Hello everyone,
I am thinking about making a formal proposal for one of two new
unmoderated groups. The group would either be comp.internet.history or soc.history.internet. I think you can see where these two names could possibly overlap.
The general idea of the new group is to discuss retro internet
technologies such as IRC, ftp sites, BBSs (telnet and otherwise), MUDS,
MOOs, and of course Usenet and others. We could also discuss the culture
that surrounded many of these technologies especially IRC and Usenet as
they were maturing. Many of use don't consider these technologies to be "retro" because we use them everyday and yet interest in them is waning
and in order for them to continue, fresh interest must be continually be added.
I don't know if anyone could possibly be interested, but the only way to
find out is to ask. If I get enough positive feedback, I'll write up an official CFD and submit it to the board. I won't do anything if no one is interested.
JE
X-posting to: alt.folklore.computers and comp.infosystems.gopher
I get the feeling that the folks in these groups could be interested in
this also.
Great idea. I'd be supportive of a moderation option though.
The general idea of the new group is to discuss retro internet
technologies such as IRC, ftp sites, BBSs (telnet and otherwise), MUDS,
MOOs, and of course Usenet and others.
IRC and FTP (and other pre-W3 protocols) I could see being a topic of discussion, but BBSes would be... odd. They were never really part of the global TCP/IP network until the 2000s and it seems whenever somebody brings
On Fri, 7 Aug 2020, robobox wrote:
IRC and FTP (and other pre-W3 protocols) I could see being a topic of
discussion, but BBSes would be... odd. They were never really part of the
global TCP/IP network until the 2000s and it seems whenever somebody brings
Whilst searching for something a week or two ago, I came across a
discussion on Usenet from '93 about cross-linking Fidonet, Usenet, and
RIME, I think it was, a network of BBSes running Waffle. I recall this not for its technical insights but because someone randomly interjected that
the Internet was going to run out of IP addresses within a year and a
half, which made me laugh, a quarter-century later.
There was actually a Fidonet Internet Gateway dating back to about 1985, which used address mangling to go between Fidonet email addresses and internet addresses. The system worked well and I used it for quite a
while to talk with people on the internet via a Fidonet BBS.
which offered internet email and Usenet. It could also provide access to gopher, FTP and even later WWW via email. I'm pretty sure the service
dates at least back as far as '91.
On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 19:33:12 -0700, Daniel wrote:
Great idea. I'd be supportive of a moderation option though.
We had the conversation in news.groups. Basically, alt.folklore.computers
is an existing active newsgroup that already fits the bill so instead of creating a new newsgroup that might go dead, it's better to join an
existing group and post there.
Also, moderation is a pain unless you have a group of people who are
ready and willing to make it work. There are a lot of dead groups because
the mods quit, lost their accounts, etc. so nobody can post at all. We
(the B8MB) can resurrect dead newsgroups by changing the moderator but
you still need people to take it over if that happens.
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