Great Moments in Usenet History

From Usenet Big-8 Management Board

Note well: all claims listed here are subject to further review. Caveat emptor!

Corrections & amendments most welcome.

See "20 Year Archive on Google Groups" for other highlights.

Date Event
1979 Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis Usenet invent a method of sharing news.
1980 Usenet, Usenix, UUCP developed as "the poor man's ARPANET."
1981 net.news split off from net.general to discuss new newsgroups.
1982 Mark Horton creates net.news.group.
1983 Mark Horton creates net.announce, the first moderated newsgroup.
1983 Gene Spafford (Spaf)] organizes the backbone.
1984 Is the death of the net coming in September?
1984 Development of newspaths improves moderation (B News 2.11).
1986-87 The Great Renaming: The Big Seven organized. Roots of the voting system planted.
1986 net.news.group renamed news.groups.
1987 alt.* groups formed.
1987 First Guidelines for Creation: Spafford, Horton, Adams, Woods, Fair as backbone admins.
1988 Spaf kills the backbone (The Cabal).
1989 news.announce.newgroups created (Greg Woods-->Eliot Lear-->tale, 1989-1991).
1989 April Fools Called Off.
1992 Kibo proposes HappyNet.
1993 The September That Never Ended.
1993 Formation of Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV) under Ron "Asbestos" Dippold.
1993 Spaf burns out, says good-bye.
1993 tale (David C. Lawrence) takes over Checkgroups from Spaf; Mark Moraes inherited other lists.
1995 New humanities hierarchy created by a vote of 508:97. The Big Seven becomes the Big Eight.
1996 tale creates the PGP key used by news.announce.newgroups moderators (1996-04-10).
1997 Usenet II proposed. Usenet II home page.
1998 HappyNet updated.
2001 Google's 20-year retrospective of Usenet History.
2001 Jim Ellis, RIP.
Oct. 13, 2002 Russ Allbery, Todd McComb, and piranha succeed tale.
2005 Old newsgroup creation system suspended. Eleven people tagged to work on a new system.
March 2006 Big-8.org opens for business. skirv preserves one-syllable tradition.
Oct. 1, 2006 Big-8 Management Board confirmed by previous n.a.n. moderators.
Oct. 2, 2006 Death of Usenet. Film at 11.