Netnews and Usenet: Anarchy Through Growth 95 Apparently, he attempted to reduce the amount of noise on Lusenet by implementing a program that would cancel articles crossposted to alt.cascade. A “cascade” is an affectionate term for a sequence of messages quoting earlier messages and adding little or no content the resulting repeated indent, nugget of idiocy, and terminating exdent is evidently favored by certain typographically-impaired peo- ple. Most of us just add the perpetrator ("perp" in the jargon) to our kill files. Regrettably, Bandy’s implementation of this (arguably worthy) idea contained a not-so-subtle bug that caused it to begin cancelling arti- cles that were not cascades, and it deep-sixed about 400 priceless gems of net.wisdom before anyone could turn it off. He admitted his mistake in a message sent to the nntp-managers mailing list (what remains of the UseNet “cabal”) but calls for him to “publicly apologize” continue to reverberate. Someone cleverly for- warded his message from nntp-managers to news.admin (which con- tained his net address), and someone (doubtless attempting to prevent possible sendsys bombing of that address) began cancelling all arti- cles which mentioned the address… Ah, the screams of “Free speech!” and “Lynch Mobs!” are deafening, the steely clashes of metaphor upon metaphor are music to the ears of the true connois- seur of network psychology. All in all, a classic example of Un*x and UseNet lossage: idiocy compounded upon idiocy in an ever-expanding spiral. I am sorry to (publicly) admit that I succumbed to the temptation to throw in my $.02: Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Splitting BandyHairs Distribution: world I’m glad we have nntp-managers for more-or-less reasonable discussion of the problems of running netnews. But as long as we’re wasting time and bandywidth here on news.admin: People who have known the perp (God, I hate that word) also know that he's been ... well, impulsive in the past. And has paid dearly for his rashness. He's been punished enough. (What, you mean sitting in a bathtub yelling "Be careful with that X-Acto blade!" isn’t punishment enough? For anything?) Some say that sordid episode should remain unchronicled (even by the ACM -- especially by the ACM) ...

96 Snoozenet People complain about "lazy or inattentive sysadmins". One look at news.admin and you'll instantly understand why it's mostly a waste of time. None of LuseNet is cast in concrete, though Bandy has been plastered. Let you who is without sin cast the first stone. —nick Newsgroups So far we haven’t actually said what Usenet is, that is, we haven’t said how you can tell if a computer system is or isn’t a part of it. That’s because nobody really can say. The best definition might be this: if you receive some newsgroups somehow, and if you can write messages that others can read, then you’re a part of Usenet. Once again, the virus analogy comes to mind: once you touch it, you’re infected, and you can spread the infection. What’s a newsgroup? Theoretically, newsgroups are the Dewey Decimal System of Usenet. A newsgroup is a period-separated set of words (or com- mon acronyms or abbreviations) that is read from left to right. For exam- ple, misc.consumers.house is the newsgroup for discussions about owning or buying a house and sci.chem.organomet is for discussion of organome- tallic chemistry, whatever that is. The left-most part of the name is called the hierarchy, or sometimes the top-level hierarchy. Usenet is international, and while most groups have English names, users may bump into gems like finet.freenet.oppimiskeskus.ammatilliset.oppisopimus. (By the way, you pronounce the first period in the names so that “comp.foo” is pronounced “comp-dot-foo.” In written messages, the name parts are often abbreviated to a single letter when the context is clear, so a discussion about comp.sources.unix might use the term “c.s.u.”) One section of Usenet called “alt” is like the remainder bin at a book or record store, or the open shelf section of a company library—you never know what you might find, and it rarely has value. For example, a fan of the Muppets with a puckish sense of humor once created alt.swed- ish.chef.bork.bork.bork. As is typical with Unix weenies, they sort of fig- ured out the pattern, and you can now find the following on some sites: alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk alt.andy.whine.whine.whine