usenet - Uzmanına Sorun

Universite Metni

Usenet yani tartışma veya haber gruplarıı(news group) dünya üzerindeki milyonlarca ağ kullanıcısının (Internet/Bitnet vb.) çok değişik konularda haberler, yazolar gönderdiği bir tartışma platformudur. Kullanıcıların gönderdiği postalar (haber, değişik konularda yazı, grafik, resim,program, vb.) internet için, NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) isimli bir Internet protokolu kullanılarak iletilir. Bir kişinin gönderdiği bir ileti (mail, posta) hiyerarşik bir yapıda dağıtılır ve dünya üzerinde Internet erişimi olan kişiler tarafından bir Usenet Servis Sağlayıcısı (news.istanbul.edu.tr gibi) aracılığı ile okunabilir. Usenet ileti trafiği Internet hatlarının yanında, UUCP, BITNET gibi hatlar üzerinden de iletilebilir. Dolayısıyla, Usenet Internet'e özgü değildır ama arakesiti büyüktür.

Usenet bir kuruluş değildır. Usenet üzerindeki haber akışını kimse kontrol etmez. Ancak, yerel usenet servis sağlayıcıları, bünyelerinde bulundurdukları grup sayılarını kontrol edebilir, bazı grupları kendi listelerinden çıkarabilirler. Ayrıca, her usenet yerel sorumlusu (servis sağlayıcının bulunduğu yerdeki yerel sorumlu) kendi domain(ler)ini kontrol eder.

Usenet'e gönderilen bir yazı dolayısıyla hakkında dava açılan, hapse giren, para cezasına çarptırılan insanların sayısı sürekli artmaktadır. Elektronik ortamda oluşan bu tip "suç" teşkil edici eylemlere karşı cezalandırılma yoluna gidilmesi özellikle Amerika Birlesik Devletleri'nde çok yaygındır. bazı usenet grupları "moderated"tır, yani iletiler haber grubundan sorumlu bir kişiye gönderilmekte, o ise toplu olarak onları dağıtıma sokmaktadır. İletileri amaca uygunluk açısından doğal olarak bir denetim uygulamaktadır. "Unmoderated" usenet gruplarında ise böyle bir denetleme yoktur.

Usenet üzerinde, çok değişik konulara göre oluşturulmuş hiyerarşik bir yapı vardır. İleti göndermek isteyen bir kullanıcı da, bu hiyerarşik yapı içinde, içeriğine göre, iletisini bir haber grubuna (news group) gönderir. Usenet yapısı içinde onbinlerce haber grubu vardır. Haber grupları soc.culture.turkish, rec.sports.soccer gibi isimler alır. Burada görüldüğü gibi, üst seviyede bazı gruplaşmalar vardır. Bunlardan bazıları:

alt: Alternate (bu seviyenin altında her türden grup vardır)
bit: Bitnet listserv grupları
comp: Bilgisayar ile ilgili gruplar
sci: Bilimsel gruplar
soc: Sosyal tartışma grupları
info: Bilgi (faq-lar gibi) grupları
Her alt grubun altında başka alt gruplar da vardır. Bu, hiyerarşik olarak dallana dallana ilerler (ağaç yapısı). Örnek vermek gerekirse,

comp
comp.os
comp.os.linux
comp.os.linux.admin
comp.os.linux.hardware soc
soc.culture
soc.culture.turkish
soc.culture.usa
soc.history

Usenet haberlerini okumak ve bir iletide bulunmak için Netscape#8217;i kullanabilirsiniz. Netscape 1.x versiyonlarında haber gruplarına erişim için Netscape#8217;in location kutusunun içine herhangi bir news host#8217;u yazmak yeterlidır. örnek olarak Pcmagazin#8217;in news server#8217;ına erişmek için, location#8217;a news://news.pcmagazine.com.tr yazmak gerekir. Netscape 2.x ve sonraki versiyonlarda ise Netscape news adı altında ayrı bir program penceresi açılır ve dolayısıyla haber grupları için tasarlanmış ayrı bir client program ile erişilir. Usenet, milyonlarca kişinin takip ettiği bir platformdur. Öncelikle, gönderilen iletilerin, karşımızdaki kişilerin kişilik haklarını zedelemeyecek şekilde olmasına dikkat etmeliyiz. Küfür, genel ahlaka aykırı iletiler, aşırı propagandalar vb. pek çok ülkede suç sayılmaktadır ve bu tip davranışlar sıkça cezalandırılmaktadır. Çoğu durumda ceza, bulunduğunuz merkezin usenet iletilerini almasını engellemek, sizin kullanıcı numaranız ve Internet erişiminizin geçici/sürekli kapatılması olmakla beraber son yıllarda sıkça federal hükümetler bazında (hapis/para) cezaları da görülmeye başlanmıştır. Usenet isteyenin istediğini söyleyebildiği bir platform değildır. Karşımızdaki kişilerin haklarına saygı göstermeliyiz. Usenet, ticari markaların reklamını yapabileceğimiz bir ortam da değildır, çünkü Internet'in bu tür ticari kullanımı Internet kullanım kurallarına uygun değildır. Hayatınız boyunca göremeyeceğiniz, dünyanın bir ucundaki kişilerle değişik konularda konuşmak, fikir alışverişinde bulunmak ancak bu ortamlar ile mümkündür. Bu yüzden, bilinçli bir usenet kullanımı çok önemlidır.

Netscape ile Haber grupları kullanımı

Haber gruplarına ulaşmak için bir server ismine ihtiyacınız var. Bu adres, netscape optionsda, servers kısmında, nntp server adlı kutunun yanına yazılmalıdır. Bu server adı yazıldıktan sonra, Netscape'in Windows seçeneğinden "Netscape News" seçilmelidır. açılan pencere Netscape'in e-mail modülüne benzeyen bir programdır. News ilk başta açıldığında standart olarak 2 haber grubuna abone olarak başlanır bunlar yeni kullanıcı haber gruplarıdır. Haber gruplarının listesine bakmak için "options" menüsünden "show all newsgroups" seçilmelidır. Opsiyon seçildikten sonra, serverın sahip olduğu tüm haber grupları listelenir. Okumak istediğiniz haber gruplarını dizinler arasından seçmeniz ve yanındaki küçük kutucukları işaretlemeniz gerekmektedır. Bu kutular işaretlendiğinde, artık haber grupları penceresini açtığınızda bu işaretlenmiş gruplara abone olduğunuzdan dolayı listeleneceklerdır, ve okunmamış mesajlar görülecektir. Bir gruptan ayrılmak istediğinizde yapmanız gereken, yanındaki işareti kaldırmaktır.

Abone olduğunuz haber gruplarının yanında okunmamış mesaj sayısı görülür, okunacak haber grubunun üzerine basıldığında, yan kısımda, okunmamış mesajlar gönderen saat ve konu başlığı olarak listelenir. Ekran düzeni e-mail penceresiyle aynıdır. Mesajların üzerine basılıp aşağıdaki kısımdan okunabilir. Mesajlara iki çeşit cevap yazmak mümkündür, bunlardan birincisi, mesaj yazarına dırekt olarak e-mail ile cevap vermektir. İkincisi ise mesajın cevabını tekrar haber grubuna atmaktır ki bu taktirde cevabı haber grubunu takip eden diğer abonelerde görebilecktir. Haber grubuna mesaj postlamak için "to: news" seçeneği seçilmelidır, bu taktirde yazılan mesaj diğer tüm abonelere gider.

Haber gruplarında mesaj trafiği çok yoğun olduğundan, eski mesajlar sürekli silinir. Ve bir mesaj okunduktan sonra progrma kapatılıp tekrar açıldığında eski mesajlar listelenmez. Ancak yine "Netscape options" menüsünden, "Show all messsages" seçeneği seçilirse, serverda haber grubunda silinmemiş tüm mesajlar listelenir.

Explorer ile Haber grupları kullanımı

Explorer ilk kurulduğunda eğer haber grubu ayarları yapılmamışsa, haber gruplarına ulaşmak için "Mail" ikonuna basarak "read news" seçilir. Pencere açıldığında "news" seçeneğinden "options" seçilir. Çıkan menülerden "server" seçildikten sonra, "news servers" listelenen kısımda "add" seçeneğine basılır, burada server adı girildikten sonra, herhangi bir başka ayar yapmaya gerek yoktur. Ayarlar yapılıp çıkıldığında Internet News programı menüsünden "News" seçilir ve "Newsgroups"a basılır. Explorer, haber grubunun barındırdığı tüm newsgroupları listelemey başlar. Bu gruplar listelendikten sonra kullanıcı okumak istediği tüm haber gruplarını işaretleyerek gruplara abone olur. Abonelik kaldırılmak istenirse veya yeni gruplara abone olunmak istenirse, "newsgroups" ikonuna basılarak yeni gruplar seçilebilir veya seçili gruplar iptal edilebilir.

Haber grupları okunmak istenildiğinde, Newsgroups yazan bara basılarak abone olunan ve okunmak istenen haber grubu seçilir. Haber grubundaki mesajlar, aşağıdaki kısımda subje, gönderen ve zaman olarak özetlenir. Mesajın üzerine basıldığında en alttaki kısımda mesaj görülür. Yeni bir mesaj yazmak için "new message" seçeneğine, kişiye haber grubu üzerinden cevap verilmek istenirse "reply to group" seçeneğine, kişiye dırekt e-mail yolu ile cevap verilmek istenirse "reply to author" seçeneğine basılır.

Explorer otomatik olarak tüm mesajları görmeye programlanmıştır, bu sayede okunmuş mesajlar dahi tekrar programa girildiğinde listelenir. Eğer bütün mesajlar değilde, sadece okunmamış mesajlar listlenmek istendiğinde menüden "view" seçeneğine girilir ve "unread messages only" seçilir.

INGILIZCESI

AN APPROXIMATE DESCRIPTION
--------------------------

Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a
set of "newsgroups" with names that are classified hierarchically by
subject. "Articles" or "messages" are "posted" to these newsgroups by
people on computers with the appropriate software -- these articles are
then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide
variety of networks. Some newsgroups are "moderated"; in these
newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval
before appearing in the newsgroup. Usenet is available on a wide variety
of computer systems and networks, but the bulk of modern Usenet traffic
is transported over either the Internet or UUCP.

WHY IS USENET SO HARD TO DEFINE?
--------------------------------

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
misunderstood. Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
phenomenon is evident, in spades. In my opinion, more flame wars
arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
from any other source. And consider that such flame wars arise, of
necessity, among people who are on Usenet. Imagine, then, how poorly
understood Usenet must be by those outside!

Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous
impressions held by many Usenet users. Therefore, this article will
treat falsehoods first. Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is
outside the scope of this article.)

WHAT USENET IS NOT
------------------

1. Usenet is not an organization.

No person or group has authority over Usenet as a whole. No one
controls who gets a news feed, which articles are propagated
where, who can post articles, or anything else. There is no
"Usenet Incorporated," nor is there a "Usenet User's Group."
You're on your own.

Granted, there are various activities organized by means of Usenet
newsgroups. The newsgroup creation process is one such
activity. But it would be a mistake to equate Usenet with the
organized activities it makes possible. If they were to stop
tomorrow, Usenet would go on without them.

2. Usenet is not a democracy.

Since there is no person or group in charge of Usenet as a whole
-- i.e. there is no Usenet "government" -- it follows that Usenet
cannot be a democracy, autocracy, or any other kind of "-acy."
(But see "The Camel's Nose?" below.)

3. Usenet is not fair.

After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter, if
someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him? Neither
you nor I, that's certain.

4. Usenet is not a right.

Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech"
to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to
say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of
said computers have no right to stop them.

Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not
to speak. If I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech,
that is my right. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own
one.

5. Usenet is not a public utility.

Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized. Most of
them, by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly
on Usenet, and little or no government control.

6. Usenet is not an academic network.

It is no surprise that many Usenet sites are universities,
research labs or other academic institutions. Usenet originated
with a link between two universities, and the exchange of ideas
and information is what such institutions are all about. But the
passage of years has changed Usenet's character. Today, by plain
count, most Usenet sites are commercial entities.

7. Usenet is not an advertising medium.

Because of Usenet's roots in academia, and because Usenet depends
so heavily on cooperation (sometimes among competitors), custom
dictates that advertising be kept to a minimum. It is tolerated
if it is infrequent, informative, and low-hype.

The "comp.newprod" newsgroup is NOT an exception to this rule:
product announcements are screened by a moderator in an attempt to
keep the hype-to-information ratio in check.

If you must engage in flackery for your company, use the "biz"
hierarchy, which is explicitly "advertising-allowed", and which
(like all of Usenet) is carried only by those sites that want it.

8. Usenet is not the Internet.

The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are
subsidized by various governments. It carries many kinds of
traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And the Internet is only
one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic.

9. Usenet is not a UUCP network.

UUCP is a protocol (actually a "protocol suite," but that's a
technical quibble) for sending data over point-to-point
connections, typically using dialup modems. Sites use UUCP to
carry many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And
UUCP is only one of the various transports carrying Usenet
traffic.

10. Usenet is not a United States network.

It is true that Usenet originated in the United States, and the
fastest growth in Usenet sites has been there. Nowadays, however,
Usenet extends worldwide.

The heaviest concentrations of Usenet sites outside the U.S. seem
to be in Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan.

Keep Usenet's worldwide nature in mind when you post articles.
Even those who can read your language may have a culture wildly
different from yours. When your words are read, they might not
mean what you think they mean.

11. Usenet is not a UNIX network.

Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a UNIX machine. Among
the systems used to read and post to Usenet are Vaxen running VMS,
IBM mainframes, Amigas, Macintoshes and MS-DOS PCs.

12. Usenet is not an ASCII network.

The A in ASCII stands for "American". Sites in other countries
often use character sets better suited to their language(s) of
choice; such are typically, though not always, supersets of ASCII.
Even in the United States, ASCII is not universally used: IBM
mainframes use (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore non-ASCII sites if you
like, but they exist.

13. Usenet is not software.

There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to
transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package
can be called "the Usenet software."

Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used
for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing
the two. Such private communication networks are typically kept
distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different
from the universally-recognized ones.

Well, enough negativity.

WHAT USENET IS
--------------

Usenet is the set of people who exchange articles tagged with one or more
universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups" (or "groups" for short).
There is often confusion about the precise set of newsgroups that constitute
Usenet; one commonly accepted definition is that it consists of newsgroups
listed in the periodic "List of Active Newsgroups" postings which appear
regularly in news.lists.misc and other newsgroups. A broader definition of
Usenet would include the newsgroups listed in the article "Alternative
Newsgroup Hierarchies" (frequently posted to news.lists.misc). An even
broader definition includes even newsgroups that are restricted to specific
geographic regions or organizations. Each Usenet site makes its own
decisions about the set of groups available to its users; this set differs
from site to site.

(Note that the correct term is "newsgroups"; they are not called areas,
bases, boards, bboards, conferences, round tables, SIGs, echoes, rooms or
usergroups! Nor, as noted above, are they part of the Internet, though
they may reach your site over it. Furthermore, the people who run the
news systems are called news administrators, not sysops. If you want to
be understood, be accurate.)

DIVERSITY
---------

If the above definition of Usenet sounds vague, that's because it is.

It is almost impossible to generalize over all Usenet sites in any
non-trivial way. Usenet encompasses government agencies, large
universities, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers of
all descriptions, etc, etc.

(In response to the above paragraphs, it has been written that there
is nothing vague about a network that carries megabytes of traffic per
day. I agree. But at the fringes of Usenet, traffic is not so heavy.
In the shadowy world of news-mail gateways and mailing lists, the line
between Usenet and not-Usenet becomes very hard to draw.)

CONTROL
-------
Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any real
control over any site but his own.

The administrator gets her power from the owner of the system she
administers. As long as her job performance pleases the owner, she
can do whatever she pleases, up to and including cutting off Usenet
entirely. Them's the breaks.

Sites are not entirely without influence on their neighbors, however.
There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related to the
direction of high-volume news flow. To the extent that "upstream"
sites decide what traffic they will carry for their "downstream"
neighbors, those "upstream" sites have some influence on their
neighbors' participation in Usenet. But such influence is usually
easy to circumvent; and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in
a backlash of resentment.

PERIODIC POSTINGS
-----------------

To help hold Usenet together, various articles (including this one)
are periodically posted in newsgroups in the "news" hierarchy. These
articles are provided as a public service by various volunteers.
They are few but valuable. Learn them well.

Among the periodic postings are lists of active newsgroups, both "standard"
(for lack of a better term) and "alternative." These lists are maintained
by David Lawrence and periodically posted to the news.lists.misc newsgroup.
They reflect his personal view of Usenet, and as such are not "official" in
any sense of the word. However, if you're looking for a description of
subjects discussed on Usenet, or if you're starting up a new Usenet site,
David's lists are an eminently reasonable place to start.

PROPAGATION
-----------

In the old days, when UUCP over long-distance dialup lines was the
dominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected sites had
real influence in determining which newsgroups would be carried where.
Those sites called themselves "the backbone."

But things have changed. Nowadays, even the smallest Internet site
has connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear
could only dream. In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaper
long-distance calls and high-speed modems has made long-distance
Usenet feeds thinkable for smaller companies.

There is only one pre-eminent site for UUCP transport of Usenet in the
U.S., namely UUNET. But UUNET isn't a player in the propagation wars,
because it never refuses any traffic. UUNET charges by the minute,
after all; and besides, to refuse based on content might jeopardize
its legal status as an enhanced service provider.

All of the above applies to the U.S. In Europe, different cost
structures favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical
organizations with central registries. This is all very unlike the
traditional mode of U.S. sites (pick a name, get the software, get a
feed, you're on). Europe's "benign monopolies," long uncontested, now
face competition from looser organizations patterned after the U.S.
model.

NEWSGROUP CREATION
------------------

The document that describes the current procedure for creating a new
newsgroup is entitled "How To Create A New Newsgroup." Its common
name, however, is "the guidelines."

If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be
created and will be widely propagated.

HOWEVER: Because of the nature of Usenet, there is no way for any user
to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or any other decision, for
that matter). Therefore, for your new newsgroup to be propagated
widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you
must also follow its spirit. And you must not allow even a whiff of
shady dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote. In other words, don't
tick off system administrators; they will get their revenge.

So, you may ask: How is a new user supposed to know anything about the
"spirit" of the guidelines? Obviously, he can't. This fact leads
inexorably to the following recommendation:

>> If you are a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup. <<

If you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the "news.groups"
newsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how things
work. If you're too impatient to wait six months, then you really
need to learn; read "news.groups" for a year instead. If you just
can't wait, find a Usenet old hand to help you with the
request for discussion. (All votes are run by neutral third-party
Usenet Volunteer Votetakers).

Readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict. Ignore it at your
peril. It is embarrassing to speak before learning. It is foolish to
jump into a society you don't understand with your mouth open. And it
is futile to try to force your will on people who can tune you out
with the press of a key.

THE CAMEL'S NOSE?
-----------------

As was observed above in "What Usenet Is Not," Usenet as a whole is
not a democracy. However, there is exactly one feature of Usenet that
has a form of democracy: newsgroup creation.

A new newsgroup is unlikely to be widely propagated unless its sponsor
follows the newsgroup creation guidelines; and the current guidelines
require a new newsgroup to pass an open vote.

There are those who consider the newsgroup creation process to be a
remarkably powerful form of democracy, since without any coercion, its
decisions are almost always carried out. In their view, the
democratic aspect of newsgroup creation is the precursor to an
organized and democratic Usenet Of The Future.

On the other hand, some consider the democratic aspect of the
newsgroup creation process a sham and a fraud, since there is no power
of enforcement behind its decisions, and since there appears little
likelihood that any such power of enforcement will ever be given it.
For them, the appearance of democracy is only a tool used to keep
proponents of flawed newsgroup proposals from complaining about their
losses.

So, is Usenet on its way to full democracy? Or will property rights
and mistrust of central authority win the day? Beats me.

IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY...
---------------------

Property rights being what they are, there is no higher authority on
Usenet than the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic is
carried. If the owner of the machine you use says, "We will not carry
alt.sex on this machine," and you are not happy with that order, you
have no Usenet recourse. What can we outsiders do, after all?

That doesn't mean you are without options. Depending on the nature of
your site, you may have some internal political recourse. Or you might
find external pressure helpful. Or, with a minimal investment, you can
get a feed of your own from somewhere else. Computers capable of taking
Usenet feeds are down in the $500 range now, UNIX-capable boxes are going
for under $1000 (that price is dropping fast, so by the time you read
this, it may already be out-of-date!) and there are several
freely-redistributable UNIX-like operating systems (NetBSD, FreeBSD,
386BSD and Linux from ftp sites all around the world, complete with
source code and all the software needed to run a Usenet site) and at
least two commercial UNIX or UNIX-like systems in the $100 price range.

No matter what, though, appealing to "Usenet" won't help. Even if
those who read such an appeal are sympathetic to your cause, they will
almost certainly have even less influence at your site than you do.

By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is
doing, only the administrator and owner of that site have any
authority to do anything about it. Persuade them that the user in
question is a problem for them, and they might do something -- if they
feel like it, that is.

If the user in question is the administrator or owner of the site from
which she posts, forget it; you can't win. If you can, arrange for
your newsreading software to ignore articles from her; and chalk one
up to experience.

WORDS TO LIVE BY #1:
USENET AS SOCIETY
--------------------

Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware
of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be
learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only
different, but *threatening*, to your own. In turn, your opinions may
be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your
beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with
face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom
buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them.
The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills.
Imagine, indeed, how poorly understood Usenet must have been by those who
had the determined will to explain what it is by what it is not?
"Usenet was not a bicycle. Usenet was not a fish."

Any posting like this that hasn't been revised every few months has
become a quaint historical document, which at best yields a
faint notion how the net "should have been" and at worst tries
to shape how the Usenet "really was".

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it was big. Really big.
Netnews (and netnews-like things) had percolated into many more places
than were even known about by people who tracked such things. There was no
grand unified list of everything that was out there, no way to know beforehand
who was going to read what you post, and no history books to guide you that
would let you know even a small piece of any of the in jokes that popped
up in most newsgroups. Distrust any grand sweeping statements about
"Usenet", because you can always find a counterexample. (Distrust this
message, too :-).

>Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous
>impressions held by many Usenet users. Therefore, this article will
>treat falsehoods first. Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is
>not relevant to Usenet.)

Any essay on the nature of Usenet that doesn't change every so often
to reflect its ever changing nature is erroneous. Usenet was not a
matter of "truth", "beauty", "falsehood", "right", or "wrong", except
insofar as it was a conduit for people to talk about these and many
other things.

>WHAT USENET IS NOT
>------------------

> 1. Usenet is not an organization.

Usenet was organized. There were a number of people who contributed
to its continued organization -- people who posted lists of things,
people who collected "frequently asked questions" postings, people
who gave out or sold newsfeeds, people who kept archives of groups,
people who put those archives into web servers, people who turned
those archives into printed books, talk shows, and game shows.
This organization was accompanied by a certain amount of disorganization
-- news software that didn't always work just right, discussions
that wandered from place to place, parts of the net that resisted easy
classification. Order and disorder were part of the same whole.

In the short run, the person or group who ran the system that you read
news from and the sites which that system exchanged news with controlled
who got a feed, which articles were propogated to what places and how
quickly, and who could post articles. In the long run, there were a number
of alternatives for Usenet access, including companies which sold you
feeds for a fee, and user groups which provided feeds for their members;
while you were on your own right when you typed this in, over the long
haul there were many choices you had on how to deal with the net.

> 2. Usenet is not a democracy.

Usenet had some very "democratic" sorts of traditions. Traffic was
ultimately generated by readers, and people who read news ultimately
controlled what was and wasn't discussed on the net. While the
details of any individual person's news reading system limited or
constrained what was easy or convenient for them to do at the moment, in the
long run the decisions on what was or wasn't happening rested with the
people.

On the other hand, there had been (and always will have been) people who
had been on the net longer than you or I had been, and who had a
strong sense of tradition and the way things were normally done. There
were certain things which were simply "not done". Any sort of decision
that involved counting the number of people yes or no on a particular
vote had to cope with the entrenched interests of those who weren't about to
change their habits, their posting software, or the formatting of
their headers just to satisfy a new idea.

> 3. Usenet is not fair.

Usenet was a fair, a cocktail party, a town meeting, the notes of a
secret cabal, the chatter in the hallway at a conference, the sounds of
a friday night fish fry, post-coital gossip, the conversations overhead
in an airplane waiting lounge that launched a company, and a bunch
of other things.

> 4. Usenet is not a right.

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 was 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 had some amount of monopoly power over the
provision of these services, and thus the flow of information was
controlled in some manner by the whims and desires (and pricing
structure) of the public utility.

Most Usenet sites were operated by organizations which were not public
utilities, not in the ordinary sense. You rarely got your newsfeed
from National Telecom, it was more likely to be National U. or Private
Networking Inc.

> 6. Usenet is not an academic network.

Usenet was a network with many parts to it. Some parts were academic,
some parts weren't. Usenet was clearly not a commercial network like
Sprintnet or Tymnet, and it was not an academic network like BITNET.
But parts of BITNET were parts of Usenet, though some of the traffic on
Usenet violated the BITNET acceptable use guidelines, even though the
people who were actually on BITNET sites reading these groups didn't
necessarily mind that they were violating the guidelines.

Whew. Usenet was a lot of networks, and none of them. You name
another network, and it wasn't Usenet.

> 7. Usenet is not an advertising medium.

A man walks into a crowded theater and shouts, "ANYBODY WANT TO BUY A
CAR?" The crowd stands up and shouts back, "WRONG THEATER!"

Ever since the first dinette set for sale in New Jersey was advertised
around the world, people had been using Usenet for personal and for
corporate gain. If you were careful about it and didn't make people mad,
Usenet was an effective means of letting the world know about
things which you find valuable. But take care...

- Marketing hype was flamed immediately. If you needed to post a
press release, edit it first.
- Speak nice of your competitors. If your product was better than
theirs, you didn't say theirs is "brain damaged", "broken", or "worthless".
After all someone else might have had the same opinion of your product.
- Dance around the issue. Post relevant information (like price, availability
and features) but make sure you didn't send everything out. If someone
wanted the hard sell let them request it from you by e-mail.
- Don't be an idiot. If you sold toasters for a living, you didn't spout off
in net.breadcrumbs about an international conspiracy to poison pigeons
orchestrated by the secret Usenet Cabal; toaster-buyers got word
of your reputation for idiocy and avoided your toasters even if they were
the best in the market.
- Disclaimers are worthless. If you posted from foobar.com, and put a note
on the bottom "not the opinions of foobar inc.,", you may have satisfied the
lawyers but your corporate reputation was still affected. To maintain
a separate net.identity, you posted from a different site.

> 8. Usenet is not the Internet.

It was very difficult to sustain the level of traffic that was
flowing on Usenet back then if it weren't for people sending news feeds
over dedicated circuits with TCP/IP on the Internet. That's not
to say that if a sudden disease had wiped out all RS/6000s and Cisco
routers that formed the NSFnet backbone, CIX hub, and MAE East
interconnects, that some people wouldn't be inconvenienced or cut
off from the net entirely. (Based on the reliability of the MAE
East, perhaps the "sudden disease" already hit?)

There was a certain symbiosis between netnews and Internet connections;
the cost of maintaining a full newsfeed with NNTP was so much less
than doing the same thing with dialup UUCP that sites which depended
enough on the information flowing through news were some of the most
eager to get on the Internet.

The Usenet was not the Internet. Certain governments had laws which
prevented other countries from getting onto the Internet, but that
didn't stop netnews from flowing in and out. Chances were pretty good
that a site which had a Usenet feed could send mail to you from the
Internet, but even that was not guaranteed in some odd cases (news feeds
sent on CD-ROM, for instance).

> 9. Usenet is not a UUCP network.

UUCP carried the first netnews traffic, and a considerable number
of sites got their newsfeed using UUCP. But was also fed using
NNTP, mag tapes, CD-ROMs, and printed out on paper to be tacked up
on bulletin boards and pasted on refrigerators.

>10. Usenet is not a United States network.

A 1991 analysis of the top 1000 Usenet sites showed about 58% US
sites, 15% unknown, 8% Germany, 6% Canada, 2-3% each the UK, Japan,
and Australia, and the rest mostly scattered around Europe.

The state of California was the center of the net, with about 14% of
the mapped top sites there. The Washington, DC area was also the center
of the net, with several large providers headquartered there. You
could read netnews on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

If you were looking for a somewhat less US-centered view of the world,
you could have tried reading regional newsgroups from various different
states or groups from various far-away places (which depending on where
you are at could be Japanese, German, Canadian, or Australian). There were a
lot of people out there who were different from you.

>11. Usenet is not a UNIX network.

Well...ok, if you didn't have a UNIX machine, you could read news. In
fact, there were substantial sets of newsgroups (bit.*) which were
transported and gatewayed primarily through IBM VM systems, and a set
of newsgroups (vmsnet.*) which had major traffic through DEC VMS
systems. Reasonable news relay software ran on Macs (uAccess), Amiga
(a C news port), MS-DOS (Waffle), and no doubt quite a few more. I'm
was typing on a DOS machine when I first wrote this sentence, and it's
been edited on Macs and X terminals since then.

There was a certain culture about the net that grew up on Unix
machines, which occasionally ran into fierce clashes with the
culture that had grown up on IBM machines (LISTSERV), Commodore
64's (B1FF 1S A K00L D00D), MS-DOS Fidonet systems, commercial chat
systems (America Online), and "family oriented" systems (Prodigy).
If you were not running on a Unix machine or if you didn't have one
handy there were things about the net which were puzzling
or maddening, much as if you were reading a BITNET list and you
don't have a CMS system handy.

>12. Usenet is not an ASCII network.

There were reasonably standard ways to type Japanese, Russian, Swedish,
Finnish, Icelandic, and Vietnamese that used the ASCII character set to
encode your national character set. The fundamental assumption of
most netnews software was that you're dealing with something that looks
a lot like US ASCII, but if you were willing to work within those bounds
and be clever it was quite possible to use ASCII to discuss things in
any language.

>13. Usenet is not software.

Usenet software had gotten much better over time to cope with the ever
increasing aggregate flow of netnews and (in some cases) the extreme
volume that newsgroups generated. If you had been reading news then with
the same news software that was running 10 years previous, you'd never have
been able to keep up. Your system would have choked and died and spent all
of its time either processing incoming news or expiring old news. Without
software and constant improvements to same, Usenet would not have been.

There was no "standard" Usenet software, but there were standards for
what Usenet articles looked like, and what sites were expected to do with
them. It was possible to write a fairly simple minded news system
directly from the standards documents and be reasonably sure that it
will work with other systems, though thorough testing was necessary if
it was going to be used in the real world. You did not assume that
all systems were tested before they have been deployed.

>WHAT USENET IS
>--------------

Usenet was in part about people. There were people who were "on the
net", who read rec.humor.funny every so often, who knew the same jokes
you did, who told you stories about funny or stupid things they'd
seen. Usenet was the set of people who knew what Usenet was.

Usenet was a bunch of bits, lots of bits, millions of bits each day
full of nonsense, argument, reasonable technical discussion, scholarly
analysis, and naughty pictures.

Usenet (or netnews) was about newsgroups (or groups). Not bboards,
not LISTSERV, not areas, not conferences, not mailing lists, they're
groups. If someone called them something else they were not looking
at things from a Usenet perspective. That's not to say that they were
"incorrect" -- who is to say what is the right way of viewing the
past? -- just that it was not the Net Way. In particular, if they
read Usenet news all mixed in with their important every day mail
(like reminders of who to go to lunch with Thursday) they were not
seeing netnews the way most people saw netnews. Some newsgroups
were also (or "really") Fidonet echoes (alt.bbs.allsysop), BITNET
LISTSERV groups (bit.listserv.pacs-l), or even both at once!
(misc.handicap). So there were some violent culture clashes
when someone referred to you favorite net.hangout as a "board".

Newsgroups had names. These names were both very arbitrary and very
meaningful. People fought for months or years about what to name
a newsgroup. If a newsgroup didn't have a name (even a dumb one like
misc.misc) it wasn't a newsgroup. In particular newsgroup names had
dots in them, and people abbreviated them by taking the first letters
of the names (so alt.folklore.urban was afu, and soc.culture.china was
scc).

>DIVERSITY
>---------

There was nothing vague about Usenet. (Vague, vague, it was filling up
millions of dollars worth of disk drives and you want to call it
vague? Sheesh!) It may be hard to pin down what was and wasn't part of
Usenet at the fringes, but netnews tended to grow amoeba-like to
encompass more or less anything in its path, so you can be pretty sure
that if it wasn't Usenet then it will be once it's been in contact with
Usenet for long enough.

There are a lot of systems that were part of Usenet. Chances were that
you didn't have any clue where all your articles will end up going or
what news reading software will be used to look at them. Any message
of any appreciable size or with any substantial personal opinion in it
was in violation of some network use policy or local ordinance
in some state or municipality.

>CONTROL
>-------

Some people were control freaks. They wanted to present their opinion of
how things were, who ran what, what was OK and not OK to do, which
things were "good" and which were "bad". You ran across them every
so often. They served a useful purpose; there was a lot of chaos
inherent in a largely self-governing system, and people with a strong
sense of purpose and order made things a lot easier. Just don't
believe everything they said. In particular, don't believe them when
they sad "don't believe everything they said", because if they posted the
same answers month after month some other people were bound to believe
them.

If you ran a news system you could be a petty tyrant. You could decide
what groups to carry, who to kick off your system, how to expire old
news so that you kept 60 days worth of misc.petunias but expired
rec.pets.fish almost immediately. In the long run you would probably
have been happiest if you made these decisions relatively even-handedly since
that's the posture least likely to get people to notice that you
actually did have control.

Your right to exercise control over netnews usually ended at your
neighbor's spool directory. Pleading, cajoling, appealing to good
nature, or paying your news feed generally yielded a better
response than flames on the net.

>PERIODIC POSTINGS
>-----------------

One of the ways to exert control over the workings of the net was to
take the time to put together a relatively accurate set of answers to
some frequently asked questions and post it every month. If you did
this right, the article was stored for months on sites around the
world, and you'd be able to tell people "idiot, don't ask this
question until you've read the FAQ, especially answer #42".

The periodic postings included several lists of newsgroups, along with
comments as to what the contents of the groups were supposed to be.
Anyone who had the time and energy could have put together a list like this,
and if they had posted it for several months running they would get some
measure of net.recognition for themselves as being the "official"
keeper of the "official" list. But don't delude yourself into
thinking that anything on the net was official in any real way; the
lists served to perpetuate common myths about who was talking about what
where, but that was no guarantee that things actually worked out that
way.

>PROPAGATION
>-----------
In the real old days, when it cost real money to make long distance
phone calls to send netnews around the world, some people were
able to get their management to look the other way when they
racked up multi-thousand dollar phone bills. These people were
called the "backbone cabal", and they had a disproportionate
influence on news traffic because, after all, they were managing
to get someone else to pay for it.

More recently, communications costs were (for many sites) buried in with
a general "internet service". If you wanted to have a disproportionate
influence on news traffic, you needed to be able to beg, borrow, buy or
steal access to great big disk drives (so that you could keep a full
feed) and lots of memory (so that you could feed a lot of sites at once).

There was a vigorous, competetive cash market for news feeds; you
could get a newsfeed from a local provider via modem or via Internet
in all 50 states of the USA, more than 50 countries, and via
satellite in most of North America. The notion that any one system
was a "pre-eminent site" was past; communications costs had
gotten low enough, and traffic high enough, that if any one node
were to have gotten wiped out completely it would have still been possible for
everyone to be back on the net within weeks.

>NEWSGROUP CREATION
>------------------
You were better off starting up a mailing list.

If you *had to* start a newsgroup, you were best off starting a mailing
list anyway - even an informal one - to plan the newsgroup. Get
a half dozen people to all agree on the basic goals, topics of
conversation, etc. Figure that you have about two months to agree
that there's something worth talking about, get a hundred other people
to see your way, and run the vote.

There were time-honored rituals for newsgroup creation, designed
mostly to minimize the amount of work that news administrators
(the people who have managed to corral a bunch of disk space to
store news) had to do; in particular, this involved minimizing
the number of mail messages they had to read every day. The
process involved handing off responsibility to a group of people
well-steeped in ritual (the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers) who
ran through the process for you.

>THE CAMEL'S NOSE?
>-----------------
I'm not sure what camels have to do with anything. The only real
camel that had anything to do with Usenet is Larry Wall and Randal
Schwartz's "Programming perl", aka the "Camel Book", published by
O'Reilley. Larry wrote "rn", one of the second generation of news
readers that let you ignore some news that you didn't want to read.
The process of getting rid of unread news got to be a complex enough
decision process that he wrote a programming language (perl) to help
him write a newsreader to replace "rn".

He never finished the new newsreader, though that's not at all
surprising. "perl" is a pretty useful language, though. If you
can understand "perl" you'll have a much greater appreciation for
the ability of news admins to get rid of things they didn't want to
see.

There are easily $12M worth of computers that I could have pointed to that
were responsible for the transportation of netnews around the world,
plus another $12M per year in communications bills spent to keep
news flowing. Much was made of the risk that miscreants would
do something horrendous that will mean The Death Of The Net As We
Knew It. It seems unlikely, however, that this collective enterprise
would be endangered by any one user's actions, no matter how bold
they might be about trying to propogate their message against the
collective will of the rest of the net trying to keep them in check.
Was was surprising was how the success of the net became indistinguishable
from its failure.

>IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY...
>---------------------
If you are unhappy, what are you doing reading netnews? Take a
break. Stretch. Walk outside in the sunshine or the snow. Relax
your brain, watch some TV for a while, listen to the radio. If
you need to communicate with someone else, give them a phone call,
or see them in person.

It's good to not spend too much time all in the same place with
a fixed focus - rest your eyes everyone once in a while by
looking around at something else.

Don't worry about missing anything, it'll all get re-posted
if it's any good.

Okumak istersen :)