ugh.book

104 Snoozenet

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—Rob

When in Doubt, Post .................................................................

I put a query on the net

I haven’t got an answer yet.

—Ed Nather

University of Texas, Austin

In the early days of Usenet, a posting could take a week to propagate

throughout most of the net because, typically, each long hop was done as

an overnight phone call. As a result, Usenet discussions often resembled a

cross between a musical round-robin and the children’s game of telephone.

Those “early on” in the chain added new facts and even often moved on to

something different, while those at the end of the line would recieve mes-

sages often out of order or out of context. E-mail was often unreliable, so it

made sense to post an answer to someone’s question. There was also the

feeling that the question and your answer would be sent together to the next

site in the line, so that people there could see that the question had been

answered. The net effect was, surprisingly, to reduce volume.

Usenet is much faster now. You can post an article and, if you’re on the

Internet, it can reach hundreds of sites in five minutes. Like the atom bomb,

however, the humans haven’t kept up with the technology. People see an

article and feel the rush to reply right away without waiting to see if anyone

else has already answered. The software is partly to blame—there’s no

good way to easily find out whether someone has already answered the

question. Certainly ego is also to blame: Look, ma, my name in lights.

As a result, questions posted on Usenet collect lots of public answers. They

are often contradictory and many are wrong, but that’s to be expected. Free

advice is worth what you pay for it.