[History] A heads-up on 1987-1992 or further year summaries
Joe Bernstein
expect, this year, to carry that chronology forward six to eight
years, ending sometime in the first half of the 1990s.
Some time ago, a thread was started on a way to reform Usenet voting
rules. This quickly turned into a thread about the defeat of
misc.kids.family-life. Subsequently, some comments of mine turned
into a full explanation of my present difficult circumstances; and
a response to *that* turned into a discussion, in part, of the
next stage of my chronology of "official" newsgroup creation, on
which I've worked in spurts ever since posting the first stage,
covering data in the "official" lists for the years 1980-1986 and
for the NET.*, fa.*, net.*, and mod.* hierarchies.
I'll post a more formal introduction whenever I do whatever I'm
going to do with the next stage (on that see below); that introduction
will also include a review of other materials posted in the time since
Google made the archives for the years before 1995 available. This
post is basically because the responses to my previous posts in the
thread mentioned have come very largely from misc.kids.family-life
debate participants, and haven't resulted in much response to my
questions. So I thought I should ask those questions in the thread
that's *supposed* to be devoted to the chronology, and with the tag
suggested by Rob Maxwell right at the start of the subject line, and
so forth.
1) Should I post the new materials - the year-summaries for 1987 to
at least 1992, and perhaps as late as 1994 - here, or should I
just put them on the Web? The argument for confining them to the
Web is that I catch some mistakes only when doing hierarchy-
summaries, so until I can actually get the Big 8 up to the present,
I'm not 100% confident in my results, and might want to limit
their dissemination. (The other argument is that not one person
actually commented on the previous bunch of year and hierarchy
summaries. But I'm hoping more people are still around who
remember specific periods or groups in the more recent period,
and who might want to comment.)
For what it's worth, I do think I've improved my error-checking
considerably since I made the errors I caught when doing the
previous bunch of hierarchy-summaries.
2) Are there any materials I should point out in the introduction,
and try to get permission to put on the website, that I don't
yet know about?
For the current list, please see the other thread mentioned.
(If it's too hard to find, just look for recent posts with
[History] in the subject line at Google...)
One more thing. I've recently narrowly avoided homelessness, I'm not
altogether sure I'm out of the woods yet, and nothing guarantees it
won't happen next month. Early on in this project I lost temp jobs
due at least partly to the time I was putting in on it, and I wrote
that I'd welcome donations. More recently, when I reported my current
situation, this project was pointed out as a reason I should *accept*
donations, and that's much of why I've recently finished 1990, 1991,
and (almost) 1992. But in fact nobody *has* yet donated any money on
the basis of this project, except via a PayPal payment I couldn't
accept. You could still be the first, by at least one measure... You
can find much more about this, alas, in the other thread. But I don't
see any reason I shouldn't say this much explicitly to those interested
in the chronological project, as well as to random people interested in
misc.kids.family-life.
Should anyone wish to make a donation, I cannot deal with PayPal at
this time; my postal address is
Joe Bernstein
General Delivery
Madison, WI 53714
USA
and despite its unconventionality, I do believe mail sent there
consistently reaches me.
But if you send an e-mail too, that would be wise so I can let you know
when/if it arrives, also so I know whether you want a public thank-you,
which I certainly don't mind making.
I do mean the word "donation". No one user of this work is required
or expected to pay anything for it; I do this work without expecting
to *be* paid for it. But I can't pretend that the *prospect* of pay
doesn't motivate me, and to the extent that this work has none of that
prospect associated with it, well, gee, that might be why it's been
going so slowly during the last two rough years. In any event, right
now all my results for 1987-1992 (except the 1987 history of net.* and
mod.*) live on my isolated home computer. If anyone at all sends money,
I will use part of that money to upload them to my website, at the
least. If nobody does, I will *try* to make sure I have the money
to do so, and I think the chances are good, so this isn't meant as a
threat; but I can promise nothing.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://these-survive.postilion.org/> At this address,
personal e-mail is welcome, though unsolicited bulk e-mail is unwelcome.
Joe Bernstein
> 1) Should I post the new materials - the year-summaries for 1987 to
> at least 1992, and perhaps as late as 1994 - here, or should I
> just put them on the Web?
I still haven't seen anyone express any opinions on this.
> 2) Are there any materials I should point out in the introduction,
> and try to get permission to put on the website, that I don't
> yet know about?
Or this.
Um, is there anyone actually reading this who *has* an opinion? These
are seriously meant questions, not rhetorical ones...
> If anyone at all sends money,
> I will use part of that money to upload them to my website, at the
> least.
Someone who asked not to be identified has, in fact, sent money
explicitly donated for this project. So yes, the results now complete
for 1987-1992 and beginning to edge into 1993 will be uploaded, no
matter what.
At this time, I think 1994 is the most realistic cut-off point I'm
likely to reach.
I will certainly have to move October 14 at latest, so the date of
cut-off, uploading, and posting (of an introduction if nothing else)
will presumably be somewhat earlier.
Jim Rusling
>In article <bk62qq$e8r$1...@reader2.panix.com>, I wrote:
>
>> 1) Should I post the new materials - the year-summaries for 1987 to
>> at least 1992, and perhaps as late as 1994 - here, or should I
>> just put them on the Web?
>
>I still haven't seen anyone express any opinions on this.
>
Personally, I would like to see them posted. I have been keeping all
of them.
>> 2) Are there any materials I should point out in the introduction,
>> and try to get permission to put on the website, that I don't
>> yet know about?
>
>Or this.
>
>Um, is there anyone actually reading this who *has* an opinion? These
>are seriously meant questions, not rhetorical ones...
>
Yes, but I have been pretty busy.
>> If anyone at all sends money,
>> I will use part of that money to upload them to my website, at the
>> least.
>
>Someone who asked not to be identified has, in fact, sent money
>explicitly donated for this project. So yes, the results now complete
>for 1987-1992 and beginning to edge into 1993 will be uploaded, no
>matter what.
>
>At this time, I think 1994 is the most realistic cut-off point I'm
>likely to reach.
>
>I will certainly have to move October 14 at latest, so the date of
>cut-off, uploading, and posting (of an introduction if nothing else)
>will presumably be somewhat earlier.
>
>Joe Bernstein
BTW, thanks a lot for your work. It has made some interesting
reading.
--
Jim Rusling
Partially Retired
Mustang, OK
http://www.rusling.org
Joe Bernstein
Current status of the work: stalled halfway through data entry for
1993. (I've finished the last list Gene Spafford posted, but not the
last one he worked on.) I will probably have time to finish that
data entry late this week, and the 1993 post should be doable soon
thereafter; I hope to have time to do 1994 in the following week or
two, but at this point really can't be sure.
Important note: You will have to change your bookmarks. Starting
fairly soon, I will have to move my site away from postilion.org.
I'd been meaning to do so anyway, until the suggestion came that
part of the site was worth money; I thought it churlish to move
something people were helping pay my rent because of. Well, as it
turns out, I don't have a choice; a death has resulted in changes
to the postilion.org structure that include my site being kicked
out. For a time, there will probably be redirects in HTTP, but not
forever. I don't yet know which of two possible addresses I want to
use next; neither promises stability. *If* by some chance I ultimately
get a happy ending out of my current situation, I do expect to buy
ten years of a domain name, but until and unless I have that kind
of money to throw around, please expect the URL not to be stable.
This is, obviously, an argument with regard to one of the questions
below.
In article <bk62qq$e8r$1...@reader2.panix.com>, I wrote:
> 1) Should I post the new materials - the year-summaries for 1987 to
> at least 1992, and perhaps as late as 1994 - here, or should I
> just put them on the Web?
So far, one person has posted a preference that I post them; nobody
has said anything either way by e-mail.
> The argument for confining them to the
> Web is that I catch some mistakes only when doing hierarchy-
> summaries,
> For what it's worth, I do think I've improved my error-checking
> considerably since I made the errors I caught when doing the
> previous bunch of hierarchy-summaries.
I should note that I've since rediscovered the particular feature of
Excel that makes one kind of error easier to catch when doing the
hierarchy summaries than otherwise; I do not expect to have time
to use that feature by October 14, the end of my present lease,
even if I much wanted to when I have no time to do full hierarchy-
summaries. Although I *have* improved my error-checking, I still
think the category of error in question (basically, being late in
catching particular changes in specific groups) is relatively likely
to occur in whatever I upload in October.
> 2) Are there any materials I should point out in the introduction,
> and try to get permission to put on the website, that I don't
> yet know about?
Nobody has yet commented on this either by e-mail or by public
posting, although I've asked in two different threads. I am
reluctantly concluding that I actually do know what's out there...
> Should anyone wish to make a donation, I cannot deal with PayPal at
> this time;
This is apparently *not* true now. The local public library has
reconfigured its internet-access setup, and much to my surprise,
PayPal is willing to talk with the computers there. So one reason
for this post is as a feeler: is there any point in my setting up
a PayPal account, or has everyone who wishes to donate already done
so via my postal address, which is still:
> Joe Bernstein
> General Delivery
> Madison, WI 53714
> USA
?
> I do mean the word "donation". No one user of this work is required
> or expected to pay anything for it; I do this work without expecting
> to *be* paid for it.
This remains true. But I am extremely grateful to the person whose
payment I've already received, and to others who have sent money in
thanks for different work of mine.
Kathy Morgan
> 1) Should I post the new materials - the year-summaries for 1987 to
> at least 1992, and perhaps as late as 1994 - here, or should I
> just put them on the Web?
I'd also like to see them posted because I archive all of these posts
locally.
> Should anyone wish to make a donation, I cannot deal with PayPal at
> this time; my postal address is
>
> Joe Bernstein
> General Delivery
> Madison, WI 53714
> USA
>
> [...] I do mean the word "donation". No one user of this work is required
> or expected to pay anything for it; I do this work without expecting
> to *be* paid for it. But I can't pretend that the *prospect* of pay
> doesn't motivate me, [...]
As you already know, I'm one of the world's worst procrastinators, but I
do finally have a small donation enroute. Under the circumstances I
thought it best to make it a postal money order, which you'll be able to
cash or deposit without having to wait for a check to clear the bank.
--
Kathy - read reviews of other newsgroups in news:news.groups.reviews
help for new users of newsgroups at <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/>
Good Net Keeping Seal of Approval at <http://www.gnksa.org/>
OE-quotefix can fix OE:
<http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/>
Joe Bernstein
results will be posted, but only once the question of my website's
next URL is settled.
In article <blapse$8va$1...@reader2.panix.com>, I wrote:
> Current status of the work: stalled halfway through data entry for
> 1993. (I've finished the last list Gene Spafford posted, but not the
> last one he worked on.) I will probably have time to finish that
> data entry late this week, and the 1993 post should be doable soon
> thereafter; I hope to have time to do 1994 in the following week or
> two, but at this point really can't be sure.
I stayed stalled in 1993 data entry too long for that. The 1993 post
is, as of today, as done as it will get on my home computer (there are
a few things I still want to add to it that I need to do online), but
I'm quite sure I won't have time to finish the 1994 one, given that
I'll be packing up that computer in eighteen hours, with a possible
twenty-four hour delay allowing a bit more work. At this time, I'm
planning to devote whatever free time I can spare this project to
one of two things:
1) trying to trace the rise of the UVV. (This should have been easy,
because the "Current Status of USENET Newsgroup Proposals" posts
listed voting addresses; all I had to do was look for a smaller
set of domains. But in May 1993, four months before the UVV first
appeared in the Guidelines, and certainly before any such narrowing
of who was taking votes, tale changed the format to just providing
message-IDs for CFVs. So it will require lots of digging if I want
to do this.)
2) doing an incomplete 1994 post. (Normally I do an entire year's
data entry and then an entire year's post. This allows me to
see longer-term trends, and also provides elementary error-
checking - usually, if something happens and then immediately
unhappens, it means I made a mistake. But there's nothing says
I can't instead do the data entry for one list posting run, then
that piece of the post, and so on. The obvious advantage of even
an incomplete 1994 post is that the long September began in 1993,
but exponential growth in the newsgroups list did not; surely
*sometime* in 1994, that growth finally kicked in, and it would
be nice to know just when.)
I'll decide which I actually want to do when I get home and have
done the other things I need to do with the computer before it gets
packed away. I can't think of any mechanism by which I can take
anyone else's opinions into account; sorry!
If I *do* get the extra twenty-four hours, not all of which I can
spend on the computer anyway, I would expect that I could do at
least a slapdash investigation into the UVV, and also at least
two, maybe three or four, of the six 1994 lists, and I would plan
on that. If anyone cares, I can report what I actually did when
I'm next online thereafter - probably Tuesday evening or night -
but I imagine it's preferable that I just start producing actual
results...
> Important note: You will have to change your bookmarks. Starting
> fairly soon, I will have to move my site away from postilion.org.
I now have confirmation that the site is again available there, but
it's pretty obvious it won't stay that way.
I probably won't post the 1987-1993/4 year-summaries until I have
a definite URL for the near future.
> *If* by some chance I ultimately
> get a happy ending out of my current situation, I do expect to buy
> ten years of a domain name, but until and unless I have that kind
> of money to throw around, please expect the URL not to be stable.
This remains true.
> In article <bk62qq$e8r$1...@reader2.panix.com>, I wrote:
>
> > 1) Should I post the new materials - the year-summaries for 1987 to
> > at least 1992, and perhaps as late as 1994 - here, or should I
> > just put them on the Web?
All opinion stated to date, by e-mail and in posts, has been that I
should post them, even without full error-checking. OK; it will be so.
> > 2) Are there any materials I should point out in the introduction,
> > and try to get permission to put on the website, that I don't
> > yet know about?
>
> Nobody has yet commented on this either by e-mail or by public
> posting, although I've asked in two different threads. I am
> reluctantly concluding that I actually do know what's out there...
The introduction points to 25 other posts, using a different letter
as an abbreviation for each. It was originally written on the basis
of having the posts through 1992 done, so 1993 will take up the 26th
letter, and if 1994 happens, it'll require something else. Well, I
think so, anyway; it's been a while since I looked at it.
I think, therefore, that I will close my catalogue of Useful Recent
Posts about Usenet's History to oustide suggestions, of which there
have been none in the month or more since I first asked this question,
anyway.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://these-survive.postilion.org>
This URL may go away at any time; I will post the new one when I have it.
George William Herbert
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>1) trying to trace the rise of the UVV. (This should have been easy,
> because the "Current Status of USENET Newsgroup Proposals" posts
> listed voting addresses; all I had to do was look for a smaller
> set of domains. But in May 1993, four months before the UVV first
> appeared in the Guidelines, and certainly before any such narrowing
> of who was taking votes, tale changed the format to just providing
> message-IDs for CFVs. So it will require lots of digging if I want
> to do this.)
Hmmm...
See:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=rdippold.743158597%40qualcom&output=gplain
aka Message-ID: <rdippold.743158597@qualcom>
Ron's first post asking for help.
The first UVV labeled vote was the sci.operations-research a little
while later.
Ron had been running a number of votes earlier than that,
but I think that the 'you have to do it that way' happened
right around then. We I was on holiday from news.groups for
a bit off talking with sci.space people about a reorg there,
and when I came back with the actual proposals Tale told me
that the third party votetaker was now required.
I think the last straw before this was sria, but there had
been some significant arguments going on since Kent Paul Dolan's
imfamous rec.arts.sf reorg snafu... Well, there had been significant
arguments going on continuously back to pre-great-renaming,
but I think that serious reform had been in the air for about
2 years at that point. But it was a long time ago 8-)
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Joe Bernstein
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> >1) trying to trace the rise of the UVV.
>
> See:
> aka Message-ID: <rdippold.743158597@qualcom>
>
> Ron's first post asking for help.
Thanks!
> The first UVV labeled vote was the sci.operations-research a little
> while later.
OK, I'll check that. But actually your pointer was enough by
itself to allow me to narrow things down, and in a selective
check last night I was able to make *some* statements after
just two or three hours.
> Ron had been running a number of votes earlier than that,
He hadn't really been running that many at all. He'd written
software that others used, but not *that* many others... And
there were others with software who were volunteeering as third
party votetakers too (Jonathan Kamens and Mark James both showed
up in my quick sample). The story that Ron Dippold was single-
handedly votetaking for the masses before the UVV doesn't seem
to hold up, far as I can see, unless this is supposed to have
happened before about 1992. In the early months of 1993 he
ran one vote at a time, max. After the UVV formed, there were
initially *lots* of volunteers, but I see from Google that Ron
Dippold did run a *ton* of votes in 1994, and it wouldn't shock
me if this was a sign that the initial impetus didn't last for
a number of the others.
> but I think that the 'you have to do it that way' happened
> right around then.
*No* vote in my quick sample was held without the UVV, if it
started after the UVV had formed. Period. tale didn't make
it required in the Guidelines until 1994, but it seems like it
might as well have been. I'll eventually look at all the
intervening votes Just To Make Sure, but I don't seriously
expect to find a non-UVV vote later than August, 1993.
(The obvious way to look is to dump "Usenet Volunteer Votetakers"
in as a no-go search term at Google, but unfortunately, Google
is selective about header searching... If there's a way to do
that search, I don't know it.)
> I think the last straw before this was sria, but there had
> been some significant arguments going on since Kent Paul Dolan's
> imfamous rec.arts.sf reorg snafu... Well, there had been significant
> arguments going on continuously back to pre-great-renaming,
> but I think that serious reform had been in the air for about
> 2 years at that point. But it was a long time ago 8-)
soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya and soc.culture.makedonija were
simultaneous, and probably made it as clear as anything could
that Something Must Be Done; simultaneously, there were already
all these individuals running around acting as UVVs on their own.
(Poor Anthony Lest, of sria fame, was after all *himself* a third-
party votetaker...) It was steam engine time, or it looks that way
to me, anyway.
(Another factor. Ron Dippold took not one but two revotes in
May-June 1993. They were sequential, but they must have added
to the pressure for change. The groups were rec.arts.prose and
rec.sport.waterski.)
Thank you for the pointer. I did get the 24-hour extension, so
I've now also done the first 1.5 lists of 1994, and expect to do
a couple more tonight.
George William Herbert
That's true; we had a high burnout rate around that time.
The next major step was the burp at the beginning of 1995
when Ron dissapeared for a while. There were two main
problems when that happened; 1) Nobody was organizing or
tracking RFD and CFVs anymore and that operation stopped,
eventually getting a huge backlog of groups; 2) Ron had
been running a large number of votes and those results
were up in the air.
After much fumbling around and attempts to contact Ron
via Qualcomm, I finally volunteered to handle the coordination
and tracking and did so starting at the end of February.
It took us several months to get the backlog and disorganization
fully fixed.
See for example...
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3ie4f4%24crs%40crl3.crl.com&output=gplain
Of course, *I* then burnt out by the end of 1995 and Bill Aten
then picked it up in a slightly more coherent transition
and has been doing it in general quite well ever since.
>> but I think that the 'you have to do it that way' happened
>> right around then.
>
>*No* vote in my quick sample was held without the UVV, if it
>started after the UVV had formed. Period. tale didn't make
>it required in the Guidelines until 1994, but it seems like it
>might as well have been. I'll eventually look at all the
>intervening votes Just To Make Sure, but I don't seriously
>expect to find a non-UVV vote later than August, 1993.
I believe that is correct. There was some confusion as the
Guidelines update lagged a while, but I think that Aug 93 was
about the cutoff for proponent run votes.
>soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya and soc.culture.makedonija were
>simultaneous, and probably made it as clear as anything could
>that Something Must Be Done; simultaneously, there were already
>all these individuals running around acting as UVVs on their own.
>(Poor Anthony Lest, of sria fame, was after all *himself* a third-
>party votetaker...) It was steam engine time, or it looks that way
>to me, anyway.
Yeah. We had been having people who were more or less neutral
third parties doing votes going back a long time... I did one for
rec.hunting in 1991, and I don't think I was the first one,
though I don't clearly recall what examples were before that.
But it wasn't a usual thing until 1993. Ron didn't even post
UseVote 1.0 until April 1993...
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=rdippold.735654147%40qualcom&output=gplain
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Joe Bernstein
contained in the post I'm following up to.
Status first. I just finished the last of my usual tasks that I *can
now do* on the 1994 post.
It dawned on me that if there were complete series of Changes posts,
I would be able to carry the work forward from where I had to leave
off when my computer went into storage and I went out onto the
streets, which was the second of *five* (not six) list posting runs
of 1994. I wasn't terribly interested in doing this, but then I
found out that I had entirely missed the addition of a *fourth*
descendant of the List of Active Newsgroups: in 1984 or 1985, the
List of Moderators, in 1985 the Checkgroups Message, in 1987 the
Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies - and in 1993 the misleadingly named
Mailing Lists Available in Usenet. This entailed re-writing the 1993
post anyway, since I'd written in it an encomium to tale for sensibly
choosing to drop the list of gatewayed groups (oops!). So I figured
I might as well roll with things.
The results are undoubtedly *NOT* to the standards of the work I did
on my home computer for 1980/1 - 1993/4, but given that all of this
is preliminary work anyway, I decided to complete the 1994 post using
Changes postings after all. (And yes, they were complete enough to
allow this.)
So 1987 to 1994 will be posted, probably partly or wholly this week.
The remaining delay is because these posts were (with some exception
in 1994) written at an isolated computer, unlike the 1980/1 - 1986
posts. No matter how much I wanted to research a particular issue,
I couldn't do it then and there, and I made something of a point of
not doing it when I left home to get online. Well, now I may as well
research those issues I left stated as matters of my ignorance, in
the posts as now written.
The catch is that the only place I've so far found where I can sleep
at all comfortably is a campsite about ten miles outside Madison.
So I'm basically short on sleep any time I'm within range of the
nets. This obviously cramps my research style.
Well, whatever. I'll see how the research goes tomorrow or so, and
decide what to do from there.
Meantime.
In article <bmhm6t$b0d$1...@gw.retro.com>, George William Herbert
<gher...@gw.retro.com> wrote:
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> >George William Herbert <gher...@gw.retro.com> wrote:
[Ron Dippold, and before the UVV]
> >> Ron had been running a number of votes earlier than that,
> >
> >He hadn't really been running that many at all. He'd written
> >software that others used, but not *that* many others... And
> >there were others with software who were volunteeering as third
> >party votetakers too (Jonathan Kamens and Mark James both showed
> >up in my quick sample). The story that Ron Dippold was single-
> >handedly votetaking for the masses before the UVV doesn't seem
> >to hold up, far as I can see, unless this is supposed to have
> >happened before about 1992. In the early months of 1993 he
> >ran one vote at a time, max. After the UVV formed, there were
> >initially *lots* of volunteers, but I see from Google that Ron
> >Dippold did run a *ton* of votes in 1994, and it wouldn't shock
> >me if this was a sign that the initial impetus didn't last for
> >a number of the others.
>
> That's true; we had a high burnout rate around that time.
The sight of so many votetakers in 1993, and a suggestion by
e-mail, have led me to conclude that one of the necessary elements
of the *second* set of phases in this chronology - the set where I
*go back over* the years 1980 to whenever - will be an index of
persons. Who was a proponent, a votetaker, a moderator, a whatever,
for what, and when. It should produce some very interesting results.
[Disaster in early 1995; I'm snipping down to the URL he gave, which
I want in my self-cc of this post.]
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3ie4f4%24crs%40crl3.crl.com&output=gplain
> Of course, *I* then burnt out by the end of 1995 and Bill Aten
> then picked it up in a slightly more coherent transition
> and has been doing it in general quite well ever since.
Y'know, this is the first time I've *ever* seen you say you once
ran the UVV. I had no idea you were so modest.
(Note to any wondering. No, I am not going to proceed into 1995 at
this time, using the slipshod methods I used to complete the 1994
post and to handle gatewayed groups in the 1993 one. Thanks for
asking, but no. About the only thing that could get me working
on 1995 at this time would be, well, enough money that I had
housing and a computer at home again. So George William Herbert's
moment of glory will, for the time being, not be chronicled by me.)
> >simultaneously, there were already
> >all these individuals running around acting as UVVs on their own.
> >(Poor Anthony Lest, of sria fame, was after all *himself* a third-
> >party votetaker...) It was steam engine time, or it looks that way
> >to me, anyway.
> Yeah. We had been having people who were more or less neutral
> third parties doing votes going back a long time... I did one for
> rec.hunting in 1991, and I don't think I was the first one,
> though I don't clearly recall what examples were before that.
I don't either, but I'm pretty sure you weren't. Maybe it'll show
up in my selective review of news.announce.newgroups before tale.
That said, I should note that I *do* remember the rec.hunting CFV
you did, and I'm afraid it *did* show up in that selective review,
as something we wouldn't expect to see any more, to put it politely.
Sorry! But I'm not going to take it out.
> But it wasn't a usual thing until 1993. Ron didn't even post
> UseVote 1.0 until April 1993...
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=rdippold.735654147%40qualcom&output=gplain
Again, thanks for the reference.
Noreen Cooper
: The catch is that the only place I've so far found where I can sleep
: at all comfortably is a campsite about ten miles outside Madison.
: So I'm basically short on sleep any time I'm within range of the
: nets. This obviously cramps my research style.
I'm so sorry to hear you are officially homeless, Joe. It's hard to wrap
our minds around such a terrible economy that someone of your nature and
intelligence would be sleeping in campsites with winter nearing. I am
personally grateful to be reading your Usenet history updates. Actually,
I find the whole movement enormously fascinating. Last I remember, the
public library where you use the computers had granted you permission to
set up a PayPal account. Have you established that it works?
Noreen
Joe Bernstein
<nco...@wahoo.sjsu.edu> wrote:
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> : The catch is that the only place I've so far found where I can sleep
> : at all comfortably is a campsite about ten miles outside Madison.
> : So I'm basically short on sleep any time I'm within range of the
> : nets. This obviously cramps my research style.
Nevertheless, I've now completed the research-revisions for 1987-
1991. To my utter astonishment, this work has turned up yet *another*
list-post series I hadn't known of; Andrew Partan did a "Regional
Newsgroup Hierarchies" post 1990-1991. No, I'm not tracking it
in my posts, except to note when it started and stopped. But I do
think it's an important enough resource for those interested in the
regional hierarchies to justify, all by itself, my having taken the
time to do these research revisions...
Unfortunately, even after I do the similar work for 1992-1994, which
should be somewhat less time-consuming anyway, I do have one other
open issue; I wanted to get my website's URL at least somewhat stable
before posting. One reader of this thread has offered me space on
his server; so far, I've preferred to try to work with Panix, but as
yet, I can neither pay them nor persuade them to forgive the $10/
month. I will try to settle this soon; until I do, no posting. I'm
mildly frustrated that the discussions with Panix are going slowly,
but I do want to emphasise that what I've been discussing with them
is basically a matter of their giving me charity, and they do already
give charity to any number of other projects; no opprobrium attaches
to their taking their time over this one, nor to the possibility that
they'll turn me down.
One way or another, it *has* to be settled soon.
> I'm so sorry to hear you are officially homeless, Joe. It's hard to
> wrap our minds around such a terrible economy that someone of your
> nature and intelligence would be sleeping in campsites with winter
> nearing.
Thank you. For what it's worth, I have found other possibilities in
recent days, and am at this point unsure what I'll do next.
(But I did say "possibilities"; I haven't found anything yet that I
can confidently rely on. The best I have with any confidence right
now is a campsite within Madison, and even near a bus line.)
In any event, I should note that I've always been fairly marginal
to the US economy. It's just that in the past, people bailed me out;
I'm now old enough that nobody wants to do that any more, nor can I
blame them. I have my own strong opinions about the wastefulness of
a society in which I've been unemployed for most of the past two
years, but I can see the logic that drives that situation; with a few
exceptions, the decisions involved actually make some sense.
> Last I remember, the
> public library where you use the computers had granted you permission to
> set up a PayPal account. Have you established that it works?
Nope. When I wrote that, I asked whether there was anyone currently
out there to whom it'd make a difference, and nobody said there was.
It would take about an hour, and have to be planned in advance in
order to *get* that hour, far as I can tell, so I haven't been in a
rush to do it on spec, or on the basis of what people said two
months ago.
Noreen Cooper
: Unfortunately, even after I do the similar work for 1992-1994, which
: should be somewhat less time-consuming anyway, I do have one other
: open issue; I wanted to get my website's URL at least somewhat stable
: before posting. One reader of this thread has offered me space on
: his server; so far, I've preferred to try to work with Panix, but as
: yet, I can neither pay them nor persuade them to forgive the $10/
: month. I will try to settle this soon; until I do, no posting. I'm
: mildly frustrated that the discussions with Panix are going slowly,
: but I do want to emphasise that what I've been discussing with them
: is basically a matter of their giving me charity, and they do already
: give charity to any number of other projects; no opprobrium attaches
: to their taking their time over this one, nor to the possibility that
: they'll turn me down.
I hope Panix comes through for you but it's good to have a back-up plan
with someone offering you a space on their server. The work you're doing,
chronically Usenet history, is very worthwhile, IMO.
: Thank you. For what it's worth, I have found other possibilities in
: recent days, and am at this point unsure what I'll do next.
I really do hope things turn around for you, Joe.
Noreen
Joe Bernstein
> Nevertheless, I've now completed the research-revisions for 1987-
> 1991.
They're now finished, 1987-1994. Whew. At last.
> I do have one other open issue; I wanted to get my website's URL at
> least somewhat stable before posting.
This remains an issue, unfortunately.
> In article <bn085n$4hs6u$1...@hades.csu.net>, Noreen Cooper
> <nco...@wahoo.sjsu.edu> wrote:
> > Last I remember, the
> > public library where you use the computers had granted you permission
> > to set up a PayPal account. Have you established that it works?
>
> Nope. When I wrote that, I asked whether there was anyone currently
> out there to whom it'd make a difference, and nobody said there was.
Well, I'm now informed that in order to convert PayPal money to real
world money, I'd have to have a bank account *anyway*. Which I don't.
So PayPal seems to be a non-starter for me.
Noreen Cooper
: They're now finished, 1987-1994. Whew. At last.
I can only imagine how much work it took to sift through all the data and
put it together in a readable format. I appreciate your efforts and look
forward to reading the next chapter of Usenet history either here or on
whatever website it ends up on.
Too bad about Paypal not being an option for you.
Noreen
Joe Bernstein
> This post is mainly a status update
As is this one.
> So 1987 to 1994 will be posted, probably partly or wholly this week.
Well, that was overly optimistic, but they are now out there.
One purpose for this post is to let people who are scared off by
their length and their formal characteristics know that there's
kind of a lot of material in them other than the formal stuff.
The first set of year-summaries were pretty terse; I saved my
impassioned flights of rhetoric for the hierarchy-summaries'
introductions. This time, though, with no hierarchy-summaries
to do, I let myself go. There are essays about inet, and about
Gene Spafford's contributions to news.*; there are shorter bits
about the long September, the origins of the UVV, the creation
of news.announce.newgroups, etc. The 1989-1991 posts contain a
selective review of news.announce.newgroups's contents before
David Lawrence became moderator. The whole series offer a
selective take on the growth of alt.*, and pointers to the posts
that list alt.* groups; the 1990-1993 posts also trace everything
I could find about the history of trial.*; the 1986-1989 posts
note every group-specific FAQ I could trace in those years. Etc.
My point? Maybe you won't like these, but don't assume so on the
basis of the previous ones.
The library from which I'm posting this closes in a quarter hour, and
I'm too tired to go to yet another library, if by some chance *it's*
keeping its regular hours (Halloween, celebrated this year on All
Saints' Day, is the most important holiday of the year at the University
of Wisconsin's Madison campus) and start writing the remaining stuff
to post. So this post is also to let y'all know that the remaining
stuff will, um, be posted. I hope tomorrow; but I don't seriously
expect to sleep tonight, so no guarantees.
> (Note to any wondering. No, I am not going to proceed into 1995 at
> this time, using the slipshod methods I used to complete the 1994
> post and to handle gatewayed groups in the 1993 one. Thanks for
> asking, but no. About the only thing that could get me working
> on 1995 at this time would be, well, enough money that I had
> housing and a computer at home again.
Remains true.
The posts left to do tomorrow are:
1) The "second start post". Cross-posted to alt.fan.dejanews as a
pointer, but also lists posts both in this thread and elsewhere
since December 11, 2001 that use the archives to contribute to
Usenet's history, and *indexes these posts* by year, by hierarchy,
and by topic. Already drafted, but needs significant revision since
my website has subsequently moved, I posted at least one more
year-summary than I'd planned, and I've added topics to the ones it
listed at the time. (The whole evolution of FAQs topic is a later
addition, for example.)
2) A post on donating. This thread is basically my strongest
opportunity to avoid running out of cash next week, so I'm afraid
I really am going to do such a thing. Since my finances are kind
of intricately bound up with this project's future, if any, I will
also go into detail in that post about the remaining phases of the
work. Anyway, this one will be a followup to 1) and will not be
cross-posted.
After that? Well, presumably, after that, I should be concentrating
on getting a job, no? If, in fact, there is any employer left in
the United States who is willing to hire someone who's worked as a
temporary for nine years; the evidence so far is that there isn't.
Be that as it may, to the extent that I find myself hankering to do
any more research work related to Usenet, I will probably see if I
can manage to complete the UNOFFICIAL List of Moderators. If
nothing else, that project is also meant to be a source material
for the hierarchy-summaries that are part of the next phase of *this*
project; so it isn't as much of a digression as it sounds.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com