Lists of newsgroups were first posted, as best I can determine, in late 1981, roughly two years after Usenet began. There is much evidence that these lists were intended to be in some sense "official" from an early date. I see little sign that the posters merely wanted to inform Usenet users of the range of groups available; rather, each of them explicitly advocated listing as a means of centralising authority over newsgroup creation and carriage. Both the informational and the authoritative roles of the lists appear to have met with approval early on - not unanimous approval, but still plenty of it - as you will find if you do searches on their authors' names in appropriate groups. This post begins a series in which I summarise such information available from these lists, and from certain allied posts, as contributes toward a chronology of Usenet newsgroups. At this time, I intend to confine my overall chronological work to the Usenet hierarchies often seen as "official", and covered by these lists - in chronological order, NET.* (1979-c. 1981); net.* (the c. 1981-1987 version); fa.* (from 1981 to 1985); mod.* (the 1984-1987 version); talk.*; misc.*, sci.*, soc.*; comp.*, news.*, rec.*; and humanities.*. (I don't yet know whether these lists also covered the trial.* hierarchy, which will determine whether I attempt to.) This doesn't mean I intend to confine this project to "official" groups, that is, groups in these lists, but the lists are in fact my starting point. As it happens, there are lists of newsgroups in some other hierarchies from later years, but at this time I don't intend to pursue this project into other hierarchies. (For three reasons. First, I doubt there's adequate archival support for this sort of research on other hierarchies - this holds particularly for non-English-language hierarchies. This is my main reason for not attempting most other hierarchies. Second, in some hierarchies, most obviously alt.*, newsgroup lists are intrinsically less trustworthy anyway. Third, generalising from the second reason, it strikes me as inherently wrong-headed, missing the point, to try to enumerate alt.* groups systematically, although the history of specific alt.* groups or sub-hierarchies does interest me.) At *this* time, in any event, I'm confining my results posting mostly to what can be learnt from the lists of newsgroups, and their two main offspring, checkgroups messages and lists of moderators. At a later date, I intend to add evidence from other sources (notably control messages, first or oldest surviving posts, and FAQs) to produce more rounded chronological pictures. But my record for follow-through on net-related projects is fairly poor, so I wanted to start presenting the first-stage results now, rather than wait for more "final" ones. The summaries I'm posting here take two forms. In this post and others, I proceed hierarchically, group by group. In a separate set of posts in the same thread, I proceed chronologically, list by list. This approach is focused on group-specific issues; the other approach is focused on net-wide events such as the removal of entire hierarchies. (In particular, if you want details about the newsgroup lists referred to, *please* find them in the appropriate annual summary, rather than post to ask. I *do* include several headers for each list in those summaries.) This initial series of postings covers the hierarchies NET.*, net.*, fa.*, and mod.*, and the years 1980 to 1986. My second series of chronological postings, which I may not be able to post in the same thread, will cover 1987 to 1993 or 1994 (the years of the "Big 7"). I'm not yet sure whether I'll offer incomplete hierarchy summaries for the Big 7 in the second series. I have some reason to think that the second series will work from considerably smaller data sets than this first series, but am not yet persuaded that this is true, so I have no estimate as yet for when the second series of postings will appear. My third series of chronological postings, which will definitely coincide with a set of hierarchy summaries as well, will cover the Big 8 years 1994 to 2002. However, I know of no lists of newsgroups for 1997, early 1998, late 2000, or 2001, so the third series will offer considerably worse granularity than the first two. I *may* have a paper copy of a list from around August 1997, which I used in producing the "List of Inactive Newsgroups", but do know for certain that I erased the copy I had kept on computer. The list I have for January 2nd, 2002 is a list I made myself. If anyone else has homemade lists from these dark periods, please let me know. Joe Bernstein THE NET.* HIERARCHY Usenet was originally invented as a more general communications medium than it has since become, and early newsgroup lists include such "groups" as to_duke (for e-mails, I think, from the listing server to Duke University's self-named Usenet computer). It appears that NET.* for net-wide groups was an integral part of this design from an early date; the capital letters in NET.*, in fact, were in the early software meant to show that the group was intended for wide propagation, as opposed to the other "groups" I mentioned. But it's entirely possible that something like "general", "test", or "to_duke" was sooner implemented, or earlier posted to. NET.general is attested as having existed by April 26, 1980, and is generally believed to be the first newsgroup in the *modern* sense of "newsgroup". Only three other NET.* groups are well-attested. Two of these, NET.news and NET.v7bugs, both have first surviving posts from mid-May, 1980, and this coincidence suggests to me that perhaps that was when newsgroups for particular topics were invented. There is a surviving post, presumably in the Google archives but not yet found, that was present in the A-News Archives, under the heading FA.unix-wizards, and dated April 7, 1981. I unfortunately did not note this post's actual newsgroup - "FA.unix-wizards" should never have been a real group name, from what I know, but it would be nice to be sure. I *presume*, however, that the group was named NET.unix-wizards, because on May 12, 1981, Mark Horton announced that he had renamed the newsgroups containing gated mailing lists, including "unix-wizards", from NET.* to fa.*. There definitely were other NET.* groups; the first attestation of the fa.* groups is Mark Horton's announcement that they had been renamed from NET.*, May 12, 1981. There is a surviving post, also presently inaccessible, dated January 21, 1981, to either NET.micro or net.micro, depending on when the non-gated groups were renamed. But none of these groups is attested by more than one piece of evidence. Mark Horton is credited with spearheading the "lowercasing" of Usenet, a credit made credible by the fact that it was Horton who announced the lowercasing of fa.*. I am not, however, confident about this. Most of the groups listed below are attested as NET.* groups *ONLY* by Mark Horton's announcement, and so for further information on them (and their importance to Usenet's early growth) you should see the fa.* post. GROUP BY GROUP The majority of the following groups are ancestral to fa.* groups, which is to say that they were based on gatewayed ARPAnet mailing lists. This may or may not reflect the actual ratio of ARPAnet gateways to non-gatewayed groups in the NET.* hierarchy. The November 29, 1981 list of newsgroups, the oldest one after the A-News distribution of June 5, 1980, shows fa.* (the gatewayed groups) in a clear majority, but omits several net.* (non-gatewayed) groups that were established already by the time the archives now available at Google became at all comprehensive (May 11, 1981). Nor have I yet found any documentation of the renaming of groups from NET.* to net.*. Finally, all subsequent newsgroups lists until Adam Buchsbaum's first (November 21, 1982) strike me as demonstrably far from complete; hence, in my opinion, any newsgroup that was on that list and whose creation date is unknown is *potentially* old enough to have been a NET.* group. In reality, the number of NET.* groups renamed into net.* was probably not anywhere near so large; the question is how to find out which net.* groups are really that old. NET.arms-d Renamed to fa.arms-d on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.arpa-bboard Renamed to fa.arpa-bboard on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.energy Renamed to fa.energy on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.general This was undoubtedly the first NET.* newsgroup, and the earliest post surviving that I know of is dated April 26, 1980 (see the Usenet.Hist archive). The latest post surviving which was definitely made under this newsgroup name is dated November 11, 1980 (see the Usenet.Hist archive). NET.general was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News distribution of around June 5, 1980. Renamed to net.general at an undetermined date. NET.home-sat Renamed to fa.home-sat on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.human-nets Renamed to fa.human-nets on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.info-cpm Renamed to fa.info-cpm on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.info-micro Renamed to fa.info-micro on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.info-terms Renamed to fa.info-terms on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.micro The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to NET.micro dated January 21, 1981, and announcing the group's creation. The A-News Archive's ascription of posts to groups was inexact, and I didn't note details, so can't attest to whether the group was really named NET.micro or rather net.micro at that time; there is some sign in the existing Google archives that the lowercasing of NET.* was later than this, however. The post in question has not yet been found in the Google archives, although it's probably in there somewhere. As part of its header conversion process, however, Google converted NET.* newsgroup names to lower case, so the Google copy will not be evidence as to when the lowercasing happened. (Compare the Google copy of the November 11, 1980 post to NET.general with that in the Usenet.Hist mailing list archive.) Presumably renamed to net.micro at an undetermined date. NET.news The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to NET.news dated May 16, 1980, which may or may not have referred to the group's recent creation. See NET.micro for further discussion; this post, like the earliest post to NET.micro, has not yet been found. NET.news was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News distribution of around June 5, 1980. It is otherwise unattested before its renaming to net.news, as far as I know. Several sources supply a list of the three earliest newsgroups which doesn't include NET.news; see NET.test, below, on this. In a nutshell, though, I'm pretty sure they're wrong. Renamed to net.news at an undetermined date. NET.sf-lovers Renamed to fa.sf-lovers on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.teletext Renamed to fa.teletext on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. Otherwise unattested. NET.test The only attestation I know of for NET.test comes from a list of the three earliest newsgroups which I've found, so far, in John Quarterman's , first edition, Digital Press, 1990, p. 244; in Tim Geller's article on the conflicts sparked by AOL's arrival on Usenet, published in August 1995 in magazine but which I saw, without the magazine's edits, on his website, at ; and, credited to Tim Geller, in Lee Bumgarner's Great Renaming FAQ (both major versions). The newsgroup list contained in the A-News distribution of around June 5, 1980 strikes me as categorical proof that the list apparently traceable to Quarterman is wrong. There was, in the June 5, 1980 distribution, a "test" newsgroup, which may be a source for the mistake. The oldest post to "NET.test" (more likely net.test, by date alone) in the A-News Archive was dated July 10, 1981. If NET.test ever existed, presumably it was renamed to net.test at an undetermined date. NET.unix-wizards The A-News Archive held a post ostensibly to FA.unix-wizards dated April 7, 1981. See NET.micro for further discussion; this post, like the earliest post to NET.micro, has not yet been found. The name "FA.unix-wizards" was, as far as I know, never the name of an actual newsgroup; while I didn't note for sure the newsgroup name given in the post, I'd now bet that it was NET.unix-wizards. Renamed to fa.unix-wizards on or near May 12, 1981 by Mark Horton. NET.v7bugs The earliest surviving posts to NET.v7bugs are a spate of posts by Mark Horton dated May 18, 1980. At least some of these survive in Google - see my post, Message-ID , for where to find them - and in fact posts earlier than May 11, 1981, form about a third of the posts Google ascribes to net.v7bugs. Google did not retain the upper-case hierarchy name, however. There is another post from Mark Horton, dated May 27, 1980, explicitly to NET.v7bugs, in the Usenet.Hist archive. NET.v7bugs was on the three-newsgroup list included in the A-News distribution of around June 5, 1980. The latest post explicitly to NET.v7bugs in the Usenet.Hist archive is dated August 13, 1980, and is from Tom Truscott. Renamed to net.v7bugs at an undetermined date.