establish that there is/would be sufficient traffic
| 4) Based on responses, create the group.
A follow-up suggests that the preferred order should be: 3 1 2 4.
From: lau...@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Newsgroup creations and deletions
Message-ID: <7...@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Jul-85 16:50:18 EDT
An interesting thread in response to the removal of net.general.
From: a...@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson)
Newsgroups: net.news.b,net.news.group
Subject: How to deal with net.general
Message-ID: <52...@elsie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 13:28:31 EDT
An amusing suggestion that off-topic postings in net.general be
cancelled (retromoderated). Since the articles in net.general were to
be of interest to *all*, then if a particular article was not of
interest to you, you could feel free to cancel it.
From: re...@Glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: the trouble with all these rules is...
Message-ID: <10...@Glacier.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 20:20:04 EDT
Reid argues that hardly anyone reads net.news.group, and that it is
unrepresentative of the net as a whole. And that there ought to be a
way for Everyman to create newsgroups that interest them.
Chuq von Rospach responded:
| Unfortunately, the network seems to feel that deleting groups is fascist,
| and any attempt to do so dumps lots of rotten vegetables on the heads of
| those who try. Because of this, it is almost as hard to create a group as
| it is to delete one, and I think everyone loses because of it.
From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: The Great Net Cleanup Part II
Message-ID: <8...@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 23:12:31 EDT
This was a summary of mostly negative feedback that Spaf had received
on the proposed removal of a baker's dozen groups. Brian Reid had
posited that there were 3 types of groups:
1) information sharing: many readers, few posters.
2) social: readers and posters were mostly the same people.
3) soap box: more writers than readers.
Spaf mused that maybe there should be three sets of rules for group
creation.
From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.database
Subject: net.database created
Message-ID: <8...@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 14:39:55 EDT
net.database is created by "popular demand", which also included
discussion of alternative names (e.g. .data, .db, .dbms)
From: gree...@timeinc.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: request for mod.sources.pc
Message-ID: <4...@timeinc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 19:43:45 EDT
|Count me in for a 'yes' vote. Looks like the magic number is about
|thirty 'yeses', so start those cards and letters, folks!
From: lau...@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: magic numbers
Message-ID: <7...@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 14:10:17 EDT
Weinstein's response was triggered by the previous message.
From: lau...@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Vote Fraud and Newsgroups
Message-ID: <7...@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Aug-85 14:25:19 EDT
This proposes that votes be conducted by a independent 3rd party.
Basically, it indicates the evolution of a process from where the
proposer of a group could be expected to fairly determine whether a
consensus exists, evaluate opposing arguments, and then decide whether
he (the proposer) should create the group - to one where the
evaluation and execution of a proposal should be done by the net
community.
It notes that what support level is needed is another issue entirely.
From: m...@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Vote Fraud and Newsgroups
Message-ID: <7...@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Aug-85 17:02:44 EDT
This is a followup to the previous. It proposes a mod.news.group.
Simple votes would be filtered by the moderator. Substantive
arguments would be posted - with sub-votes possibly conducted.
From: ro...@prlb2.UUCP (Ronse)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: how to avoid vote fraud?
Message-ID: <8...@prlb2.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Aug-85 14:55:19 EDT
This article suggests that the posting of votes would be one way to
counter vote fraud.
From: kau...@yale.ARPA (El Magnifico Qux)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: A proposal for combat of newsgroup proliferation
Message-ID: <1...@yale.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 22:09:06 EDT
This suggests a group for controlling which groups should be created.
From: lau...@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Doomsday cometh (VERY LONG)
Message-ID: <7...@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 16:06:53 EDT
Expresses concerns about proliferation of new newsgroups and volume
will destroy Usenet.
From: chu...@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news
Subject: mailing lists vs. newsgroups: facts (was Vote Fraud and
Newsgroups)
Message-ID: <32...@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Sep-85 02:01:33 EDT
This proposes some criteria by which it could be more efficient to
convert a mailing list to a newsgroup.
Which brings us to this message:
>> From: sp...@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
>> Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.music
>> Subject: Yet Another Rogue Group -- net.music.guitar
>> Message-ID: <12...@gatech.CSNET>
>> Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 08:58:37 EDT
On 17 Oct 2002 04:30:21 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>Oh, hey: that date brings us to this group.
>
>And here we *do* find a clearly written procedure. It even has
>voting. Fascinating. I had tended to assume that since very few
>groups were created in net.* from 1985 to the Great Renaming, there
>couldn't have been votes; and I noted a little discussion archived
>in news.groups's early days that seemed to indicate the voting
>procedure being worked out. Either the disdain for unmoderated
>groups was *much* wider spread in Usenet's Golden Age than I would
>have thought, though, or the backbone admins really were stomping on
>voted groups left, right and center. I wonder which. Well, that
>stage of my research is a long way off.
Reading back over the 1983-85 period in net.news.group, it is clear
that the the procedure outlined by Spaf was widely understood. It was
only when the procedure wasn't followed (e.g. net.bizaare or in this
case, net.music.guitar), that the procedure was more formally
enunciated. As the introduction to Spaf's list notes:
|
| For future reference, the proper procedure for creating a new group is:
|
A response to Spaf's message suggested that a poll be conducted.
Others argued that this would mean a breakdown in the approved
procedure.
In this time frame, there was also discussion of alternate voting
schemes, including those that would be site-based and weighted on the
basis of the number of newsfeeds (in effect, biased toward backbone
sites)
On 17 Oct 2002 04:30:21 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>In any event, I do concede that this procedure does call for a
>demonstration of interest, both by doing what we would do today
>through writing a Rationale, *and* by holding a vote.
Continuing on from September 1985.
From: ch...@ihlpm.UUCP (cherepov)
Newsgroups: net.sport,net.news.group
Subject: Tennis newsgroup (attn. Gene Spafford)
Message-ID: <4...@ihlpm.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 20:31:26 EDT
This argues that a +40/50 vote margin is too rigorous.
From: q...@yale.ARPA (El Magnifico Kaufman)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Vote count for/against net.bizarre
Message-ID: <2...@yale.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 14:31:22 EDT
This is a vote result on the proposed removal of net.bizarre.
From: re...@Glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: current newsgroup creation rules are silly
Message-ID: <13...@Glacier.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 22:50:53 EDT
Reid argues readership is more important than writers. This will
eventually lead to the readership statistics.
From: m...@k.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Browne)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.flame,net.misc
Subject: New (?) Newsgroup Request - net.bizarre
Message-ID: <6...@k.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 21-Oct-85 23:17:14 EDT
This proposes a "new" group called net.bizarre. It is suggested that
discussion of bizarre things take place in net.misc to demonstrate
existing traffic, and that people send their votes in to indicate
interest.
From: th...@h-sc1.UUCP (robert thau)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group,net.flame
Subject: Fear and Loathing on the Clouds
Message-ID: <6...@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Oct-85 20:31:56 EDT
Worth reading the whole thread. Thau complains about Spaf's removal
of net.bizarre and net.internat. The debate is about the backbone
enforcing the rules vs. what the people want. And whether the rules
had been consistently applied.
From: ri...@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: net.flame will no longer be distributed by many sites
Message-ID: <7...@seismo.CSS.GOV>
Date: Fri, 8-Nov-85 20:49:06 EST
Announces that net.flame will no longer be distributed by a number of
sites. Henry Spencer also announced that he would no longer be
propagating a number of troups.
From: ln6...@sdcc7.UUCP (Paul van de Graaf)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Ban the binaries!
Message-ID: <1...@sdcc7.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Nov-85 11:04:58 EST
This is a complaint about the binaries being posted to
net.sources.mac.
From: he...@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.unix-wizards,net.lan,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Re: net.os
Message-ID: <62...@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Dec-85 13:19:05 EST
Complains about public voting, and also says that voting does not
demonstrate existing traffic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This gets us through the end of 1985.
Spaf's November 2, 1987 guidelnes.
>I think his text in late 1987 is clearly descended from the post you
>pointed me to above, from 1985. I'll have to look in a great deal
>more detail for such posts. I'm afraid all I did thus far is chain
>back through news.announce.newusers, taking advantage of Spafford's
>tendency to think that most of the things he auto-posted were of
>interest to newbies.
I don't want to go find it now, but there was a post in the latter
1985 period suggesting that the procedure for creating a new group be
posted to news.announce.newusers.
I think the intent of the Spaf's 1985 post is to inform all the people
who may not be aware of the current procedures. Originally, one
person took the role of proponent, votetaker, and newgroup issuer.
Only the role of list-keeper was distinct. In essence, the proposer
was trying to determine whether they should issue the newgroup
message. Most participants were either the news admin or close to the
news admin, and might be expected to have a concern about the overall
well-being of the net. There tended to be more of a common
understanding of what might be needed for a new group to be successful
(not that the common understanding was neccessarily correct, but that
it at least existed).
Later participants were more interested in the topics being discussed,
less interested in Unix. The process had to be explained to them.
>I have posted in the past that a thread archived from December 1981
>contains in capsule all of the systems the "official" hierarchies
>have used to date: Wm Leler with the early days anarchy, Mark
>Horton with the Backbone Cabal, and Steve Bellovin with Big 8-style
>voting, more or less. I do think the *standards* have been evolving
>steadily. But look: the raw total of unmoderated groups in the
>official lists was 173 at the end of 1984, 176 at the end of 1985,
>and 184 at the end of 1986.
I compared the following lists: 9/31/84 (just a couple of months after
Spaf took over from Buschbaum), 3/31/85, 12/31/85, 9/15/86 (start of
GR)
6 month period (9/31/84) to (3/31/85)
net: 2 removed, 11 created, net.news.map moved to mod.*
mod: 1 removed, 11 created. This is the foundation of mod.*
9 month period (3/31/85) to (12/31/85)
net: 11 removed, 10 created, 2 renames.
mod: 31 created (including 10 conversions from fa.*), 1 removed.
Originally more groups had been proposed for removal. Some of the
groups that were removed were later re-created (e.g. net.rec.coins,
net.rec.disc, net.movies.sw, net.theater). So part of what you see as
stagnation was actually removal of some dead wood.
Very few computer groups were created (net.micro.{amiga,att,mac},
net.internat, and net.database). The creation of net.internat had not
followed the usual procedures, and originally was presented as being
the equivalent to net.bizarre in that regard. But since it had more
serious backing, it was eventually regularized. A large share of the
mod.* groups were computer related. So there was 10% growth, plus
another 20% in mod groups. Maybe the energy of those who knew how to
create groups was redirected towards mod.*. And you were also getting
into a period where there was more expressed concern about the volume
of traffic, especially that which wasn't Unix related.
9 month period (12/31/85) to (9/15/86)
This ends just at the start of the Great Renaming. The first 8 talk.*
groups had been created, but their net.* equivalents still existed.
net: 2 announce groups moved to mod.*; 1 2-for-1 split; 1 rename
(sort-of); one removal; 5 mew groups.
mod: 17 new groups. It is hard to count since it is not always clear
whether the parent group in a sub-hierarchy was active.
Another thing that hampered growth at this stage was the difficulty in
splitting groups. Many people simply didn't want to split groups.
They felt that everything would be cross-posted or they would end up
reading all the sub-groups in any case. When you had sub-hierarchies
it was for collections of similar groups (net.micro.*, net.rec.*)
rather than sub-groups of the main topic.
In 1987 we got interest polling by a person who had been one who had
stressed the importance of interest polling before. Others had tended
to give more importance to demonstration of traffic. If Brian Reid or
Brad Templeton were the listkeeper, you would have been more likely to
switch mechanisms.
>> >I haven't confirmed this by detailed study of the group creations [1],
>> >so don't know how widely practised this was, but the original group
>> >creation guidelines written by Gene Spafford explicitly said that
>> >a very active mailing list was adequate evidence of traffic, and in
>> >that case a vote could be skipped. A *lot* of inet groups were
>> >promoted in 1987, and I'm fairly sure this was how most of them were.
>>
>> Identifying a need for a newsgroup has tended to become less obviously
>> a part of the process, because it is not a formal part of the process.
>
>The Rationale is its fossil. Formality has taken a toll on things
>like that that aren't really formal. I suppose if we switched to
>these Justification things that alt.config is now asking for, we
>could formalise it.
Only superficially.
1.Determine if there is traffic.
2.Suggest the group (RFD).
3.Reach consensus (discussion in news.groups, there is a place for
it).
4.Take an interest poll (CFV).
5.Issue the newgroup (issue the newgroup).
I can only prove that 2, 4, and 5 actually happen. Some semblance of
3 can occur.
>> >Among the 1988-1989 groups
>> >hardly any are promotions from inet; in 1987 I have several confirmed
>> >examples - maybe a dozen? - and strongly suspect more. (It's hard to
>> >be sure without checking group by group because Fair didn't bother to
>> >post a list of inet groups until the end of 1987.)
>>
>> There is a list from 1989 by Spaf of inet groups when he proposed
>> merging them into the regular Big 8.
>
>1989 is easy; he was posting lists of inet in the "Alternative
>Newsgroup Hierarchies" posts starting in I think September 1988.
August 1988. Before that time his entry for the Imet groups gave Erik
Fair's email address. It is quite possible that Spaf simply edited
Fair's list from the previous December. There are no differences.
Which 3 groups? comp.arch.parallel-sym and comp.sys.pc.net were in
Fair's 1997 list, and Spaf's August 1998 inet list. They were removed
from Spaf's December 1998 inet list (and hence from the Janaury 1999
list). sci.psychology was created as a Big 8 group in 1998. It had
existed as an Inet group. This wasn't really characterized as a
conversion, but rather as creation of a group covering the same topic
on a different distribution. The proponent had originally proposed a
different name. comp.lang.scheme.c was a new Inet group around the
time of Spaf's initial listing of Inet groups. It didn't exist in
1997.
--
Jim Riley
greg andruk
> From: ste...@shark.UUCP (Steve Biedermann)
> Newsgroups: net.news.group
> Subject: Newsgroup wars
> Message-ID: <2...@shark.UUCP>
> Date: Fri, 20-Jan-84 01:53:07 EST
> This argues that "votes" should not be used, but that actual traffic
> should be present before creating a new group. This occured at the
> time when proposals were made to split off net.religion.jewish
> (renamed to net.culture.jewish during the GR), and to split net.music.
> There were quite a few proposals at this time for restructuring of
> newsgroups into more of a hierarchy. This anticipated that the top
> level hierarchy (e.g. 'net.' would be stripped off and become the
> distribution).
It might be useful to keep in mind that this time period sees a lot of
split proposals not just because of growth, but because of the lifting of a
technical limitation too. Before B2.10 news, the 14 character business
applied not to individual dotted components, but to the whole string. As
can be seen from the net.music and net.religion examples, there really
wasn't space in there to do the hierarchical thing used now.
Joe Bernstein
news:<aoo049$65p$1...@slb4.atl.mindspring.net>...
a long post with tons of interesting references about a period which,
as the combination of that post with my previous probably made clear,
I haven't researched much. But I'm going to snip way down.
> On 17 Oct 2002 04:30:21 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> Throughout 1983, there were quite a few new groups being created.
> In some cases, the "discussion" was mostly of the form, "I vote YES on
> net.rec.disc", for example. (This group was created, then removed so
> it is not the direct predecessor of the current rec.sport.disc).
> There were complaints about groups being created, and then not having
> any traffic. There was a proposal to remove groups that received less
> than 2 messages/week.
Etc. The history of proposals for radical change is something I
intend to research as I go forward, but except for 1981-82, I haven't
done it yet. Please note two things:
1) I was able to establish, just by references I ran across *at
random* while researching the stuff I posted in February, that Great
Renaming proposals occurred with regularity from Mark Horton's
December 1981 one straight through to the one that actually happened.
This persuaded me that proposals for radical change, then as now, were
usually vapourware, and so the important thing I could do *first* was
establish a basic chronology of what had in fact happened.
2) Related to this: My home net access is exiguous. At the moment,
I've had no such access since late May; prior to that, it existed in
fits and starts over the preceding two years, for about two months in
fall 1998 (this is when I was proponent for soc.history.early-modern),
and not at all prior to that. My huge production of Usenet activity
in 1996-1997 was due to a rather insane pattern of life that allowed
me access to a business computer after midnight. The research I was
able to do in December 2001-March 2002, or so, in fact cost me at
least one job, possibly two - and even for a temp, losing two jobs
that close together is a problem. So home net access isn't just rare
but also risky for me. The upshot: I can't always do significant
online research, and limit the times I can. Establishing basic
chronology is relatively safe and boring, by this scale; I have all
the materials I need, most of which I won't read long into the wee
hours because they're boring, on my home computer, and am at no risk
of staying up until 5 am looking up all the threads you've pointed me
to.
More to the immediate point, I can't do research *now*. The library
closes in ten minutes.
So I concede that you're in a better position than I to determine most
things, although I still think I have an edge in plain facts about
"officially" listed groups. My comments in this thread have been on
the basis of what I can do with what I've already found in Google, and
are perfectly capable of being corrected. Thank you for doing so.
From this point, I'll have to assimilate your conclusions, somehow, to
my working history of Usenet, which is not the same as averring them
as cold, hard fact (something I *try* not to do with my own
conclusions, until I've done the kind of research I consider
trustworthy).
> From: fa...@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
> Newsgroups: net.news.group
> Subject: Getting rid of fa.* (and moving it to mod.*)
> Message-ID: <10...@dual.UUCP>
> Date: Fri, 17-May-85 02:28:14 EDT
>
> A proposal to rename fa.* to mod.*
Note please that this went on to happen a few months later.
My comments on that renaming (which I keep hoping will eventually
acquire the name Lesser Renaming) have tended to call it
autocratically determined by Fair. These have been based on three
things:
1) He in fact dictated it. He controlled the main gateway through
which the fa.* groups worked. When he went from talk to action,
nobody could stop him.
2) He dictated at least one newsgroup name over the vocal opposition
of the group's gatewayer (in this case *not* him), and to boot turned
said gatewayer into a moderator of a previously unmoderated group.
(Yes, this is the group that eventually became comp.laser-printers.)
3) He switched the gateways to the new names early, something he was
to repeat in the renaming of mod.*, and that caused the moderators
endless trouble both times.
My comments have *not* been intended to convey that he did this
renaming *entirely* without public discussion; in fact, this is a
significant contrast between the Lesser Renaming and his later
creation of inet (as far as I know, anyway; for all I can tell, maybe
he *did* post a flyer about many many more gateway groups on
news.groups in January 1987 or some such).
> From: use...@gatech.CSNET
> Newsgroups: mod.newslists,net.news.group,net.announce.newusers
> Subject: List of Active Newsgroups (Last changed: 1 July 1985)
> Message-ID: <4...@gatech.CSNET>
> Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 00:39:09 EDT
>
> |mod.rec Discussions on pasttimes (not currently active)
> | mod.rec.guns Discussions about firearms
>
> Interesting in that the creation of mod.rec.guns also resulted in the
> creation of mod.rec, at least as a place-holder. A scan through the
> other hierarchies shows that there was always a parent group when
> there were sub-groups. A recurring debate was what conditions
> warranted creation of a sub-group.
mod.rec and mod.religion, at the very least, were permanently dead
groups created only for the sake of namespace cleanliness. Ancestors
of the *.misc groups.
> >1989 is easy; he was posting lists of inet in the "Alternative
> >Newsgroup Hierarchies" posts starting in I think September 1988.
>
> August 1988. Before that time his entry for the Imet groups gave Erik
> Fair's email address. It is quite possible that Spaf simply edited
> Fair's list from the previous December. There are no differences.
Because Fair had created no inet groups, far as I know, but I don't
know *for sure*. Spafford had already been doing separate
inet-inclusive checkgroups for months, so it was no big trouble to
start listing the inet groups in the Alternative posting. Frankly,
although I haven't gone digging for it (let alone asked them), I
personally suspect Fair had pissed him off enough that he wanted to
drag his feet about it. But who knows? Not me.
> >But Fair did, oh by the way, note within that list which groups were
> >Big 7 and which were inet. He got three of them wrong, as I gather
> >you noticed in your breakdown.
> Which 3 groups?
Sorry; I should've looked this up on my home computer, in the
confidence that you'd ask. One reason I'm posting this without that
information is so that I'll be too embarrassed *not* to look it up
before I come back to the library.
Jim Riley
>Jim Riley <jim...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
>news:<aoo049$65p$1...@slb4.atl.mindspring.net>...
>> Throughout 1983, there were quite a few new groups being created.
>> In some cases, the "discussion" was mostly of the form, "I vote YES on
>> net.rec.disc", for example. (This group was created, then removed so
>> it is not the direct predecessor of the current rec.sport.disc).
>> There were complaints about groups being created, and then not having
>> any traffic. There was a proposal to remove groups that received less
>> than 2 messages/week.
>
>Etc. The history of proposals for radical change is something I
>intend to research as I go forward, but except for 1981-82, I haven't
>done it yet. Please note two things:
>
>1) I was able to establish, just by references I ran across *at
>random* while researching the stuff I posted in February, that Great
>Renaming proposals occurred with regularity from Mark Horton's
>December 1981 one straight through to the one that actually happened.
>This persuaded me that proposals for radical change, then as now, were
>usually vapourware, and so the important thing I could do *first* was
>establish a basic chronology of what had in fact happened.
Sometimes ideas need to percolate for a while before they happen. In
the first couple of years, there was a suggestion to split into net.*
and pers.* which presaged the later split into comp+sci+news and
rec+soc+talk. After some jokes that were in bad taste on
net.jokes(?), there was a group created in a new non-net hierarchy, so
that it needn't be carried by the backbone. This was several years
before the creation of alt.*. net.nlang.india was the 3rd natural
language group. At that time, someone suggested that
net.culture.india would be a better name. It was at the GR that
net.nlang.* was renamed to soc.culture.*.
>2) He dictated at least one newsgroup name over the vocal opposition
>of the group's gatewayer (in this case *not* him), and to boot turned
>said gatewayer into a moderator of a previously unmoderated group.
>(Yes, this is the group that eventually became comp.laser-printers.)
Given the previous name of fa.laser-lovers, Fair is to be commended.
>3) He switched the gateways to the new names early, something he was
>to repeat in the renaming of mod.*, and that caused the moderators
>endless trouble both times.
>
>My comments have *not* been intended to convey that he did this
>renaming *entirely* without public discussion; in fact, this is a
>significant contrast between the Lesser Renaming and his later
>creation of inet (as far as I know, anyway; for all I can tell, maybe
>he *did* post a flyer about many many more gateway groups on
>news.groups in January 1987 or some such).
Unlikely though - I think he generally avoided news.groups.
>> Interesting in that the creation of mod.rec.guns also resulted in the
>> creation of mod.rec, at least as a place-holder. A scan through the
>> other hierarchies shows that there was always a parent group when
>> there were sub-groups. A recurring debate was what conditions
>> warranted creation of a sub-group.
>
>mod.rec and mod.religion, at the very least, were permanently dead
>groups created only for the sake of namespace cleanliness. Ancestors
>of the *.misc groups.
Even more amusing, since the *.religion groups were moved to talk.* by
the GR.
--
Jim Riley
Joe Bernstein
<jim...@pipeline.com> wrote, amid much else that I've already
replied to or that I'm not going to reply to, something I goofed
on:
> On 17 Oct 2002 04:30:21 GMT, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
[and back and forth from there]
> >> >Among the 1988-1989 groups
> >> >hardly any are promotions from inet; in 1987 I have several confirmed
> >> >examples - maybe a dozen? - and strongly suspect more. (It's hard to
> >> >be sure without checking group by group because Fair didn't bother to
> >> >post a list of inet groups until the end of 1987.)
> >>
> >> There is a list from 1989 by Spaf of inet groups when he proposed
> >> merging them into the regular Big 8.
> >1987 is hard because *nobody* posted a full list of inet groups that
> >is archived before Erik Fair's year-end list, which you note:
> >
> >> OK, I found a list of gated newsgroups from December 1987, including
> >> those in the Inet distribution.
> >But Fair did, oh by the way, note within that list which groups were
> >Big 7 and which were inet. He got three of them wrong, as I gather
> >you noticed in your breakdown.
> Which 3 groups?
comp.mail.mhs
comp.mail.mhs.arpa
comp.protocols.iso.dev-environ
In each case, he listed them as Big 7 and Spafford did not follow suit.
(This makes Spafford's nearly-contemporary guidelines, according to
which Eric Fair was a trusted newgrouper, particularly amusing.)
Personally, I think those names are ugly, although I'm prepared to
believe that "mhs" was a universally-known acronym in the late 1980s.
Jim Riley
>In article <aoo049$65p$1...@slb4.atl.mindspring.net>, Jim Riley
><jim...@pipeline.com> wrote, amid much else that I've already
>replied to or that I'm not going to reply to, something I goofed
>on:
>> >But Fair did, oh by the way, note within that list which groups were
>> >Big 7 and which were inet. He got three of them wrong, as I gather
>> >you noticed in your breakdown.
>
>> Which 3 groups?
>
>comp.mail.mhs
>comp.mail.mhs.arpa
>comp.protocols.iso.dev-environ
You confused me when you wrote, "as I gather you noticed in your
breakdown". I did *not* notice these 3 groups.
I compared (by visual check) Erik Fair's December list with Spaf's
1989 list of groups that were candidate for promotion. I only scanned
Fair's groups that were designated "inet". I compared Spaf's list
with a more current list (September 2000) using a spreadsheet.
So I missed comp.protocols.iso.dev-environ. It has been an Inet group
since at least 1987.
The two comp.mail.mhs.* groups do *not* show in Spaf's lists of
Alternative hierarchies in late 1988, nor the list of groups that
were candidate for promotion in January 1989. They *do* show up in
Spaf's checkgroups (including Inet) in January 1988, and do *not* show
up in the listing for March 1988.
Perhaps Spaf used Fair's list and recognized them as not being regular
distribution - and then discovered they didn't exist at all?
--
Jim Riley
nukleus
nukleus
nukleus
nukleus
>Hey, baboon.
Oh.
> Think, son. Think.
Well...
One more time:
------------------------ Quote Begin --------------------
[...]
http://www.templetons.com/brad/
>[ Hint: Economic impact ]
From ???@?????????? Tue Oct 15 17:01:59 2002
From ???@0x00002359 Tue Oct 15 17:50:14 2002
Path:
news.ukr.net!news.adamant.net!news.kiev.sovam.com!Svitonline.COM!carrier.kiev.
ua!tenet!sewer-output
From: nuc...@invalid.you.are (nucleus)
Newsgroups:
news.groups,news.admin.misc,news.admin.censorship,news.software.nntp,alt.
config
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Change of Moderators
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 14:01:21 GMT
Organization: TeNeT Networking Centre
Lines: 215
Message-ID: <aoh6v8$7kh$1...@toster.Te.NeT.UA>
References: <10345321...@isc.org> <aochcp$3sb$1...@panix1.panix.com>
<ylsmz9v...@windlord.stanford.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: d44.tenet.odessa.ua
X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01
Xref: news.ukr.net news.groups:2173 news.admin.misc:33
news.admin.censorship:28 news.software.nntp:541 alt.config:342
Status: N
In article <ylsmz9v...@windlord.stanford.edu>, Russ Allbery
<r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Mean Green Dancing Machine <aa...@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> Well, that's welcome news. No offense, but it'd be good to either see
>> this reposted with a PGP signature or a copy posted to isc.org.
>
>It was supposed to be archived on ftp.isc.org, but I see that this too
>isn't working at the moment. One more thing to fix.
>
>I've just posted a checkgroups message, for additional confirmation.
>Signing messages posted to n.a.n is a good idea, but we're not set up to
>do that yet. I'll keep it in mind.
Signing messages posted to n.a.n?
So that only "trilateral comission", the most blatant
and perverted fascists, can have ANY say in what happens
to news system?
Now...
Russ Allbery is the one who conceived the idea
of Usenet 2, meant to be a totally fascist and
totalitarian system. His not so famous rant,
justifying this totally censored version of the
universe on www.usenet2.org are all too revealing.
Yes, Usenet 2 simply felt on its face as it did not
get any support from the people, and his pathological
craving for power has new opportunity as he effectively
becomes a fuehrer of big-8. He does not need to worry
about Usenet 2. He can just convert big-8 into Usenet 2.
In fact, that is what is likely to happen in not too
distant future. Never mind what kind of lies is he
telling to everybody at this moment. All lies.
This man is a pure grade totalitarian dictator and
pervert, forever manipulating and confusing the
issues of big-8 and publishing those dictates he
now calls "official" "guidelines" to delude all
into believing that big-8 is some kind of democracy.
Interestingly enough, the groups meant to deliver
the introductory information about news groups
are located in big-8 hierarchy and are "moderated"
by the members of this totalitarian gang.
So, those "clueless" and "newbies" get trapped as
soon, as they enter into domain of news distribution
system and get only the totally biased information.
This is how the initial phase of brain washing works.
His contribution to big-8 resulted in the most
devastating impact on the entire set of hierarchies.
Since he is an elitist censor at heart,
he forever sponsores the groop takeover via
trick of "moderation", even though this conman
publishes the "pitfals to moderation".
His lifelong dream of replacing big-8 with Usenet 2
system, ran by "czars", censoring every single group
on any and all practical levels, failed and quite
miserably so.
He considers alt.* hierarchy, probably the most flexible
system in entire history of usenet, something evil.
Because it is not dominated by the people like himself.
That is why this pervert attempted to make alt.* like
something "outdated" and unnecessary.
Since herr fuehrer tale held the PGP signature key
to entire big-8, Russ was only had limited "powers"
and eventually became a godfather of brainwashing
and deceit on big-8.
But now, his lifelong dream becomes a reality.
He no longer needs to paddle that fascit Usenet 2
idea. He can just convert big-8 into anything he wants
because he has all the necessary components to do so.
Finally, here is a quote by Brad Templeton,
one of the people instrumental during the creation
and evolution of the entire news distribution system
even before the usenet was born.
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: b...@templetons.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: USENET - it is over
References: <3A9353AB...@worldnet.att.net> <3C195139...@sfo.com>
<9vbl5t$4i3$1...@panix3.panix.com> <9vejea$spf$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad
Originator: br...@news.netfunny.com (Brad Templeton)
Message-ID: <wc7T7.10286$Kg2.1212411@rwcrnsc51>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:10:04 GMT
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:10:04 GMT
------------------------ Quote Begin --------------------
[...]
But two decades later, I think that debating which newsgroups should
exist is entirely the wrong approach, and has been the source of a
good chunk of the negative aspects of managing USENET.
It started because resources were limited and tree organization
tools were (and continue to be) meagre,
but the whole idea is flawed.
As is the voting, which was just a fraud to make people shut up once
they lost a vote. (In those days, the debates would get long and
the person pushing for a group nobody else wanted would never go
away and admit defeat. Voting with the silly '100 more' rule
was not to create democracy, but to end the debate.)
--
Would you expect a product called "Windows" to give you privacy and security?
http://www.templetons.com/brad/
----------------------- End of Quote --------------------