Xref: utzoo news.groups:7344 news.admin:4772 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!blake!ogccse!littlei!uunet!lts!amanda From: amanda@lts.UUCP (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Re: A moderator's liability (was flack about rec.humor.funny) Message-ID: <884@lts.UUCP> Date: 11 Feb 89 03:26:46 GMT References: <2730@looking.UUCP> <3850@cbnews.ATT.COM> <2559@kalliope.rice.edu> <1989Feb10.034157.25972@utzoo.uucp> Reply-To: amanda@lts.UUCP (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Reston, VA Lines: 65 henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: Those of us who remember what Usenet was like six or seven years ago tend to feel that this happened long ago, and that the johnny-come-latelies whining about the loss of "the spirit of Usenet" don't know what they're talking about. -- The Earth is our mother; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology our nine months are up. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu What he said. As of this month I've been reading Usenet for 8 years. There are a lot of us out here that actually were *there* for most of the history of this thing, even (or especially?) if we don't post very many articles about how to "fix" the net... Usenet is not what it once was; this has both good and bad aspects. I can remember leaving for a two-week vacation and being able to catch up on my news in afternoon. This is back when I read every article... Usenet is a lot bigger, which means there's a lot more to wade through--a whole lot more. Then again, 'rn' makes reading modern news almost as manageable as 'readnews' did back when News B came out (anyone else remember the A->B conversion?). In some ways it's a lot less informal, but that's partly due to sheer size, I think, and also to the fact that there are a lot more people talking about a lot more things than there used to be. One nice thing is that as Usenet has expanded, the technology has so far managed to keep up, even though we tend to push it. In these days of Trailblazers and up-to-the-minute NNTP feeds across NSFnet, it can be easy to forget that a well-connected site once could have consisted of a VAX or PDP-11 that got a news feed once a *week*. In this sense, the thing that most approaches what Usenet was like back then is probably FidoNet... Today's Usenet isn't the same thing that I used back in 1981. There's a family resemblance, but that's about as far as it goes. Some things about it I like better, some I like less. One of the strongest part of the resemblances is that, when you get right down to it, Usenet is what we make it. Look at the name for a few minutes. Usenet is what it is because it was built by the people who use it. People like Mark Horton, sjb (I forget his real name now ), Henry Spencer, Larry Wall, Gene Spafford, and a proverbial case of thousands... It's always had commercial use, and it's always had user-group stuff, and yes, it's always had bozos who annoy the rest of the net. Usenet has been changing for as long as it's been around, and will keep doing so. What keeps it alive isn't some high-minded "Spirit of Usenet," but the fact that it is worth enough to enough people that we keep it working. Things that don't work (or present a direct threat to the existence of net, such as that may be possible these days), we stop doing. Things that do work we keep doing. It's kind of an empirical approach, but Usenet isn't some research project, or product being built to a set of specifications... Anyway, I seem to be getting a little verbose tonight, so I'll stop. Just remember that Usenet is not so fragile that Brad's actions will destroy it or its "spirit..." Peace, -- Amanda Walker ...!uunet!lts!amanda / lts!amanda@uunet.uu.net InterCon, 11732 Bowman Green Drive, Reston, VA 22090 -- Calm down; it's only ones and zeros...