Alt.massive.flamage 99 for an administrator to drop those groups. Of course—that was the point! At the time most of Europe was connected to the United States via a long- distance phone call and people in, say, Scandinavia did not care to read about—let alone participate in—discussion of Roe v. Wade. Even though this appeared to be yet another short-sighted, short-term Unix-style patch, and even though the users objected, Usenet was con- trolled by Unix-thinking admins, so the changes happened. It went surpris- ingly smoothly, mostly accomplished in a few weeks. (It wasn’t clear where everything should go. After a flamefest regarding the disposition of the newsgroup for the care and feeding of aquaria, two groups sprouted up—sci.aquaria and rec.aquaria.) For people who didn’t agree, software at major net sites silently rewrote articles to conform to the new organiza- tion. The name overhaul is called the Great Renaming. Terms like “net.god” are still used, albeit primarily by older hands. In these rude and crude times, however, you’re more likely to see the terms like “net.jerk.” Alt.massive.flamage At the time for the Great Renaming, Brian Reid had been moderating a group named “mod.gourmand.” People from around the would sent their favorite recipes to Brian, who reviewed them and posted them in a consistent format. He also provide scripts to save, typeset, and index the recipes thereby creating a group personal cookbook—the ultimate vanity press. Over 500 recipes were published. Under the new scheme, mod.gourmand became “rec.food.recipes” and Brian hated that prosaic name. John Gilmore didn’t like the absence of an unmoderated source group—people couldn’t give away code, it had to go through a middleman. Brian and John got together with some other admins and created the “alt,” for alternative, hierarchy. As you might expect, it started with sites in the San Francisco Bay Area, that hotbed of 1960s radicalism and foment. So, alt.gourmand and alt.sources were created. The major rule in “alt” is that anyone may create a group and anarchy (in the truest sense) reigns: each site decides what to carry. Usenet had become a slow-moving parody of itself. As a case in point, the Usenet cookbook didn’t appear in rec.food.recipes and Brian quit moder- ating alt.gourmand fairly rapidly. Perhaps he went on a diet? As for alt.sources, people now complain if the postings don’t contain “official”

100 Snoozenet archive names, descriptions, Makefiles, and so on. Alt.sources has become a clone of the moderated groups it sought to bypass. Meanwhile, alt.aquaria and alt.clearing.aquaria have given more forums for aquar- ium-owners to congregate. This Information Highway Needs Information Except for a few jabs at Unix, we’ve recited history without any real criti- cisms of Unix. Why have we been so kind? Because, fundamentally, Usenet is not about technology, but about sociology. Even if Unix gave users better technology for conducting international discussions, the result would be the same: A resounding confirmation of Sturgeon’s Law, which states that 90% percent of any field is crap. A necessary but, unfortunately, not sufficient condition for a decent signal- to-noise ratio in a newsgroup is a moderator who screens messages. With- out this simple condition, the anonymity of the net reduces otherwise ratio- nal beings (well, at least, computer literate beings) into six-year olds whose apogee of discourse is “Am not, Are so, Am not, Are so....” The demographics of computer literacy and, more importantly, Usenet access, are responsible for much of the lossage. Most of the posters are male science and engineering undergraduates who rarely have the knowl- edge or maturity to conduct a public conversation. (It turns out that com- paratively few women post to the Usenet those who do are instantly bombarded with thousands of “friendly” notes from sex-starved net surfers hoping to score a new friend.) They also have far too much time on their hands. Newsgroups with large amounts of noise rarely keep those subscribers who can constructively add to the value of the newsgroup. The result is a polarization of newsgroups: those with low traffic and high content, and those with high traffic and low content. The polarization is sometimes a creeping force, bringing all discussion down to the lowest common denominator. As the quality newsgroups get noticed, more people join— first as readers, then as posters. Without a moderator or a clearly stated and narrow charter such as many of the non-alt newsgroups have, the value of the messages inevitably drops. After a few flame fests, the new group is as bad as the old. Usenet parodies itself. The original members of the new group either go off to create yet another group or they create a mailing list. Unless they take special care to