Newsgroups 97 alt.tv.dinosaurs.barney.die.die.die alt.biff.biff.bork.bork.bork alt.bob-packwood.tongue.tongue.tongue alt.tv.90210.sucks.sucks.sucks alt.american.automobile.breakdown.breakdown. breakdown As you can see, the joke wears thin rather quickly. Not that that stops any- one on the Usenet. Hurling Hierarchies Usenet originally had two hierarchies, net and fa. The origins of the term “net” are lost. The “fa” stood for from ARPANET and was a way of receiv- ing some of the most popular ARPANET mailing lists as netnews. The “fa” groups were special in that only one site (an overloaded DEC VAX at UCB that was the computer science department’s main gateway to the ARPA- NET) was authorized to post the messages. This concept became very use- ful, so a later release of the Usenet software renamed the fa hierarchy to mod, where “mod” stood for moderated. The software was changed to for- ward a message posted to a moderated group to the group’s “moderator” (specified in a configuration file) who would read the message, check it out to some degree, and then repost it. To repost, the moderator added a header that said “Approved” with some text, typically the moderator’s address. Of course, anyone can forge articles in moderated groups. This does not hap- pen too often, if only because it is so easy to do so: there is little challenge in breaking into a safe where the combination is written on the door. Mod- erated groups were the first close integration of mail and news they could be considered among the first hesitant crawls onto the information super- highway.2 The term “net” cropped up in Usenet discussions, and an informal caste system developed. The everyday people, called “net.folk” or “net.deni- zens,” who mostly read and occasionally posted articles, occupied the low- est rung. People well known for their particularly insightful, obnoxious, or prolific postings were called net.personalities. At the top rung were the 2The first crawls, of course, occured on the ARPANET, which had real computers running real operating systems. Before netnews exploded, the users of MIT-MC, MIT’s largest and fastest KL-10, were ready to lynch Roger Duffey of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory for SF-LOVERS, a national mailing list that was rapidly taking over all of MC’s night cycles. Ever wonder where the “list-REQUEST” con- vention and digestification software came from? They came from Roger, trying to save his hide.

98 Snoozenet net.gods and, less frequently, net.wizards who had exhaustive knowledge of the newgroup’s subject. Net.gods could also be those who could make big things happen, either because they helped write the Usenet software or because they ran an important Usenet site. Like the gods of mythology, net.gods were often aloof, refusing to answer (for the umpteenth time) questions they knew cold they could also be jealous and petty as well. They often withdrew from Usenet participation in a snit and frequently seemed compelled to make it a public matter. Most people didn’t care. The Great Renaming As more sites joined the net and more groups were created, the net/mod scheme collapsed. A receiving site that wanted only the technical groups forced the sending to explicitly list all of them, which, in turn, required very long lines in the configuration files. Not surprisingly (especially not surprisingly if you’ve been reading this book straight through instead of leafing through it in the bookstore), they often exceeded the built-in limits of the Unix tools that manipulated them. In the early 1980s Rick Adams addressed the situation. He studied the list of current groups and, like a modern day Linnaeus, categorized them into the “big seven” that are still used today: Noticeably absent was “mod,” the group name would no longer indicate how articles were posted, since, to a reader they all look the same. The pro- posed change was the topic of some discussion at the time. (That’s a Usenet truism: EVERYTHING is a topic of discussion at some time.) Of course, the software would once again have to be changed, but that was okay: Rick had also become its maintainer. A bigger topic of discussion was the so-called “talk ghetto.” Many of the “high-volume/low-content” groups were put into talk. (A typical summary of net.abortion might be “abortion is evil / no it isn’t / yes it is / science is not evil / it is a living being / no it isn’t…” and so on.) Users protested that it would be too easy comp Discussion of computers (hardware, software, etc.) news Discussion of Usenet itself sci Scientific discussion (chemistry, etc.) rec Recreational discussion (TV, sports, etc.) talk Political, religious, and issue-oriented discussion soc Social issues, such as culture misc Everything else