Submitted June 4, 2002, 4:18 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since about 1990 or 1991. It's hard to remember
at this point.
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Well, I had heard about it, I'm pretty sure, from my
brother, who had access at his school in Northern
Arizona U. I had been doing the BBS thing since about
1978, and Usenet was a natural evolution of that.
A funny story that'll date me: When I first tried to
get e-mail and Usenet access, I had to fill out
a request form and take it to my department head
to sign. S/he had never heard of Usenet, wasn't
familiar with e-mail, and, further, couldn't imagine
why a history major needed that sort of thing. But,
s/he signed it. The form was pretty officious, with
warnings about propriety, acceptable use &c &c.
I took them seriously, and when the old "This post
will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars"
warning would come up, it would always make me
reconsider. I deleted more than a few posts before
sending due to that warning and the good-conduct
form I had to sign.
I lurked for quite a while before posting, and
got a fair slapping-down in one of my first posts to
alt.folklore.urban. But I deserved it, so . . .
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Well, I generally used a Wyse terminal on the campus
T1 and used "rn" [read news] and then "tin" to
read news.
From home my initial connection was a 1200 baud modem.
I upgraded to a 14.4 in 1995 when the university
said it wouldn't support anything less.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
[Before 1996]
Well, I think it was both more and less
forgiving, in its own way. That is, there were plenty
of well-established societies [aka groups] that
one could not trample lightly on. Some had their
own language [cf alt.fan.warlord] or their own
mores [cf. alt.folklore.urban] that marked insiders
and outsiders. But it was fiarly easy to get involved,
and the generall level of cluefulness was fairly high.
That is, once you read for a bit and eased your way in,
people were very accepting. Each September there would
be a small flood of newbies and new students got
accounts and "discovered" Usenet.
After the Great September in 1996 newbies came in with
the attitude that anything could be posted anywhere,
and that old-timers were obstacles to participation.
At the same time old-timers got less tolerant and
weren't as ready to provide clues. Vicious cycle. Newbies
complained that things like moderation or group mores
were little more than censorship or an abrogation
of the "free speech" guaranteed "in the Consitution."
Now, I think, Usenet has settled into a rut.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Way too many to name. Probably any lengthy exchange
on alt.folklore.urban.
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Which groups do you use the most?
alt.folklore.urban; soc.history.war.us-civil-war;
soc.history.war.us-revolution; news.groups [lurk];
soc.history.moderated; alt.humor.best-of-usenet;
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Submitted October 2, 2002, 4:15 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
18.5 years (i started 2/84)
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
my husband garret told me about this "neat message
thing" on the vax at the university of chicago's
astrophysics dept (where he was a grad student). i
went over to the computer lab, read an article on
abortion and immediately posted a response
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
the university was connected to the net
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
the male:female ratio was terrible -- the early net
wasn't a female-friendly place, particularily for
women like me, who didn't want to adopt a traditional
nuturing female role, but who instead wrote what we
thought and, in doing so, challenged many members of
the largely male population.
usenet was very small in 1984 -- you could read all of
it in a few hours. and it was nets and mods, not all
this rec.this and soc.that. a bad move if you ask me.
sort of like coming down from of the trees.
the net has become much more egaliterian, it is no
longer run by a handful of sysadmins and assorted
net.cops trying to control what people write.
one thing i was surprised about was when the ISPs
began showing up. there were the usual "death of
usenet" predictions but by and large, i don't see any
real changes in the newsgroups (other than the number
of messages) over the past 14 or 15 years.
the worst new thing about the net is the spam
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
when brian reid created alt.sex, thus creating the
altnet. freedom!
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
i done rite much gooder then i use too
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Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted July 23, 2002, 2:52 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since 1993 while a graduate student at Loyola
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Read about it in a computer journal where the author made a passing remark to it. It seemed interesting but it took a while to find it. The school had a feed but very poor sampling of the groups, it took some doing via Gopher, Archie, Vernoica, to find other resources to get at other groups.
First groups I got into were computer related groups and some erot*** groups (I was of course one of the few doing so :).
I did not post for a very long time, but first post was in a database group to respond to questions that I had recieved help on before
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Being able to questions and get feedback from the top Oracle database guru Thomas Kyte (he has over 6500 posts to date). He is considered to be the cat's meow when it comes to Oracle, and to be able to engage in discussions with him and to have him provide assistance and learn from him has been invaluable.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
At work it has been a big boost to my career. Alot of people are amazed at some of the solutions I have brought up to problems and the response time to do so. I always tell them the source but most people never heard of usenet, or they think its just google so it doesn't register.
We had a problem where several senior devlopers had met to solve an Oracle problem and had developeed an expensive complex solution involving pages of code. I posted a message and had Thomas kyte respond back. Instead of the pages of code, he gave me a single 1 line sql statement that did it. It was a thing of poetic beauty!!!
Another time I was given a task, told it was needed asap but they understand it would a long time to solve but try anyway. I posted for help by end of the day had been given not just the solution but one that had gone thru several rounds of commenting, getting better with each round
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Which groups do you use the most?
I have d/l gigs of usenet stuff over the last 5 years, so I go to alot of different groups. I check the Oracle and other computer groups every day. Also the pet group espically Labrador groups
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Submitted July 18, 2002, 9:24 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
God! Initially, it was for computer driver information mainly. Later on I got involved in quite a few groups, dipping in and out as I saw fit. I'm more of a reader ( lurker ) than a poster.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Now an enormous amount of off topic material. A lot more scams ( Nigerian, send $5 to these 5 people, Make Money Fast etc.) In the early days, I didn't disguise my e-mail address - now I do.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
When I posted "Tragic For Me, Tasteless For You" on alt.tasteless the sewer of usenet. It was a post about my wife's ( girlfriend then ) miscarrying my child.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=tragic+for+me+tasteless&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=7j3n0k%24nn8%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&rnum=1
I was amazed at the support I got ( I wasn't expecting any from that bunch of hyenas) mainly by private e-mail by quite a few on the thread as well. It was quite moving. I'd only posted that tale up to alt.tasteless as I needed to get it out of my system.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
My worklife has changed dramatically. My first port of call with ANY computer problem is Deja to check the archives and if I can't find the solution there, then to the newsgroups to post the problem and, usually, get the answer.
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Which groups do you use the most?
Alt.tasteless
uk.local.geordie
most of the microsoft groups
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Submitted June 4, 2002, 3:53 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I remember when trn - threaded read news - came out, what an improvement over rn - read news.
I used to read the software and computer newsgroups and then found the rec.sport.disc (Frisbee) newsgroup. I started reading that every day and made my first post in 1992 which was about mid-air corrections of frisbee flights.
The ca.earthquake group was interesting too, and had a lot of first hand stories from people who used USENET to give out accurate information during the 1989 earthquake. The reports were that USENET had been a valuable and effective way of spreading news about the quake.
ca.driving was also especially good and quite humorous in those days.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I was doing the user administration for a 2 server SCO Unix site that had 9600 baud dial up connections to the Internet. Our servers were 25 MHz Intel 80386 computers.
We downloaded USENET as part of our normal operations and three other sites periodically dialed into our server to get the news. In 1992 we got a 14,400 modem and a dedicated phone line.
So my connection was generally from a DOS or Windows 3.0 computer running telnet over an ethernet network running TCP/IP and Novell network protocols. Configuring the network protocols was different for every different manufacture of network card.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I used to enjoy the rec.humor exchanges where people made endless nonsense rhyming exchanges.
My favorite personal post was explaining some new ideas about how frisbees fly and having no one take me seriously. Some day we will find out.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It's a good thing, like OW Riegel said in 1934
"a web of communications systems and a technique of news-dissemination"
"created a world-community that is closely-knit and possesses the quality of neighborliness"
For my experiences in the Frisbee newsgroup these things are especially true. I also have built some friendships in some of the history groups.
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Which groups do you use the most?
rec.sport.disc
soc.history.war.world-war-II
oc.*
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Submitted August 30, 2002, 4:03 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I do not rmember fo sure but it was prior to the great renaming since i know i started reading net.* and mod.*
which suddenyl become the groups we all know today
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
our manager installed it and there was suddenly a pair of programs called readnews/postnews. As people have pointed out, you could read the entire spool in a day or so
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
probably UUCP;the initial feed here was unofficial and it was prior to SESQUENET.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
a bit more relaxed;people also tried a bit more to consider the effects on the net as a whole and tried to consider the readers when creating groups. The creation of NNTP was really what changed it
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Well Kent Dolan and I went at it a couple of times. I have had a few dust ups in news.groups and became a moderator when soc.history.moderated as created. The original plan was to moderate soc.history in place but I and a few others objected to that and felt that the creation of a companion moderated group was the appropriate response. I also was invovled in the creation of the humanities hierarchy [which probably would have succeeded a few years earlier].
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
it is a source of techical information;i also tend to hang out in the abuse groups more than anywhere else [nature of the job]. I also have witnesses the evolution of alt from a useful hierarchy to one which is totally useless [groups created prior to 3-4 years ago are pretty good but it has devolved into useless since then]
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Which groups do you use the most?
news.groups
abuse/security groups
history groups
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Submitted June 11, 2002, 2:32 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Fot the first years some groups were gatewayed
through uucp e-mail.
The start was my involvement with user groups
around unix and databases.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
2400 bps uucp dialup for the first e-mail gateway.
(1986)
9600 bps uucp dialup for the first newsfeed (b-news),
(1990)
19200 bps analog leased line for the first NNTP feed.
(1993)
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Asking a question about a quirk in a computer,
and having the designer reply within 4 hours.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It has definately extended horizons; but in terms
of people and geography.
We are now communicating directly with people we
would otherwise just read about.
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Which groups do you use the most?
alt.folklore.computers
alt.sys.(pdp10 multics pdp11)
comp.sys.databases.(various)
no.fritid.dykking
no.it.tjenester.nettilbydere
some product specific groups
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Submitted December 31, 2002, 12:11 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I learned about Usenet from a Russian guy
I met at Compuserve in 1995. I was
very much interested in Russia at the time,
and he said I could talk to more real
Russians in Usenet. So I went to
soc.culture.russian, and it wasn't long
before I was involved in what was
called "the floating Russian flamewar."
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
sexzilla.net, a hobby server run by one of the Usenet spam cancelers, the late Douglas E. Mackall.
We had a lot of fun with it, posting silly messages, and Doug issued his cancels through it. It was still running on the day he died. There's a new sexzilla.net now, run by another anti-spam activist, but it isn't the same without Doug.
For more information, do a Google
search on sexzilla.net and Doug
Mackall in news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.
It is a story in itself.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It has put me in touch with people around the world that I would never be able to meet if I lived a thousand years, and I will be unhappy when I have to give it up.
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Which groups do you use the most?
Right now I use the groups in the us.* hierarchy the most, because I am the hierarachy maintainer.
Home base is us.config.
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Submitted January 23, 2003, 5:32 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I've been a Usenet user since about 1988(ish).
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
My first interaction with usenet was a usenet to BBS gateway on a local dial-up bbs. I later got a shell account from the University of Utah that allowed be to use 'nn' and then later 'tin' to read the newsgroups. As I recall, other usenet users were very interested in helping well mannered newbies learn the rules of usenet. They were also pretty helpful in helping newbies user the 4 or 5 clients that were in widespread use.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
bbs gateway (doorway?) and then a dialup shell account.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
There is much much much more spam now. The flame wars are more about yelling and less about getting a quality flame in now. The number of newgroups is such that there is a group for every need, but there is not the same sense of community in most of them.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
For a while I spent time reading and posting in alt.mountainbiking where one of the regulars was (is) a 911 operator in Colorado. I had a chance to do a ridealong with a cop one night. During the night I learned that one of the local 911 operators was doing her last shift cause she was moving to that same city in Colorado to take a job with that department. It was kinda fun to tell her to look him up so that she could pass greetings from usenet through the police dept BBS system accessed in a moving squad car to his desk in the real world.
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Which groups do you use the most?
comp.databases.pick and utah.general.
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Submitted June 11, 2002, 2:22 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I've been on Usenet since 1993 (I didn't post much until 1994). I had started seeing references to Usenet about two years prior to that, on WWIVNet and WWIVLink. I was 16 at the time. So in the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty young...
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I discovered BBSs back in about 1990-91, and fairly quickly got involved in the discussion forums there (read: spent a lot of time in large flamewars). When the local BBS scene started drying up, I went out looking for a replacement way to spend my time, and in my searches I came across Usenet. I got involved in a few RPG-related groups (rec.games.mecha, rec.games.frp.cyber), posting occasionally but mostly just lurking; then in 1994 I got extremely offended at the Green Card Lottery and started spending some time on news.admin.* and alt.current-events.net-abuse. Things snowballed from there.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Depending on whether I was at school or not, ethernet or a dial-up connection to the local freenet. Either way, my time was spent using 'nn' on our high school DECStation Alpha, so it went fast enough for me. Besides upgrading to a cable modem, this is essentially the same way I access Usenet today.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I didn't use it before 1990. Sorry. I'm as much a part of the Endless September as anyone...
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
That would probably be when I created free.*. I was in the middle of a years-long flamewar with the Freedom Knights (http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/), and specifically Hipcrime (http://www.killfile.org/dungeon/why/hipcrime.html); one night I was up a bit too late, and suddenly had the idea to simultaneously prove a point in the argument and take care of a long-standing idea. And so I wrote up a manifesto (http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/free/charter), send out a couple of newgroup messages, and went to bed. By the time I woke up the next morning, I had been received dozens of accusations of "negotiating with terrorists" and such, and the flamewar had extended out onto Usenet as a whole. Years later, I still maintain the FAQ on the hierarchy (http://www.killfile.org/faqs/free.faq)
and, while it can't be said to be thriving, it certainly does serve a purpose on Usenet. And I still occasionally get people griping at me for my actions. So yes, that was memorable...
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
Well, for starters, it's kept many of my friends and I in touch years after we've scattered to all corners of the world. That's something that just wouldn't have happened otherwise. More than that, though, I met most of those same people through Usenet - local hierarchies, to be sure, but still Usenet. They're effectively an extra social group that I can call upon when I need them, and which I care about as much as any of the rest of my friends.
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Which groups do you use the most?
These days, most of my time is spent in local hierarchies (uiuc.*, cmi.*, meat.*), instead of on Usenet at large. I still moderate a half-dozen newsgroups (identities left as an exercise to the reader), I post irregularly in alt.comics.sluggy-freelance and rec.arts.comics.dc.vertigo, and I lurk in news.*, much of comp.* and rec.arts.comics.*.
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Submitted July 19, 2002, 3:34 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since 1987, when I started as an undergraduate at MIT.
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I had a modem (first 300 baud, then 1200 baud) in middle school and high school, and I used it to participate in various BBSs. Immediately after I arrived at MIT, I discovered that the computers there were simply a different world than my old Apple ][+, and that was especially true for the Usenet, which was way better than any BBS.
I initially read news using rrn. Then I switched to xrn (whose maintenance I eventually took over, and I maintain and use it to this day).
I quickly became an obnoxious know-it-all in various newsgroups, most notably comp.unix.questions and comp.unix.wizards. I answered people's questions, flamed people for posting questions that were in the FAQ, flamed people for posting incorrect answers to other people's questions, etc. I'm still a know-it-all, but I've become a bit more tactful over the years :-).
The other newsgroups in which I spent far, far too much time reading and posting messages were soc.culture.israel and soc.culture.jewish. I took it as my personal crusade to debunk all the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda posted in those newsgroups, under the theory, that if no one debunked it, some people might actually believe it.
I remember fondly that I was number one in the "top 25 posters to Usenet" chart for several months during this time. Of course, this was all before I got a life and realized that there were better things to do with my time than posting to the Usenet.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I read news on MIT undergraduate workstations (DEC VaxStation 2s running BSD or IBM RT/PCs running AOS) running X or on MIT dialup machines through a 1200-baud modem.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
In my opinion, without a doubt the biggest change is the spam. While it may or may not be true that it's mostly under control because of the spam cancelers (of which I was one of the early ones, BTW), it contains to have unfortunate side effects.
The one which most concerns me is the increased proportion of Usenet users who choose to mask their identities on the Usenet. Very few people masked their identities in Usenet postings in the old days -- it was understood that it was rude to post without giving people the ability to respond by E-mail. Now, the spam problem and the new breed of Usenet user who likes to remain anonymous together mean that many more people mask their identities. I think it cheapens the medium and forces a lot of garbage into newsgroups that should have been sent by E-mail.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
So many memories.... Setting up rtfm.mit.edu... Setting up the Usenet address database... Taking over xrn... Maintaining God-knows-how-many FAQ postings... proposing and moderating news.answers and later *.answers... Running the first Usenet voting server... Canceling spam... Being branded a pedophile and God-knows-what-else by various net.kooks...
Two specific memories stand out. The first is the many arguments I had with one particular anti-Semite, Jack Schmidling. He was clueless, and he had no understanding whatsoever of argumentation theory, but boy, was he persistent.
The second was dealing with the massive vote fraud surrounding the vote on the creation of the soc.culture.makedonija and talk.politics.macedonia newsgroups, for which I served as the vote collector. I don't think it was the first instance of Usenet vote fraud, but I think it was the biggest that had occurred to date, and it was quite an experience.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
Honestly, I don't think it affected me all that much. I can't claim to have formed any really strong attachments over the Usenet. All I can say is that it consumed a great deal of my time for several years, and it may very well be a good part of the reason why it took me six years to get my Bachelor's degree.
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Which groups do you use the most?
I no longer read the groups in which I was really active at the start. The groups I read most religiously now are rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns, which proves that the Usenet has become a much more read-only medium for me than it used to be. I do still read and occasionally post in a few other groups; probably the ones in which I'm most active are misc.consumers.house and ne.general.
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Submitted June 4, 2002, 10:47 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I heard from friends and found some writings on the net about it. Now i post daily on a few groups, it's the best information database on the new IMHO.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
my schools 512kb connection
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I helped on a book, I got lots to thank you posts/mails, I got involved in some projects.
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Which groups do you use the most?
alt.php
dk.edb.internet.webdesign.serverside.php
gnu.emacs
gnu.emacs.gnus
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Submitted June 4, 2002, 8:38 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Only since 1995, except for six months in 1985, which
are what I'll concentrate on here.
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I was first introduced to Usenet as a tool for
intra-school communication at the University of
Chicago.
Notices about computation center closures and like
that would be posted on internal newsgroups, or at
least that's what I remember now.
But of course I was also told about the net-wide
groups, and some stuff about netiquette, which I
promptly displayed my ignorance of by posting a
flaming followup to an early bit of spam on
net.general. This resulted in an exceedingly polite
letter back, I think from Mark Horton, telling me
not to feed the trolls.
Not long after I first came across Usenet in this way,
I was ignoring school for a couple of weeks, and I
spent one of those weeks reading everything on file
from net.a* through net.l*. This left me with an
abiding belief that Usenet was a wondrous example of
a true anarchy that worked.
It also led to my finding someone who'd graduated a
couple of years ahead of me from my high school, and
we exchanged a couple of e-mails via UUCP and
bang-paths, which was enough work that we didn't
keep it up.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
A university computation center that was linked, via
the rest of the university's network, back to the
legendary ihnp4 facility AT&T ran in Naperville,
Illinois (which would be, for another year or so,
the main link between the coasts for Usenet).
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I can't claim to have had a good take on it at the
time, frankly. In particular, I know now, from later
research, that by the time I first saw it, Usenet was
no longer a functioning anarchy, really; but at the
time I thought it was.
It seems to me, though, that it was a lot smaller
then, and this unsurprisingly means it was a lot
better behaved on average. It's fairly clear to me
that when I returned, Usenet had gone through a
period of being big enough to meet many interests,
and accumulate lots of useful information and
valuable communities - the glory days of FAQs; by the
time I returned, that was beginning to die. Now,
few of the groups I've read are even what they were
in 1995.
But flipside, things that interest me a lot didn't
*have* groups before 1994 or 1995, and weren't much
discussed on the groups that did then exist.
So I think growth has its own trade-offs, and I'm
not simply condemning the Usenet of today.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Um, I don't really play "most" games. So I'm not
sure how to answer this, in general.
But from 1985, it would be the story above: getting
my hand slapped by someone I thought at the time was
one of the Heroes of Making Anarchy Work was, in its
own weird way, an inspiring experience.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
Since I haven't really spent a lot of time around the
real-life communities related to the topics I follow
online, I couldn't say. It's affected me by, at
times, providing a place where I can talk with people
with common interests, and by, at times, providing a
place where I can get information in response to
specific questions. A recent thread on
rec.arts.sf.written is devoted to "books I would
never have read if not for this newsgroup". That,
I think, is much of what Usenet has been like for me:
it's too topically organised to expand one's horizons
in a *big* way necessarily (although that's part of
the attraction of general groups like news.groups),
but it can expand all kinds of possibilities in
*small* ways.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
In 1985, net.games.frp, net.general, not sure any
more what else. Oh, I liked to read net.flame and
net.jokes.
Since 1995, news.groups, soc.history.ancient,
soc.history.medieval, rec.arts.sf.written,
sci.archaeology, humanities.classics
(formerly sci.classics), others.
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Submitted June 11, 2002, 10:30 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
it was in either talk.environment or sci.environment. I was working for an environmental non-profit, and had had a couple years experience using non-Usenet BBS-type community online venues in Berkeley. I was given a helpful, good-hearted introduction to Usenet norms by Carl Lydick.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
24K modem, dial-up, gateway through igc.org
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
That would have to be my introduction to alt.folklore.urban, unless you count the time i got my green card and made money fast.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I've met a couple three friends, and honed some critical thinking skills through hanging out in AFU.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted June 20, 2002, 12:17 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I got started on Usenet in mid 1996, so I'm a relative late comer. :-)
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I had just gotten my first Internet account with an ISP, and their advertising and contract indicated that my account included email, web, chat, ftp, news, and other standard Internet services. I had absolutely no idea what "news" was, but if I was paying for it by golly I was gonna use it!
I had read several FAQs about news groups before I ever had the opportunity to try news, including one of the FAQs for news.groups, and expected to get flamed immediately no matter what I posted. (news.groups can be pretty contentious at times, and I didn't understand that "news.groups" is different from "news groups". )
As it happens, I got lucky and my first few forays were into friendly groups with a sociable atmosphere, so my occasional newbie blunders were kindly overlooked or greeted with friendly information on how to correct my posting style, so I had plenty of time to get hooked on news before encountering my first flame war. :-)
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I had a 28K dialup connection, except I was using a 14K modem, so access was pretty slow. The web was intolerably slow, but Usenet is extraordinarily well designed for good access to Usenet even on a poor connection.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Boy, that's hard to choose. It's a thrill, for instance, when I receive a personal email from someone I regarded as a celebrity in the computer world--and continues to amaze me each time it happens. It turns out that celebreties are real people and mostly not snobbish or aloof! (Not that it happens that often, but there is a special thrill whenever you get a friendly, personal email from someone you regard with awe. )
In early 1997 when news.newusers.questions was presubscribed in the most popular newsreader of the day, Netscape Navigator, and completely overwhelmed by off topic traffic, a team of helpers there began an RFD to moderate nnq in place. After seeing a notice in the group about the RFD, I made my first foray into news.groups in support of the change. I was still quite a newbie, and expected news.groupies (slang for those who hang out in news.groups) to flame me to a crisp. That didn't happen, and nnq won its vote and was converted to moderated. Not terribly long after I served for a time as one of moderators for the group, and partly because of that experience have since become moderator or backup moderator for a couple of other groups.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I have formed some warm friendships with a number of people I've never met in person and probably never will - I live a couple of thousand miles or more from most of them - but the friendships are none-the-less real and I treasure them.
For the most part (with notable exceptions) the people I've encountered from the various newsgroup communities are generous, friendly people. They're eager to share their knowledge to help someone else, and often with tangible assistance as well. For instance, complete strangers sent me thread needed to finish a quilting project, others have sent me software or sold me hardware at an inexpensive price, and I've done likewise. I've learned how to better care for my cats, my sewing projects, my computer, and my community, and I've learned that people can disagree on important matters but remain civil or even friendly. Usenet teaches you to separate the person from the argument of the moment.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Oh, boy, that's a toughie! I'm subscribed to 34 newsgroups, but many of them receive almost no posts (announce groups) and in many I read just a sampling of posts. I tend to read and post more in some groups than others, but which particular groups floats back and forth over time. I'm pretty consistent, though, in participating in:
news.software.readers - help, info, and discussion about newsreaders
news.groups - discussion of Big 8 newsgroup creation
comp.mail.eudora.mac - Eudora email on a Macintosh
news.admin.net-abuse.policy
news.newusers.questions, alt.newbie, alt.newbies - help groups for people
new to newsgroups
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Submitted June 19, 2002, 11:52 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Read about it on a copy of The Internet for Dummies I downloaded (FTP) somewhere; found a copy of David Delaney's Net Legends FAQ, which refered to a number of newsgroups; found read-only access to Usenet via my school, which gave spotty and intermittent access. That would have been 1992/1993. When I changed schools I had full access to Usenet, in 1994. First posts were to professional newsgroups (bionet.*). By the time I posted to Usenet itself I had a year or more of lurking to guide me.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
First read-only access may have been Gopher, via a University connection. Connection was always through school until 1997/1998 when I finally got a dial-up connection.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Since 1994 I've had a close set of 50 or so friends with whom I meet physically every year or so; first physical meeting was in 1995, most recent was two weeks ago.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
Many of my closest friends were met through Usenet.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Now bionet.* is about it. Gradually dropped newsgroups over the past five years.
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Submitted March 4, 2003, 12:37 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I started as an undergraduate in the early 80's -- as a part of an independant-study project I was given an account on the CS dept's vax (I was an engineering student) which had e-mail and usenet (barely, see below).
Because of the lameness of the connection, I was read-only on this system.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
The C.S. dept's vax called up another system (in Minn, IIRC) once a night (for cheaper long distance) with a 1200 baud modem to transfer email and usenet.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Imagine any place which was once fabulous, and imagine being there before it was 'discovered'. A place full of witty and smart and helping people sharing in something really cool, even cooler than you knew. Now imagine that place choked with smog, traffic jams, squee-gee guys, idiots, and Wal-Marts...
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I'll keep some of those to myself, but here's one which illustrates what a dork I am -- my wife and I were married in '85 and so I printed out all of net.jokes (on a pile of fan-fold using the mainframe chain printer!) to take along for something to read aloud while driving.
I think it's still sitting in the bottom of a closet someplace.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
... other than a short stint in '99-'00 when I got involved with the colorful characters of comp.software.year-2000 because of heading the Y2K-lab at work I've been post-usenet for for 6 or 7 years, I guess.
Now, I participate in a small closed-membership "blog" (although I had that word!)
My wife still reads some of the misc.kids groups, though.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Once upon a time I read a mish-mash of groups, some for example: alt.fan.lemurs, alt.planning.urban, comp.database.ingres, misc.consumers.house, misc.kids, rec.woodworking
|
Submitted June 20, 2002, 11:46 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I was an undergrad at the University of Waterloo. There was a very enlightened policy there: junior students were given read-only access to Usenet, and seniors had posting privileges. Most people had a pretty good handle on the culture before their gags were removed.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Waterloo's LAN, which was probably 1MB ethernet at that point. I'm not sure what the connection to the greater Internet was, probably a 56K line, and I'm not sure that Usenet wasn't handled through UUCP over modems.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
The main changes have been the quantity of postings and the breadth of the participants. I think that if you worked on it full-time, you could read all of Usenet around 1988. At least skim it. There are probably single groups that generate more traffic today than a complete feed did back then.
And at that time, nearly all of the participants were either high-tech workers/academics or CS students. A side effect of this was that most people's connectivity was provided by a bureacracy that had power over them, and most people were conscious of the fact that Usenet could be taken away from them.
The biggest change, of course, is spam. There was no commercial traffic on Usenet.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
alt.folklore.urban, alt.peeves
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Submitted January 22, 2003, 5:13 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I forgot. I think I was interested in wine or something. Later, I found that I talk with other programmers and get a lot of good info on Usenet.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
9600 baud phone line, and that connected most of the time at about 2,800.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I have made quite a lot of money through referrals on Usenet. Biggest deal was around $20,000 consulting. I just lurked and then emailed one of the posters privately. It turned out to be an attorney who wanted just what I had to offer.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I think it has brought the Poick community closer together. comp.databases.pick is the newsgroup.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted May 21, 2003, 8:33 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I was new to computing and trying to write software and understand PC's. I heard, probably on Compuserve about Usenet. I got an ISP account and started reading and asking questions about Windows 3.1
I remember being rather nervous when I first posted, not wanting to appear foolish.
I have since turned Computing into a career and have got alot of my knowledge from Usenet
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I would say the most memorable experiences have been connecting with people without any boundary and developing relationships.
It is amazing to be able to talk to people anywhere on the planet and share knowledge and ideas.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It became my obsession for a few years. At first I read alot and posted a little, then I started to post up to 100 articles a day. I have spent most of my time doing peer to peer support on PC related issues.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted April 7, 2003, 4:22 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
A friend of mine, Keith Dolye, had access at work; we both had Amigas, he'd get daily information and sometimes programs. This was incentive enough.
The guy I worked for at the time, Greg Laskin, was porting Bill Blue's PNET BBS software to UNIX. It had private mail and messaging fuctions, and and an interface to usenet. Greg would nag me endlessly "try my BBS" which I ignored. One day I tried it, and flamed Clayton Cramer in rec.guns.
There's a book I read once hat said "your first experience writing to usenet is likely to be a humiliating one". I thin they were writing about me.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
There were a lot less people! There was no spam. Less off topic posts.
But, I wouldn't go back. In those days the population of usenet seemed to be bored computer programmers, so as a bored programmer asking a question about some non-programming topic you typically got answers from other bored programmers who very seldom knew the answer you wanted but would of course answer any way, or sometimes university professors who might on a good day give you a semi-comprehensible tome that instructed you how you might obtain the answer.
These days because the population of usenet is so high there is expertise from all walks of life online. In all I'd say the good outweighs the bad.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
The creation of sci.aquaria.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I have some long standing aquaintences, many of which are very dear and important to me that were established because of usener.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
alt.horolgy, rec.autos.mercedes.
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Submitted June 11, 2002, 11:24 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I first started reading Usenet in 1985
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
The company I worked for, Tektronix, had a feed. Co-workers introduced me to Usenet. I read rec.humor and some music-related groups, but didn't post.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I don't know what kind of connection it was. It was fast.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I recall that most participants were associated with academic or research institutions, or with large-ish corporations. In general, people were computer literate, although there was the standing joke about September, when incoming freshmen got their accounts and failed to understand that their "email" was propagating worldwide.
In 1986/87, I worked for a small startup. I was often at work late into the night, trying to get something to compile or whatnot. I'd read newsgroups: rec.humor, rec.humor.funny, and some of the music-related ones. About that time, ISPs like Portal hooked up, and people could have personal access to the 'net. There was a certain amount of snobbery from the old "regulars" toward these newbies. When that startup folded, I got an account on Portal. By this time, I was an irregular poster, mostly to alt.folklore.urban.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
One poster had shared her joy with her pregnancy, and then miscarried. I cried, and emailed her my condolences.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I've learned a lot.
I've learned a lot about how different people can be.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted October 7, 2003, 9:05 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
The first thing I did was do a search for david duchovny which led me to the alt.tv.x-files usenet group. That search enhanced my life.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
A dial up modem at the college where I still work.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I used usenet before 1990 through a friend who had arpanet at work. She would share and post for me to the star trek group.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Meeting my friend gizzie on the internet. She said that she was forty something and had a really wicked sense of humor - we started writing back and forth and have been to each other's homes since then. She is one of my best friends.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
We have been able to check up on one another when there are illnesses, deaths, and bad weather. Many of us have met one another at special gatherings.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
I use alt.tv.x-files.creative, and alt.fan-david.duchovny and also a lot of yahoo groups to keep in touch with my friends
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Submitted June 21, 2002, 11:06 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
5 years (arrived summer, 1997)
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I had just begun to use the Internet extensively, and I read a trade press article about Usenet. At the time I was knowledgable enough to know that the WWW was not "the Internet," yet novice enough not to understand why. That article I read described the basics of netiquette. I stumbled across alt.folklore.urban (AFU) a few months later, when those netiquette guidelines were still fresh in my mind. AFU fascinated me, but it took six months of lurking before I worked up the courage to post. The 4 and 1/2 years since then have been rewarding.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
In my parents' house I had a 28.8 kbps modem. I used that during the summer. Shortly after I discovered Usenet, I returned to college for my sophomore year, where I had access to a high bandwidth network.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Jeez...make me feel like a youngster.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
When I worked as a network administrator, I once spent slightly over 4 hours on the phone with Microsoft tech support about some problem or other with my NT server. The result: "It's a hardware problem, and you'll have to take it up with the vendor. I'm sorry we can't help, but thank you for your continued business." Then I asked my question on Usenet (typing time: 5 minutes) and had an answer within an half-hour (lunch: no time wasted), and the fix took 15 minutes to implement.
On the hobby side, I will never forget my first few months on rec.sport.unicycling (RSU). I had just picked up unicycling, and I was learning very slowly; I had trouble making turns of a radius less than about 5-6 meters. I asked my cohorts what I was doing wrong. A dozen people offered suggestions for shifting my hips and leaning my shoulders, and everyone had kind words of encouragement. Two days later I announced that I had cut down my turning radius to about one meter, and the group cheered me on. I stuck around for about a year, helping other newbies in the same way that I had been helped. My dues paid, I eventually left RSU (and unfortunately, I ride much less often these days), but I still enjoy a similar community atmosphere in other froups.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
AFU, alt.folklore.urban, home of the original troll.
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Submitted June 20, 2002, 12:13 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since 1994 or 1995; my memory is foggy on when I
started.
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Initially, the math department at the University
of Alabama in Huntsville did not have a Usenet
connection, but we did have access, via the
University's Gopher server, to an archive of
Usenet post maintained at some other University
(Minnesota?). I then got an account with the
Computer Science Department, which did have a
Usenet connection, and about the same time I got
an AOL account.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I would telnet to the CS Department and use Pine,
or I would use my AOL account.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Probably my first "flame-war." Without getting into
the gory details, another poster and I went at it for
several days. It was mild compared to later
experiences, but it was quite an eye-opener at the
time.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I think it has helped me to connect with a number
of people who share the same interests and we have
been able to communicate and even get together some
and pursue joint ventures.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
alt.war.civil.usa
soc.history.war.us-civil-war
|
Submitted July 6, 2002, 4:36 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I remember an afternoon in the University compuer lab in the UK when someone told me to try a program called 'rn'. I was still there at12pm on a vt220 amazed that there could be as many as (from memory) 200 newsgroups.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
vt220 tty into a vax running an early (4.1?) BSD unix
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I stopped actively using usenet in about 1992. Too mnay posts to keep up to date (so why try?), too many flames, too concerned about privacy issues.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Learning about the philosophy behind open source by actually doingit in the late 80s.
Reading the GNU manifesto.
Playing larn.
rec.homor.funny in the early days.
reading sunspots
playing networked transatlantic blitz empire in 1987
|
Which groups do you use the most?
now - none.
I used to use comp.sources.unix, comp.sys.sun, rec.humor.funny, rec.games.traveller, rec.games.empire a lot - mostly as a lurker, but there are some posts from me.
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Submitted April 24, 2002, 9:53 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since 1989. Approximately 13 years.
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I had probably heard of it from my brother or from a friend at my school (Northern Arizona University). I was an early user of rec.music.gdead. I also frequented comp.sys.mac, alt.shenanigans, rec.jokes (or something like that, don't read it any more). Of course, I was a typical "new guy" posting irrelevant messages or messages that could have been handled in email correspondance.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
T1 or whatever my university had.
Unless you mean what program I used to access Usenet. In which case I was a big fan of VN (Visual News). I used a flavor of RN (Read News) later.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I think people were a lot more forgiving of what we might now call minor mis-uses of the medium such as using it for personal correspondance. At that time I believe people at least took the time to tell you what you'd done wrong as opposed to instantly jumping on you for transgressions. Certainly there was plenty of flaming going on, even for minor problems, but (at least in my memory) things were a little friendlier, a little more tolerant.
It also felt more like a community. Almost a secret gathering of all these people sharing ideas about different topics. It was very cool to have discussions with people from all over the world. We weren't so jaded about "the way things are" when it came to the internet. We saw the medium as a fun place to chat with friends, albiet at a slower pace than today.
I think most of the people who used it before 1990 will mention something about when AOL came online. That was the beginning of the end. I'm not saying we're worse off now that it has happened as I do believe it was just part of the natural evolution of the technology, but suddenly we found ourselves swamped with "This is just a test" messages in every newsgroup. And people just writing messages to say stupid, off-topic (and often off-color) things.
A lot of this had to do with AOL introducing a large number of people under college-age simply using the medium because they could. They were fascinated with it just like we had been or were, but their fascination manifested itself in ways that were not very tolerable to the people who had been there first. I think it's safe to say that most serious users of Usenet felt invaded when AOL got connected.
Of course, there was definitely a lot less spam back then, but I assume that goes without saying.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I think the way that it helped connect people from around the world made it memorable. How it was all so new. Sure, email accomplished the same thing, but with Usenet you were connecting to people you would have never connected with otherwise. For me it was a natural transition from my BBSing days, but with BBSs I was talking with people around my town. One great thing that Usenet did for me was expand my collection of Grateful Dead tapes.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
rec.music.phish
rec.music.gdead
rec.crafts.brewing
rec.beer
news.groups
bburg.forsale
bburg.general
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Submitted June 13, 2002, 3:56 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Just now 20 years since I've been "on" it. I was
first exposed to "netnews" as most everybody called
it back then, during a summer internship in 1981.
I have had continuous access to Usenet since the
summer of 1982.
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
My first direct experiences consisted of reading
newsgroups for about a week before I made my first
posting. I read netnews at work. I think my
first posting was probably to net.sf-lovers to reply
to postings about the "Star Trek" movie that had just
been released a couple weeks earlier. This would
have been in June, 1982. This started me on the
path to creating the newsgroup net.startrek later
that same summer, but that's another story.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Your typical "glass tty" (a CRT terminal, 24 rows
by 80 columns) connected over a 2400 baud line to
a DEC VAX-11/780. The VAX had a 9600 baud modem.
Ah, the good old days.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Let's see, back then all the newsgroups were named
net.something and I think there were much fewer
than 100. One person could keep up with the ENTIRE
Usenet feed reading the first page of every article
in only about an hour or so each day.
Back then it was all text-based, of course. No GUIs.
On UNIX machines, we had the readnews and postnews
programs, and I think this was a version called B
news. The Internet didn't exist yet. The Arpanet
did, but it was still using its network control
protocol; TCP/IP became the standard in 1983. Usenet
was informally defined as every site that received
net.general. Much of the news transmission was with
the UUCP protocol over ordinary phone lines. Back
then we thought 9600 baud was pretty fast. There
was no standard user@host.domain mail addressing
scheme on Usenet. Every article showed the path
that the article actually took from poster to you.
Typing this path to send e-mail to the poster often
did not work, since some routes were one-way and
others worked for news but not mail. Signature
blocks began appearing at the end of articles, at
first so that the writer could identify the path
that correspondents could use to send e-mail. It
started with one or more major (or "backbone") hosts.
It was up to you to figure out how to route your mail
from your host to the backbone. ASCII graphic Usenet
maps were posted to make this task easier. They
showed more than one kind of network connected together
by "gateway" machines that knew about more than one
network. Often it took some ingenuity to figure out
how to get out of UUCPnet and onto another one of the
others (collectively, "inter-nets"). All Usenet
postings were wholly text, no attachments of any
kind. The only way I can recall that we sent files
was to include them in the body of an article, even
ftp was not yet available to a great many Usenetters.
Source code (including for Usenet software itself)
was posted using a "shell archive" format. In this,
the body of the article would be saved to a file, the
recipient would manually edit the file to delete
all text before the "cut here" line, and the result
would be given as input to the UNIX shell (sh or csh)
to recreate the file. Many of the now familiar
conventions, such as quoting another posting with
the ">" characters, date back to this time. Failing
to carefully trim down articles you were replying to
would get you flamed, because network bandwith was
tiny. Just about every month someone predicted the
imminent death of Usenet because traffic was increasing
so rapidly.
Wow, I didn't mean to type quite that much. But that
always was one of my tendencies in the early days of
Usenet. :-)
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
The most memorable experience was meeting a very
charming and erudite woman who had similar interests.
We had an exciting e-mail courtship that led to
falling in love. I'm still a sucker for women who
know how to write well!
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I have an insightful and carefully thought-out answer
to that question. Unfortunately, this form is too
small to contain it. :-)
|
Which groups do you use the most?
These days I am more or less retired from Usenet
newsgroups. Usenet seems so much less important
now that the WWW has pretty much taken over.
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Submitted April 29, 2002, 3:28 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I had a uucp feed from gryphon in 1986. I remember the date because that's when I upgraded my Tandy unix box to a low-serial-number Compaq 386. I might have been on a little earlier on the Tandy, with a feed from Pete Carah at puffin.
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
My friend and colleague Peter Carah got me connected. I think I originally hung out mostly in the comp. hierarchy, and maybe on rec.martial.arts
I didn't file my experiences sequentially; I can tell you one that sticks in my memory was sitting in on John Mashey debating RISC architecture. It was and is such a precviously-unimaginable privilege to lurk at the High Table of Terra U.
Sometime in 1989 or thereabouts I was working a consulting gig with the eponymous richard SEXton and greg of gryphon (in those days there were giants abroad in the land), and heard some of the discussion that in time became the alt.sex lowerarchy.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
In the earliest days having a Unix account correlated reasonably well with clue.
Many communities were overwhelmed and washed away by Endless September; the methods by which unmoderated groups persist in the wilds of the alt. hierarchy will provide research opportunities for decades.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Nope. ;) Suffice it to say it's a work in progress.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It enables geographically dilute communities. As I once said in email, "sometimes afu (alt.folklore.urban) is whalesong". By which I meant to evoke the experience of a member of an uncommon species, looking for others.
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Which groups do you use the most?
alt.folklore.urban
comp.lang.c++.moderated
comp.risks (lurk only)
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Submitted May 17, 2003, 7:00 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since "before the beginning". I was at Duke prior to the development of NetNews and Usenet.
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I recall pulling a multi-topic "news of the day" program off of a "conference tape" on the Duke PDP-11/70 at some point around 1979. It wasn't long until Duke and UNC were sharing the news via UUCP due to the efforts of Truscott, Bellovin and company. Then the full-fledged NetNews (ANews) came along and the Usenet was born.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
glass TTY serial terminal at 9600baud.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
The early days were intimate. You got to know all the regular users/posters (at least by reputation) pretty well. It was nice to know that the folks you exchanged messages with were just a few hours away.
The main change in Usenet is the growth of its population. As more and more people discovered Usenet it became harder and harder to keep up with who was who and to read all the traffic that was of interest. It became a culture of relative strangers rather than a culture of relative friends.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
The most memorable even for me on Usenet was the second or third flame war. I was young and naive enough to not realize that what I wrote would be an insult to women. The resulting argument about the role of women in computing went on for weeks and nearly cost me my access to Usenet.
The second most memorable event that related to Usenet was meeting the woman who is now my wife. She was a coder for the phs site (number three site in the original Usenet) and my brother introduced me to her one afternoon while we where wandering around the Duke campus. The rest is history.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It became an addiction very quickly, and it still is. Usenet represents a large community of expertise and most of the participants know that and appreciate it. To be able to go online and ask for assistance and generally to get answers is an incredible resource. There are the flamers and kooks, but modern software provides effective means for identifying and filtering them out of the way. Each newsgroup creates a virtual community of folk interested in a topic and allows them to interact in a way that doesn't have a face-to-face parallel. I have met and communicated with all sorts of folks I'd never have met otherwise.
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Which groups do you use the most?
triangle.* *.linux.* scary.devil.monastary and various private hierarchy newsgroups.
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Submitted June 4, 2003, 8:42 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
I was on ARPANet in either late 1983 or early 1984, in graduate school.
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I started primarily reading, and responding to messages via email only. The connection I had made it difficult - you clicked to go somewhere, got coffee, came back, saw some progress, etc. Initial involvement was very tech-specific.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
ARPANet through a University computer network. It went through a firewall causing all addresses to translate the @ to an %, then had an internal address with @. Yuck! Very slow too. I didn't use it much then because of the connection.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
It's not even the same creature!! I sort of saw it as a tech community back in the early 80s, for asking/answering specific questions. By 1988 or so it was more of a community, I was reading non-technical groups. At that point I mostly browsed for interesting material. By 1989 or so (maybe early 1990) I was on misc.kids (or whatever it was called then). That was definitely a cozy community - knew almost everyone on it, many of them in person after a while. Flames were fun >;-) because of that personal aspect. Not nearly so much garbage, nor so many fanatics; most of us were techies, so we tend to be more intelligent (we like to think so).
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
When Nixon died, I had a great flame war with someone who actually admired him, and didn't remember a thing about Vietnam, Watergate, etc.
I also met one of my closest friends IRL through misc.kids. And I can't forget the troll we wrote together w/others when the aolers first came on!
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It's so much part of my life, I can't imagine being without it. Good information, I still go there with technical questions.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
Now, not many and not often. Alas, too much traffic, too many idiots. I use groups local to my internet provider for info, and I sometimes read the travel groups for asia and the caribbean. I read a couple alt.support groups sometimes. Mostly now when I have a specific technical question I search for the relevant group and ask it there.
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Submitted May 13, 2003, 12:39 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Hrmmm...8 or 9 years I think, never really kept track to be perfectly honest.
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I first saw references to Usenet on the Inet, looked into it, started posting...viola!
What really attracted me to Usenet was the fact that it was pretty much instant access to thousands of communities all across teh grid. Usenet to me always seemed to bring things closer together, much more close knit than IRC or the Inet.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I trained little hamsters to carry messages back and forth between my house and ISP...sure it was slow and awkward, but eventually it gave rise to things like dialup and presently uncapped cable connections.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
o_O
I'm an oldbie for sure, but I'm not THAT old.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
...hrmmm...far too many to list. Let's see, completely obliterating the adult baby newsgroups, forcing thousands of them to abandon the groups, where there was once hundreds of new messages a week, now only a few dozen and all spam.
Then there was also that huge flame war I started between AUK and AHM and involved various other volatile froups, like alt.flame, alt.romath, alt.troll and alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk (my semi-official home froup).
That time I went around pretending to be a Vatican nun was pretty hysterical too. ^_^
Mmmm...Usenet Performance Art...
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
Usenet hasn't really effected me. I mean it's a great source of entertainment and certainly beats watchin reruns of Friends or hangin out at the mall all day long, but aside from that it's not really a big part of my life. It has certainly increased my typing speed as well as improved my spelling and grammar. I've also learned how to incorporate varying writing styles and accents into my writing. How I "speak" on Usenet is really quite different from the way I speak in real life.
As far as the affect I've had on various communities, well, usually I tend to have a negative effect because people make the mistake of taking me seriously. To them, Usenet is just as real as real life, to me it's just a form of entertainment.
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Which groups do you use the most?
It varies from year to year. For a long time I hung out mainly in the volatile froups, now I'm mostly hanging out in the binary ones.
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Submitted March 5, 2003, 11:47 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
Since before the web. Maybe mid 80's. I first accessed via unix readnews program.
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How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
One of my instructors at college was the head of networking for the campus. He told about it and said "once you use it, you will be addicted" He was right!
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Unix text based interface, "readnews" I think. It was a campus based high speed connection. I would occastionally "SLIP" in from my home PC via a linux box at school w/ a modem that we set up for this purpose.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
SPAM!!!! That's the biggest change. The people have changed from a more technically inclined type to a wider range of computing abilities. Different groups have waxed and waned.
There are many web based forums that appear to be siphoning traffic from usenet. I find this a little disturbing because with google, usenet really is a central repository of human thought. Many of the web forums go offline and all that thought is wasted.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
rec.audio.opinion. Jeezus. Talk about polarization. I spent about three weeks learning that some people are on usenet just to start fights.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I think usenet is the singular most important aspect of the web. When I do research, I start with google groups and do a search. Doesn't matter if I am trying to find info on a bug or looking for a new toaster, them information is there. You could take away my browser and I would survive if I had archival usenet access.
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Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted May 7, 2003, 12:16 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I have been reading about the American Civil War and discovered several newsgroups on the internet that helped fuel my interest. I found myself very caught-up in the reading and submitting of posts, most postings being argumentative and caustic until I realized that contrary opinions were just that, opinions, and not necessarily any more accurate than mine. However, I did enjoy the experience, and still do, but I'm not posting as often as I did at one time.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I used and dial-up connection on a FreeNet server that was supplied by a local university.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
I don't think much has changed, other than volumes of messages and the ever-increasing number of newsgroups for all types of interests.
|
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I don't have one "memorable" experience but I was always thrilled to be able to "talk" with many of the authors of books I had read or was currently reading. I enjoy the moderated groups who have authors visit from time-to-time and exchange messages with Usenet users.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I have met many people on the Usenet newsgroups. Some I have met face-to-face after exchanging emails via Usenet interaction. Some I hope I never meet.
The Usenet has taught me that my opinion is mine and while I wholehearteldy agree with it, others may not and others might agree with me.
My library has expanded considerably since I became a regular user of the Usenet groups. And that's a good thing!!
|
Which groups do you use the most?
First on my list would be any group connected with military history, in particular the American Civil War and Canadian history.
Next would be cooking and recipe forums.
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Submitted June 14, 2002, 7:26 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Reading alt.tasteless in its glory days was more than entertaining.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
The prison stories by Paul Ess.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
It has heightened my awareness of my writing abilities.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
alt.peeves
sci.chem
alt.urban.legends
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Submitted July 16, 2004, 5:21 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I was on AOL and was just looking around. I originally posted for fun a "hello" message around the world, pretty silly now that i think about it.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Most memorable has to be that "hello world", brought in a lot of messages.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
I've learned a lot off Usenet.
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Which groups do you use the most?
Submitted December 4, 2002, 4:22 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
The earliest map I can find with "cincy" is dated June 1, 1981.
I suspect that I got us on there a month or so beforehand,
since the maps didn't get updated very often. (I have a decent
collection of these if there's some good way to
insert them into your record.)
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
Someone (Brian Kernighan?) talked about uucp at
the (first) Toronto Usenix conference. I think Tom Truscott
talked about usenet news at that same conference. I
was entranced by the prospect of a "cheap" network connection
to the rest of the world. At the time, I was running
Sixth Edition Unix on an 11/60; uucp only ran on
Seventh Edition (v7), but the folks at BRL had built
a compatibility library which allowed me to build
a working uucp...
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
I hand dialed duke, using a racal-vadic 1200 baud modem.
I did that about every other day ... until my advisor
started getting the long distance bills! I also dialed
pur-ee and uiucdcs for a while to get them going.
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If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
It was possible (and interesting) to read EVERY article.
It didn't even take that long.
The biggest deal then was getting reasonably quick
responses to technical questions from other folks
who had "been there, done that" - as well as access
to ARPANet lists that had been unavailable (in the
fa. groups).
The signal/noise ratio has gone steadily downhill. Now there
are precious few groups that have the perceived value
of the early days.
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
The really memorable ones, other than the odd flame
war, were early on when I was able to communicate about
odd disk driver problems, unique to the 11/60, with folks
at the antipodes - sending and receiving information
between Cincinnati and New South Wales. This was as
much a "uucp" phenomenon as it was "usenet" ... but
there was suddenly a sense of there being a whole lot
of people "out there", willing to help.
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How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
Usenet was one of the first online communities -
extending the sense of community beyond those people
that you could actually meet in person. ARPANet and
Fido had similar early effects, as well as some
other communities based on GTE's Telenet and other
online services (moderately well documented at the
time in "The Network Nation" by Hiltz & Turoff).
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Which groups do you use the most?
These days, a few of the rec. and comp. groups are all I read.
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Submitted May 13, 2003, 11:21 AM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I moved to Southern California in late 1993 from Maryland. I didn't know anyone, and decided that an Internet ISP would be a better choice than renewing the Compuserve account that I had had up until then. A cow orker referred me to a local ISP, and I dialed in nightly.
I looked through the list of maybe 2-3000 newsgroups, and settled on a couple of gaming groups, and alt.folklore.urban.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
2400 baud modem on a 486/33DX Gateway machine, running DR-DOS 6.0 with a copy of Windows 2.0 that I never used.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
There are a lot of firsts that stick with you: the first time someone you don't know .sigs something you said; the first time you get email from someone you don't know who loved a particular post you made; the first time you meet Usenet friends face to face.
Probably the most memorable experience was the great AFU NYC2 get-together: AFU regulars had several local gatherings in the early days, and it culminated in the second NYC gathering in, hmm, 1994 I think. I flew in from San Diego, others from elsewhere in the US, a few from the UK, Australia,... It was a great family, back in those days. Even Kibo showed up.
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
The people I've met on Usenet have become my most treasured friends. We send each other dozens of emails every day, and visit each other whenever possible.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
alt.folklore.urban, although much less since the wife and I had our two kids. I post a little to the Seattle Mariners ng, and lurk several others: peeves, AUE, and some local ISP groups.
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Submitted June 14, 2003, 2:03 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
I had already been involved in compuserve, GEnie
and BBS conferences/echoes (Findonet for one) so
usenet was just another forum.
The quality of the posts on usenet was higher, as
was the quantity of flames.
But the experience of reading, posting and responding,
etc. was not notably different from the other
online communities.
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What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
Arranging for the particiaption of one of the top
CW scholars, James McPherson in the newsgroup
soc.history.war.us-civil-war was my most memorable
experience.
Prof. McPherson didn't even use a computer. I faxed
the newsgroup articles to him. He typed his responses
on a manual typewriter and then faxed them back to me.
I then keyed his articles into my computer and
posted them.
You can read the transcript, you'll find it as a link
on the page:
www.thecivilwargroup.com
|
How has Usenet affected you and/or the communities related to the newsgroups you participate in?
The biggest effect it that I get to discuss the Civil
War. Few people at home or the office have the
interest or desire to spend more than about 5
minutes per month with a Civil War Nut.
|
Which groups do you use the most?
soc.history.war.us-civil-war
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Submitted March 6, 2003, 9:40 PM
How long have you been on Usenet?
My first Usenet experiences -- which, for some reason, do not appear in the Google archives, and therefore the archives are incomplete -- were in about 1987 -88. I had a sporadic presence on rec.games.frp. My permanent residency online didn't begin until early 1991.
|
How did you first get involved with Usenet? Tell us about your first experience reading, posting, or responding to messages.
My early introduction was through a friend of mine, John Bunch, who was my Atari guru. He helped me get on BBS's, some of which, like Albedo BBS (through Fidonet) connected to Abusenet. This was in the mid-'80s. I didn't actually see a regular Usenet posting until the later '80s, as mentioned above.
When I moved to Pittsburgh to go to UPitt, I finally obtained my own dialup account through the local service Telerama, plus I of course had school access. Through these connections I was able to get to Usenet directly, and immediately became a permanent resident of several groups, including rec.arts.sf-lovers, rec.games.frp, rec.arts.anime, and alt.callahans.
While interesting in its breadth, there was nothing particularly new in the overall experience; I'd been using BBS's of one sort or another online since 1976, and my "handle" was only one year younger than that.
|
What type of connection did you first use to access Usenet?
Either UPitt's direct connection (T1, probably) through the computer labs, or (more often) my 1200 baud home connection through Telerama.
|
If you used Usenet before 1990, what were the early days like? How has Usenet changed over time?
The largest change was the fact that one could read large percentages of Usenet at a sitting. And that it was possible for a single living person, typing at a computer, to become one of the top posters on the net (without using bots or other tricks). I made the Top 25 posters list more than once in the early 90s.
There has also been a marked diversification in residency (i.e., the people online are more likely to come from non-geeky backgrounds), more spam, etc. I recall the Great SF-Lover's Reorganization, the Green Card sequence, and The Never-Ending September beginning.
In other words, it's degenerated markedly. All these damn PEOPLE!
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Tell us about the most memorable experience or exchange you\'ve had on Usenet.
I could write a BOOK. Lots of exper |
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