This post announces the availability of more materials in my history of newsgroup creation in the "official" newsgroups, and also provides pointers to some scattered materials relevant to this subject that have been posted to news.groups in the past year and a half. In December, 2001, various archives of Usenet posts dating between 1980 and 1995 were made available by Google () in addition to the posts from 1995 onward to which Google already offered access. My own interest in the history of Usenet had been frustrated for years by lack of evidence of this sort, and I almost immediately began to work with the newly accessible materials. Most of what I posted in the first month or so is rich in errors and is essentially superseded by later posts, but in mid-January, 2002, I began the thread this post is in, and created an archive at my website. The new materials I'm now making available are both at the website, and posted to this thread, in news.groups alone. The core contents of the thread are accounts of newsgroup creation in a limited set of hierarchies, as observed from a limited range of evidence (quasi-"official" lists of newsgroups), and as organised in two ways: there are year-summaries, which proceed chronologically list by list, and there are hierarchy-summaries, which proceed alphabetically group by group. What I posted in January, 2002 was the year-summaries for 1981 through 1986, plus the hierarchy summaries for NET.*, net.*, fa.*, and mod.*. What I can now make available as well are the year-summaries for 1987 through 1993, along with an incomplete draft of the one for 1994. There have been various additional posts, by me and others, that have filled in and in many cases corrected the picture presented by my summaries. Following my name in this post you will find an index by year, by hierarchy, by topic, and by periodic posting, trying to sort this material out, and a list of the posts in question with URLs at Google and at my archive. My work on this project is chronological, which is to say that the year-summaries are what I do first. I intended to post no more materials until I had reached at least the end of 1994, if not the present, basically because hierarchy-summaries are best done only when a particular hierarchy's history is fully covered, and I found in the first stage of the project that doing a hierarchy-summary often uncovered errors I had made in the year-summaries. However, as a result of recent events in my life, discussed elsewhere on news.groups, I consider myself obligated to make available what I can, sooner than my plans had called for me to do. For information about those developments, my request for donations to help me deal with them, and the implications for this project, please see a post following up to this one which I will post to news.groups only. The index follows. In essence, I don't consider that anything yet written on the significant questions in this aspect of Usenet's history is the last word; the index is an attempt to show what you need in order to approach a particular subject, beyond the obvious post(s). The website has recently moved. If you have any address involving postilion.org, please replace it with . Please also note that this URL is not likely to be permanent, and keep an eye open for further developments. Joe Bernstein INDEX By topic, by hierarchy, by year, and by periodic posting. I have resisted by main force the temptation to try to index by personal and group name at this time. This does mean that some relatively substantial or interesting items - the manifestoes of successive news.announce.newgroups moderators, for example - are not indexed. BY TOPIC I have written an elementary discussion of Usenet's history as seen from the vantage point of newsgroup creation, which is post A in the list below; it's essentially a synthesis of my year-summaries through 1986 with what I then knew of the following years, and various other matters. I got some stuff unequivocally wrong, and post B is my corrections. Jim Riley, in post C and related discussion, strongly disagrees with some of my interpretations of events particularly 1984-1987, citing numerous posts from net.news.group (a body of evidence I haven't used much); I haven't had time yet to do the kind of research that would be required to settle the matter, nor have I seen him provide definitive proof, but at this point the balance of evidence is certainly on his side. Post D, by me, offers a substantial chunk of the available data on newsgroup creation in 1981 and 1982, with minimal synthesis. (This is the only post, except the fa.* hierarchy-summary, post L, for which I've so far made substantial use of posts to net.news.group.) Post C, by Jim Riley, provides references to, and quotes or summarises, numerous posts, primarily from 1985 and mostly from net.news.group; his specific concern is the evolution of the vote, but the discussion is wider than that; the related discussion is also worth consulting for some of his interpretations and, for what it's worth, also of mine. Post E, by me, is an account of changes in the posted Guidelines from 1987 to 2002. In a post cited under post C below, Jim Riley deals with STV voting circa 1990; in posts V through X, I note many examples of guidelines violations and how they were dealt with. Post F, by Russ Allbery, is an authoritative account of changes in the Guidelines 1998-2002 by the person who revised them in 1998 and has maintained them since. I reposted some early lists of newsgroups, and the oldest surviving Usenet posts known to me, in post G. In the early years of Usenet, there was a relatively tight relationship between Usenet and the ARPAnet mailing lists. Keith Lynch and I discussed various lists and this relationship in general, with particular attention to surviving archives of the lists other than the Usenet archives, in thread H. Usenet-ARPAnet relations are also a major topic of the fa.* hierarchy-summary, post L. For later Usenet-mailing list relations, see also the discussions of the inet distribution in the year-summary for 1987, post T. (Subsequent discussions of inet are relatively uninformative on this subject; but see also the year-summary for 1993, post Z, which introduces a periodic posting you will probably want to consult, and that for 1994, post AA, which deals with a different aspect of Usenet-Internet relations.) I don't really deal in detail with the Backbone Cabal, but for what I do discuss see primarily the year-summaries for 1985 through 1988, posts R through U. It's also worth seeing the posts that deal with the rules over those years - for example, my post A and Jim Riley's post C. The Great Renaming of net.* and mod.* into the Big 7 is covered in the year-summaries for 1986 (net.*, post S) and 1987 (mod.*, post T) and in the hierarchy-summaries for net.* (post K) and mod.* (post M); the latter are where you'll find the names particular groups were renamed to. Additional resources for which groups went where are at my website: . I detail the oldest attested single-group FAQs or posting guidelines in the year-summaries for 1986 through 1989, posts S through V; my criteria for which posts to list are in post S, while post V notes a periodic posting that covers the topic for subsequent years. In post I, I offer very preliminary information about the evolution of the "charter"; a little more such information is available in the year-summary for 1990, post W. The year-summaries for 1989 through 1991, posts V through X, summarise a reading of the surviving posts to news.announce.newgroups for the period before David Lawrence took over as moderator. See also post B for the voted charter of news.announce.newgroups. I offer minimal discussion of commercialism in Usenet in the year- summary for 1989, post V; I meant to offer more in that for 1994, post AA, but forgot. The early re-orgs are presented in the year-summaries for 1989 through 1994, posts V through AA, with particularly extensive discussion in posts W and X. Although these years were the height of .miscification, I can't honestly say that there's much explicitly on that topic in the posts; what there is is in post W. But the names of the groups added in those years do provide some evidence. There is an example of dead group removal in 1991, discussed in the year-summary, post X, with what little information I can provide. The year-summary for 1993, post Z, deals with three major events of 1993: the retirement of Gene Spafford, the rise of the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers, and the beginning of the long September, which is also dealt with in the draft year-summary for 1994, post AA. Posts Z and AA also cover a difficult to understand series of changes in how David Lawrence listed alt.* groups. Finally, post BB is the post at the head of this thread, in which I provide pointers to the guides to Usenet's history *older* than January, 2002. Note that one URL given in that post is now defunct; for current sources for the Great Renaming FAQ, version 2, see my post CC. Google's announcement of the archive, with its details on the different sources thereof, is post DD. BY HIERARCHY Post BB discusses my main methods in compiling posts J through AA, the hierarchy- and year-summaries, so if you rely to any significant extent on the hierarchy-summaries (or on post D, which is basically derived from them), you should read the relevant parts of post BB. Similarly post DD is a good thing for anyone using the Google archives to read. For NET.*, the hierarchy-summary, post J, is still probably what you need to read first, but this is unfortunate, because I fundamentally misunderstood the NET.* to net.* transition when I wrote it. Posts A and especially D offer what I've written to date correcting this mistake. See also the year-summary, post N, but with the same warning about my misunderstanding. For net.*, the hierarchy-summary, post K, is also obviously wrongheaded about the hierarchy's start, and again post D offers more reliable and more complete information (organised chronologically rather than alphabetically, and with a table of contents). But for events after 1983, you're stuck with the hierarchy-summary, and, for a very different take, some of what Jim Riley says in post C and related posts. The relevant year-summaries are posts N through S or arguably T. Besides the remarks about the "Usenet II" version of net.* in the hierarchy- summary, there's also a tidbit about it towards the end of the year- summary for 1989, post V. For fa.*, the hierarchy-summary, post L, is relatively clueful, and much more complete than the other hierarchy-summaries, but you should still look at thread H. Post D is *not* relevant to fa.* at all. The relevant year-summaries are posts N through R. For mod.*, see the hierarchy-summary, post M. Some of Jim Riley's remarks in or near post C are also relevant. The relevant year-summaries are posts Q through T. For the Big 8 hierarchies, I've done no hierarchy-summaries yet, as discussed above. Their history is, of course, the main topic of posts E and F, and prominent also in posts A and B; and some of the data for that history can be found in the year-summaries for 1986 through 1994, posts S through AA. For the inet groups, there is an extensive discussion in the year-summary for 1987, post T, and the distribution's minimal growth is of course traced in the subsequent year-summaries, posts U through AA. Among several places where I've opined at length about what the inet phenomenon means, perhaps the least one-sided is the post with which I opened the discussion that culminated in Jim Riley's post C (post C itself has relatively little about inet). For a pointer to a statement of intent by Erik Fair quite different from the original 1987 one, see the year-summary for 1990, post W; for a pointer to the most extensive discussion of inet known to me, see that for 1992, post Y. The trial.* hierarchy is covered as fully as I could in the year- summaries for 1990 through 1993, posts W through Z. I thought I had seen a substantial discussion of its history based on the materials Google made available in 2001, but I cannot now find that discussion, so as far as I know, those posts now contain the most complete publicly available treatment of the hierarchy. In general, I've done little with alt.*, but the year-summaries for 1987 onward, posts T through AA, do point to some of the "Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies" posts that list alt.* groups, note how many groups were listed there at each year's end, and mention for each list posting date those alt.* groups listed for the first time that I find noteworthy from a newsgroup-creation or Usenet-historical perspective. Those for 1991 onward, posts X through AA, also point to additional lists of alt.* groups by an all-newgroup no-rmgroup alt.* completist, Bruce Becker, and make feeble attempts to explain the increasingly strange handling of the lists in the "Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies" posts. Although I note in each year-summary, posts T through Z, how many groups were listed for each hierarchy covered by "Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies" as of the last such post in the year, I have made no other efforts to track hierarchies not mentioned above. Sorry, but I don't even have useful suggestions as to how to do so. BY YEAR Post A, for what it's worth, is globally relevant. Post BB discusses my main methods in compiling posts J through AA, the hierarchy- and year-summaries, so if you rely to any significant extent on the year-summaries (or on post D, which is basically derived from the hierarchy-summaries), you should read the relevant parts of post BB. Again, post DD is similarly globally relevant to users of the Google archives for research. For 1980, see the year-summary, post N; the NET.* hierarchy-summary, post J; and the somewhat less misguided relevant material in the opening parts of post D. Post G contains much of the surviving raw materials. Thread H offers crucial information. For 1981, posts N, J, D, and G, and thread H, are again relevant; so now are the hierarchy-summaries for fa.*, post L, and net.*, post K (again, correcting the latter by reference to post D). For 1982, see the year-summary, post O; the hierarchy-summaries posts L and K (supplemented by post D, which also makes it easier to isolate the 1982 material; but my treatment of 1982 events initially was anyway not as wrongheaded as my treatment of earlier stuff). For 1983, see the year-summary, post P and the hierarchy-summaries posts L and K; this is also where Jim Riley's post C begins to matter. For 1984, see the year-summary, post Q, the hierarchy-summaries posts L, K, and now, for mod.*, M, and again Jim Riley's post C. For 1985, see the year-summary, post R, and the hierarchy-summaries posts L, K, and M. This is the year for which post C offers the most material, by far. For 1986, see the year-summary, post S, and the hierarchy-summaries posts K and M, as well as post C; post I touches on this year. For 1987, see the year-summary, post T, the hierarchy-summary post M (post K contains minimal information on 1987 events as well), and again also posts C (finishing up) and I (this is the year for which post I is most useful). The written Guidelines appeared in November 1987; on these see post E. For 1988, see the year-summary, post U, and again posts E and I. For 1989, see the year-summary, post V, and also posts E and B. For 1990, see the year-summary, post W, and also post E. For 1991, see the year-summary, post X, and also post E. For 1992, see the year-summary, post Y. For 1993, see the year-summary, post Z, and also post E. For 1994, see the draft year-summary, post AA. Only posts E and F, of the posts here indexed, relate meaningfully to any years later than 1994. BY PERIODIC POSTING The grouplist posted by Curt Stephens is a major source for the year- summary for 1982, post O, and I give full details on each posting known to me. The List of Active Newsgroups posted by Adam Buchsbaum, Gene Spafford and David Lawrence is my core source for the year-summaries for 1982 onward, posts O through AA, and I give full details on each posting known to me. The List of Moderators posted by Gene Spafford and David Lawrence appears in 1984 and is a source for each year-summary thereafter, posts Q through AA, and I give full details on each posting known to me. The Checkgroups Messages posted by Gene Spafford and David Lawrence first appeared in 1984, and are occasionally a source in the subsequent year-summaries, posts Q through AA. The Changes postings, diffs between older and newer versions of Gene Spafford's periodic postings, first appeared no later than 1985. I didn't use them consistently for most years, but discussed them in the 1985 and 1988 year-summaries, posts R and U, and did use them to a considerable extent in the 1993 and 1994 ones, posts Z and AA. The Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies postings by Gene Spafford and David Lawrence appeared in 1987, but did not become a core source for my work until 1988; I give full details on each posting known to me for that date onward, in the relevant year-summaries, posts U through AA, but only message-IDs for previous postings, in posts T and U. The 1987 posts, unlike the later years', are at my website, so there is only a short gap between the posts I detail fully and those I've already collected for you. The Guidelines postings by Gene Spafford, by Greg Woods (maintained by Gene Spafford, Eliot Lear, and David Lawrence), and by Russ Allbery, are the focus of post E, and for Russ Allbery's also post F; they are only occasionally treated in the year-summaries for the relevant years, 1987 through 1994, posts T through AA. The Checkgroups Messages (with INET groups) posted by Gene Spafford are a core source for my work on a part of 1988, the year they first appeared, and used rarely thereafter; the year-summary is post U. I have not used the ones posted by David Lawrence and have not detailed them. The List of Periodic Informational Postings posted by Rich Kulawiec and later the moderators of news.answers appeared in 1989. I do not provide details at all, just hand off to it; for what I do say see the year-summaries for 1989 and 1990, posts V and W. The Current Status of Votes on Newsgroups postings and their descendants and precursors, by Eliot Lear and David Lawrence, appeared in 1990, and are discussed on occasion, but not detailed, in the year-summaries for that year onward, posts W through AA. The Regional Newsgroup Hierarchies postings by Andrew Partan appeared in 1990 and 1991, and then (unrevised) in 1992; I only provide a message-ID for the first, but do provide the ending dates as well. The postings reporting on newly created groups, which had various names, by Eliot Lear and David Lawrence, appeared at the end of 1990, and are mentioned on occason in the successive year- summaries, posts W through AA. Those postings' brief attempt in 1992 to cover regional hierarchies is discussed in the year- summaries for 1992 and 1993, posts Y and Z. Bruce Becker's lists of alt.* groups, which had various names but most often 'Another listing of newsgroups in the "alt" hierarchy', first appeared in 1991; I provide dates and subject lines for each through the last Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies of 1994 (early October), in the year-summaries, posts X through AA, but don't use them as a core source or indeed as much of a source. The Bogus USENET Groups postings by David Lawrence first appeared in 1992, and are briefly mentioned in the year-summary for that year, post Y, but what few details I offer are in the year-summary for 1993, post Z. David Lawrence's Mailing Lists Available in Usenet post first appeared in 1993, and is treated as a core source for which I give full details in the year-summaries for 1993 and 1994, posts Z and AA. (In reality, however, at this time my work with it has covered only the first posting; I handled the rest with Changes posts instead.) Bruce Becker's A listing of Canadian regional and university newsgroups first appeared in late 1993 and is briefly mentioned in the year-summary for 1994, post AA. THE POSTS (AND THREAD) By me unless otherwise noted. I include complete URLs, despite their repetitiveness and length, mainly to make web or web-compatible versions of this post easy to use point-and-click. (I am, after all, likely enough to use it myself that way.) A ("How tale got where he is", early October, 2002) Message-ID: <3da105bd$0$187$892e7fe2@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: I strongly urge any user of this post also to see post B, and to the extent that you rely on it for the period 1984-1987 you should also see post C and the ensuing discussion. B (the early history of news.announce.newgroups, early October, 2002) Message-ID: Google: My site: Since I recommend post A to everyone, and this post to everyone who reads post A, this post is basically also recommended to everyone. But if this topic is actually your focus, see also posts V, W, and X. C (Jim Riley on the history of voting and related matters, mid-October, 2002) Message-ID: Google: My site: While this post by Jim Riley is by far the richest post in this discussion, it would probably be helpful to see the context. I think the historical discussion basically begins with (1) a post of mine, to which (2) Jim Riley replied; (3) I answered; (4) post C is his further reply, and (5) and (6) we went back and forth again. Basically, to see all this, go to Google and do the "see this message in context" thing. Post T provides much of the background to my side of the discussion. Jim Riley has at least twice before covered similar material, in posts I chose not to index here. See Message-IDs and . In the same thread as the latter, his message-ID includes a preliminary account of STV votes in news.announce.newgroups. D ("Some 1981 and 1982 Newsgroup Creations", mid-February, 2002) Message-ID: <3c6fc9b8$0$1347$892e7fe2@authen.blue.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: This is basically a corrective to, and expansion of, posts N, J, and K; if you can't understand it, you should probably read those posts, but wherever this one contradicts them, you should trust it over them. E ("The Guidelines: a preliminary revision history", mid-February, 2002) Message-ID: Google: My site: For the prehistory of this subject see post C; for more details on 1998-2002 see post F; and for detailed discussion of how this document related to reality in 1989-1991, see posts V, W, and X. F (Russ Allbery on the Guidelines 1998-2002, mid-February, 2002) Message-ID: Google: My site: This expands on post E for the period 1998 to 2002. G ("Early lists of newsgroups", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a57cc$0$38167$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: This provides actual copies of much of the evidence used in posts N and J, and is therefore also relevant to post D and, minimally, thread H. H (Keith Lynch and me on "Early mailing lists", late January and early February, 2002) Here, I'm referring you to a group of six posts, of which the first, third, and fifth were by Keith Lynch, and the other three by me. Message-IDs: <3c586095$0$26394$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> <3c6181a9$0$67476$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: The background will be found in posts J and L. I (the early history of charters, mid-May, 2003) Message-ID: <3ecdc4a3$0$211$892e7fe2@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: Post W carries the story forward somewhat; unfortunately, neither post C nor posts S through U are much use on this topic. J ("The NET.* Hierarchy in Lists of Newsgroups and Other Sources", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a4288$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: It's really important for any user of this post to see also (if not instead) post D, and probably helpful to see thread H as well. K ("The net.* Hierarchy in Lists of Newsgroups", mid-January, 2002) Message-IDs: <3c4a468b$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> <3c4a4754$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: Users concerned with the period through 1982 should see also, or preferably instead, post D. Post C offers a very different take on subsequent times. L ("The fa.* Hierarchy in Lists of Newsgroups and the Google Archives", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a47dc$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: You are strongly encouraged to consult also thread H. M ("The mod.* Hierarchy in Lists of Active Newsgroups and of Moderators", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a49f4$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: Post C is somewhat relevant here. N ("1980 and 1981 in Lists of Newsgroups and Other Sources", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a40c1$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: I strongly recommend consulting post D too, or instead. Thread H also relates. O ("1982 in Lists of Newsgroups", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a43bb$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: Post D expands on this. P ("1983 in Lists of Newsgroups", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a485f$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: Q ("1984 in Lists of Active Newsgroups and of Moderators", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a4948$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: R ("1985 in Lists of Active Newsgroups and of Moderators", mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a4abe$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: You should really see post C in relation to this post. S ("1986 in Lists of Newsgroups", mid-January, 2002, revised early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: T ("1987 in Lists of Big 7 and inet Newsgroups", early October, 2002 to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bo18g1%24h65%241%40reader2.panix.com> My site: U ("1988 in Lists of Big 7 and inet Newsgroups", early October, 2002 to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: V ("1989 in Lists of Big 7 and inet Newsgroups", mid-May to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: W ("1990 in Lists of Big 7, inet, and trial.* Newsgroups", mid-May and late August to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: X ("1991 in Lists of Big 7, trial.*, and inet Newsgroups", late August to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: Y ("1992 in Lists of Big 7, trial.*, and inet Newsgroups", mid-September to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: Z ("1993 in Lists of Big 7, trial.*, and inet Newsgroups", mid-October to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: Please note that if I am ever again able to carry this project forward, I may replace this page on my website and supersede this post. AA ("1994 in Lists of Big 7 and inet Newsgroups", mid-October to early November, 2003) Message-ID: Google: My site: Please be aware that if I am ever again able to carry this project forward, I will replace this page on my website and supersede this post. BB (on sources and methods for posts J through AA, mid-January, 2002) Message-ID: <3c4a3cbf$0$95686$892e7fe2@authen.puce.readfreenews.net> Google: My site: CC ("Great Renaming FAQ version 2", late August, 2003) Message-ID: Google: Not at my site, but I've requested the permission of the FAQ's author, Lee Bumgarner, to make this version available there; if he agrees, it will be at . DD ("Google Groups Archive Information", mid-December, 2001) Message-ID: <90cbefb1.0112211728.4cfe9bb@posting.google.com> Google: I've requested Google's permission to make this available at my site; if they agree, it will be at . (Alternative message-ID: <90cbefb1.0112211746.43392bc8@posting.google.com> with predictable effect on Google URL. This is the posting to news.* and alt.fan.dejanews; the one cited above is the posting to google.public.support.general.)