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
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”
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