 X-NEWS: spcvxb alt.config: 7325 K Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0-3 14/03/90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu R Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!rutgers!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rphroy!ilium!heifetz!emvK Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.bbs,news.newusers.questions,news.misc,alt.config  Subject: What is Usenet? NOT. + Message-ID: <1992May7.014847.5757@msen.com> % From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)  Date: 7 May 92 01:48:47 GMT ) Organization: MSEN, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, MI 
 Lines: 442f Xref: spcvxb news.admin:12723 alt.bbs:8960 news.newusers.questions:7330 news.misc:3766 alt.config:7325  I In article <2A0836CA.49EC@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes: 1 >According to peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva): - >>Why not just watch and say "I told you so"?  > C >Altruism.  I like to help people avoid banging their heads against D >walls unnecessarily.  That's also why I wrote "What Is Usenet?" and >why I posted Deliver.  5 Ah, that hoary chestnut; time to drag this out again.   # >Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1 > >Last-change: 2 Dec 91 by chip@count.tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) > @ >The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widelyF >misunderstood.  Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"B >phenomenon is evident, in spades.  In my opinion, more flame warsF >arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet thanD >from any other source.  And consider that such flame wars arise, ofF >necessity, among people who are on Usenet.  Imagine, then, how poorly, >understood Usenet must be by those outside!  B Imagine, indeed, how poorly understood Usenet must be by those whoA have the determined will to explain what it is by what it is not? 7     "Usenet is not a bicycle.  Usenet is not a fish."     E Any essay on the purpored "nature of usenet" that doesn't get revised D every few months quickly becomes a quaint historical document, whichC at best yields a prescriptivist grammar for how the net "should be" 8 and at worst tries to shape how the Usenet "really is".   E The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is big.  Really F big.  Netnews (and netnews-like things) have percolated into many moreA places than are even known about by people who track such things. E There is no grand unified list of everything that's out there, no way E to know beforehand who is going to read what you post, and no history D books to guide you that would let you know even a small piece of anyC of the in jokes that pop up in most newsgroups.  Distrust any grand A sweeping statements about "Usenet", because you can always find a 1 counterexample.  (Distrust this message, too :-).   > >Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneousE >impressions held by many Usenet users.  Therefore, this article will D >treat falsehoods first.  Keep reading for truth.  (Beauty, alas, is >not relevant to Usenet.)   D Any essay on the nature of Usenet that doesn't change every so oftenB to reflect its ever changing nature is erroneous.  Usenet is not aE matter of "truth", "beauty", "falsehood", "right", or "wrong", except B insofar as it is a conduit for people to talk about these and many
 other things.    >WHAT USENET IS NOT  >------------------   # > 1. Usenet is not an organization.   D Usenet is organized.  There are a number of people who contribute toE its continued organization -- people who post lists of things, people F who collect "frequently asked questions" postings, people who give outE or sell newsfeeds, people who keep archives of groups, people who put F those archives into WAIS servers.  This organization is accompanied byA a certain amount of disorganization -- news software that doesn't D always work just right, discussions that wander from place to place,E parts of the net that resist easy classification.  Order and disorder  are part of the same whole.   B In the short run, the person or group who runs the system that youB read news from and the sites which that system exchanges news withE control who gets a feed, which articles are propogated to what places C and how quickly, and who can post articles.  In the long run, there C are a number of alternatives for Usenet access, including companies A which can sell you feeds for a fee, and user groups which provide C feeds for their members; while you are on your own right now as you C type this in, over the long haul there are many choices you have on  how to deal with the net.    > 2. Usenet is not a democracy.   B Usenet has some very "democratic" sorts of traditions.  Traffic isD ultimately generated by readers, and people who read news ultimatelyB control what will and will not be discussed on the net.  While theC details of any individual person's news reading system may limit or E constrain what is easy or convenient for them to do right now, in the E long haul the decisions on what is or is not happening rests with the  people.   B On the other hand, there have been (and always will be) people whoC have been on the net longer than you or I have been, and who have a F strong sense of tradition and the way things are normally done.  ThereE are certain things which are simply "not done".  Any sort of decision E that involves counting the number of people yes or no on a particular B vote has to cope with the entrenched interests who aren't about toA change their habits, their posting software, or the formatting of ) their headers just to satisfy a new idea.    > 3. Usenet is not fair.  F Usenet is fair, cocktail party, town meeting, notes of a secret cabal,> chatter in the hallway at a conference, friday night fish fry,F post-coital gossip, conversations overhead on an airplane, and a bunch of other things.   > 4. Usenet is not a right.   B Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw.% The postman hits!  You have new mail.   $ > 5. Usenet is not a public utility.  @ Usenet is carried in large part over circuits provided by public@ utilities, including the public switched phone network and lines< leased from public carriers.  In some countries the national? networking authority has some amount of monopoly power over the @ provision of these services, and thus the flow of information is? controlled in some manner by the whims and desires (and pricing ! structure) of the public utility.   D Most Usenet sites are operated by organizations which are not publicC utilities, not in the ordinary sense.  You rarely get your newsfeed D from National Telecom, it's more likely to be National U. or Private Networking Inc.   ' > 6. Usenet is not an academic network.   D Usenet is a network with many parts to it.  Some parts are academic,C some parts aren't.  Usenet is clearly not a commercial network like C Sprintnet or Tymenet, and it's not an academic network like BITNET. F But parts of BITNET are parts of Usenet, though some of the traffic onE usenet violates the BITNET acceptable use guidelines, even though the B people who are actually on BITNET sites reading these groups don't8 necessarily mind that they are violating the guidelines.  ? Whew.  Usenet is a lot of networks, and none of them.  You name % another network, and it's not Usenet.   ) > 7. Usenet is not an advertising medium.   E A man walks into a crowded theater and shouts, "ANYBODY WANT TO BUY A < CAR?"  The crowd stands up and shouts back, "WRONG THEATER!"  F Ever since the first dinette set for sale in New Jersey was advertisedD around the world, people have been using Usenet for personal and forF corporate gain.  If you're careful about it and don't make people mad,@ Usenet can be an effective means of letting the world know about1 things which you find valuable.  But take care...   C - Marketing hype will be flamed immediately.  If you need to post a    press release, edit it first. A - Speak nice of your competitors.  If your product is better than H   theirs, don't say theirs is "brain damaged", "broken", or "worthless".E   After all someone else might have the same opinion of your product. N - Dance around the issue.  Post relevant information (like price, availabilityH   and features) but make sure you don't send everything out.  If someone=   wants the hard sell let them request it from you by e-mail.oH - Don't be an idiot.  If you sell toasters for a living, don't spout offH   in net.breadcrumbs about an international conspiracy to poison pigeonsG   orchestrated by the secret Usenet Cabal; toaster-buyers will get wordnH   of your reputation for idiocy and avoid your toasters even if they are   the best in the market.  (C - You can't avoid representing your company when you post under the C   banner of the company's name.  No matter how many disclaimers you.A   put on, no matter how laid back the audience, it still happens.5B   To maintain a separate net.identity, post from a different site.    > 8. Usenet is not the Internet.  A It would be very difficult to sustain the level of traffic that'ssC flowing on Usenet today if it weren't for people sending news feeds C over dedicated circuits with TCP/IP on the Internet.  That's not tonC say that if a sudden disease wiped out all IBM RTs and RS6000s thatdD form the NSFnet backbone that some people wouldn't be inconveniencedC or cut off from the net entirely.  (Based on the reliability of thet8 backbone, perhaps the "sudden disease" has already hit?)  E There's a certain symbiosis between netnews and Internet connections;eA the cost of maintaining a newsfeed with NNTP is so much less thaniD doing the same thing with dialup UUCP that sites which depend enoughE on the information flowing through news are some of the most eager toc get on the Internet.  D The Usenet is not the Internet.  Certain governments have laws which@ prevent other countries from getting onto the Internet, but thatF doesn't stop netnews from flowing in and out.  Chances are pretty goodA that a site which has a usenet feed you can send mail to from thefF Internet, but even that's not guaranteed in some odd cases (news feeds sent on CD-ROM, for instance).  " > 9. Usenet is not a UUCP network.  D UUCP carried the first netnews traffic, and a considerable number ofC sites get their newsfeed using UUCP.  But it's also fed using NNTP, D pressed onto CD-ROMs, faxed to China, and printed out on paper to be9 tacked up on bulletin boards and pasted on refrigerators.n  + >10. Usenet is not a United States network.b  B A recent analysis of the top 1000 Usenet sites showed about 66% USD sites, 15% unknown, 10% Germany, 7% Canada, 2-3% each the UK, Japan,C Sweden, and Australia, and the rest mostly scattered around Europe.eC You can read netnews on all seven continents, including Antarctica.m  C The state of California is the center of the net, with about 15% of"< the mapped top sites there.  Other states and provinces withC widespread news connectivity include Massachusetts, Texas, Ontario,g3 Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Oregon.u  D If you're looking for a somewhat less US-centered view of the world,@ try reading regional newsgroups from various different states orE groups from various far-away places (which depending on where you areoD at could be Japanese, German, Canadian, or Australian).  There are a3 lot of people out there who are different from you.o  " >11. Usenet is not a UNIX network.  C Well...ok, if you don't have a UNIX machine, you can read news.  InN@ fact, there are substantial sets of newsgroups (bit.*) which areE transported and gatewayed primarily through IBM VM systems, and a setb@ of newsgroups (vmsnet.*) which has major traffic through DEC VMSF systems.  Reasonable news relay software runs on Macs (uAccess), AmigaE (a C news port), MS-DOS (Waffle), and no doubt quite a few more.  I'mo" typing on a DOS machine right now.  B There is a certain culture about the net that has grown up on UnixE machines, which occasioally runs into fierce clashes with teh culture E that has grown up on IBM machines (LISTSERV), Commodore 64's (BIFF ISiF A K00L D00D), and MS-DOS Fidonet systems.  If you are not running on aF Unix machine or if you don't have one handy there are things about theC net which are going to be puzzling or maddening, much as if you are < reading a BITNET list and you don't have a CMS system handy.  $ >12. Usenet is not an ASCII network.  F There are reasonably standard ways to type Japanese, Russian, Swedish,F Finnish, Icelandic, and Vietnamese that use the ASCII character set toB encode your national character set.  The fundamental assumption ofF most netnews software is that you're dealing with something that looksF a lot like US ASCII, but if you're willing to work within those boundsC and be clever it's quite possible to use ASCII to discuss things int
 any language.f   >13. Usenet is not software.  F Usenet software has gotten much better over time to cope with the everD increasing aggregate flow of netnews and (in some cases) the extremeC volume that newsgroups generate.  If you were reading news now withvD the same news software that was running 10 years ago, you'd never beF able to keep up.  Your system would choke and die and spend all of itsC time either processing incoming news or expiring old news.  WithoutnE software and constant improvements to same, Usenet would not be here.d  C There is no "standard" Usenet software, but there are standards forwF what Usenet articles look like, and what sites are expected to do with@ them.  It's possible to write a fairly simple minded news systemD directly from the standards documents and be reasonably sure that itE will work with other systems, though thorough testing is necessary ift( it's going to be used in the real world.   >WHAT USENET ISi >--------------p  6 		"Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember 		 how to read."		J.Heller  A Usenet is in part about people.  There are people who are "on the F net", who read rec.humor.funny every so often, who know the same jokesA you do, who tell you stories about funny or stupid things they've ; seen.  Usenet is the set of people who know what Usenet is.s  B Usenet is a bunch of bits, lots of bits, millions of bits each dayF full of nonsense, argument, reasonable technical discussion, scholarly analysis, and naughty pictures.c  F Usenet (or netnews) is about newsgroups (or groups).  Not bboards, notC LISTSERV, not mailing lists, they're groups.  If someone calls themt: something else they're not looking at things from a UsenetE perspective.  That's not to say that they're "incorrect" -- who is to E say what is the right way of viewing the world? -- just that it's notcB the Net Way.  In particular, if they read Usenet news all mixed inC with their important every day mail (like reminders of who to go toaC lunch with Thursday) they're not seeing netnews the way most peoplesC see netnews.  Some newsgroups are also (or "really") Fidonet echoesoD (alt.bbs.allsysop), BITNET LISTSERV groups (bit.listserv.pacs-l), orD even both at once! (misc.handicap).  So be prepared for some violentB culture clashes if someone refers to you favorite net.hangout as a "board".  D Newsgroups have names.  These names are both very arbitrary and veryE meaningful.  People will fight for months or years about what to name F a newsgroup.  If a newsgroup doesn't have a name (even a dumb one likeD misc.misc) it's not a newsgroup.  In particular newsgroup names haveD dots in them, and people abbreviate them by taking the first lettersD of the names (so alt.folklore.urban is afu, and soc.culture.china is scc).d  
 >DIVERSITY
 >---------  D There is nothing vague about Usenet.  (Vague, vague, it's filling upA thousands of dollars worth of disk drives and you want to call iteF vague?  Sheesh!)  It may be hard to pin down what is and isn't part ofD usenet at the fringes, but netnews has tended to grow amoeba-like toF encompass more or less anything in its path, so you can be pretty sureE that if it isn't Usenet now it will be once it's been in contact with  Usenet for long enough.f  E There are a lot of systems that are part of Usenet.  Chances are that D you don't have any clue where all your articles will end up going orE what news reading software will be used to look at them.  Any messageuF of any appreciable size or with any substantial personal opinion in itF is probably in violation of some network use policy or local ordinance in some state or municipality.   >CONTROL	 >------- i? 		1.  Keep the processors up and running, and make sure there'ss& 		    enough disk space for netnews.  5 	    	2.  Keep the network up and running so that then 		    newsfeed comes in.  5 		3.  Install new newsreaders, get more feeds of more 1 		    groups, test out the latest filtering code.t6 		4.  Plan for getting more disks	so you can keep more 		    news and index it all.  " 		5.  Read news (if there's time).  F Some people are control freaks.  They want to present their opinion ofA how things are, who runs what, what is OK and not OK to do, whichmF things are "good" and which are "bad".  You will run across them every> so often.  They serve a useful purpose; there's a lot of chaosE inherent in a largely self-governing system, and people with a strongoD sense of purpose and order can make things a lot easier.  Just don'tD believe everything they say.  In particular, don't believe them whenF they say "don't believe everything they say", because if they post theE same answers month after month some other people are bound to believen them.l  C If you run a news system you can be a petty tyrant.  You can decidetD what groups to carry, who to kick off your system, how to expire old? news so that you keep 60 days worth of misc.petunias but expireeD rec.pets.fish almost immediately.  In the long run you will probablyF be happiest if you make these decisions relatively even-handedly since@ that's the posture least likely to get people to notice that you actually do have control.a  @ Your right to exercise control over netnews usually ends at yourB neighbor's spool directory.  Pleading, cajoling, appealing to good> nature, or paying your news feed will generally yield a better  response than flames on the net.     >PERIODIC POSTINGS >-----------------  6 		"I've already explained this once, but repetition is/ 		the very soul of the net."		(from alt.config)t  C One of the ways to exert control over the workings of the net is toiE take the time to put together a relatively accurate set of answers tooC some frequently asked questions and post it every month.  If you doaE this right, the article will be stored for months on sites around theo? world, and you'll be able to tell people "idiot, don't ask thisu; question until you've read the FAQ, especially answer #42".c  E The periodic postings include several lists of newsgroups, along withoB comments as to what the contents of the groups are supposed to be.E Anyone who has the time and energy can put together a list like this,hA and if they post it for several months running they will get somenA measure of net.recognition for themselves as being the "official",> keeper of the "official" list.  But don't delude yourself intoB thinking that anything on the net is official in any real way; theE lists serve to perpetuate common myths about who's talking about what F where, but that's no guarantee that things will actually work out that way.   PROPAGATION  -----------i    F In the olden days, when the net was young, and you could still read itF at 300 baud on a dumb terminal without a news reader and get work done during the rest of the day...n  @ In the olden days, news was sent out over UUCP and long-distanceA dialup lines.  A few people managed to sneak the horrendous phonesD bills past their management, and they held a lot of power over whichB newsgroups could be carried where.  Those people called themselves "the backbone cabal".C  = Things have changed.  Nowadays, internet sites have plenty ofoD bandwidth, and it's generally disk space that's the limiting factor,B and the patience of news adminstrators to deal with odd newsgroupsC appearing.  New groups appearing and disappearing in the mainstreamcE news hierarchies are fairly well controlled, and newsgroup votes tendd) to be accepted by most system managers.     > There are many systems around the US which now sell a reliableD newsfeed for a few bucks a month.  These folks will generally gladlyA get you any group you want to read (to the best of their ability) + because, after all, you're paying for it.  r   NEWSGROUP CREATION ------------------  6 		  "If there are enough people who want to talk about2 		  Joey and the Shralpers coming to you from East4 		  Podunk, Ohio, and they vote and it passes, well,4 		  dammit, they get a  newsgroup."		jamie@digex.com  @ It takes about two months, playing by the rules, to create a newD newsgroup.  Pick a name, write a charter, circulate it for opinions,E and if after a month you don't have a raging flame-war in news.groups F call the vote.  A month after you call the vote plow through your mailE box and count the results, if it meets the standards you're in.  This A is all explained with a substantially greater amount of wind in av* document reverently called The Guidelines.  A In order for your newsgroup to be propogated widely, it must show E promise.  The name has to be good and consistent with other newsgroupxC names; the charter should provide enough substance that people willeD want to talk about those topics; and you have to figure out a way toB make it through a month of sniping by the news.groupies before you call the question.  @ Chances are, some one is already talking about some of the stuffB you're interested in in one of the 2000-odd newsgroups and equallyF many mailing lists there are out on the net.  The purpose of all this C vote-gathering is to get the word out to them that there's some newNB niche appearing to discuss things and if they want to get involvedF here's the way to do it.  If your proposed niche collides with someoneD else's happy mail list or if it runs up too close to a hot newsgroup7 argument be prepared for an unhappy vote-counting time.e   IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY...y ---------------------vD Take a walk in the park, go rent a good movie, take a nice long bathF by candlelight, or call up a relative you haven't talked to for a longE time.  Spend some time away from the net, after all, it's still goings to be there when you get back.   -- rE Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com ?        MSEN, Inc. 628 Brooks Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 741 1120hC    "Gigabits are not needed where rice is lacking!" Bob Sutterfieldh