ugh.book

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