I respond with friendly laughter:
I don't know about "official" standards of Usenet/USENET, but I know
a little historically.
Old systems used to run on CAPITALS. EVERY TIME YOU TYPED IN A
CHARACTER,
THE DEFAULT WAS CAP'S. Then, in the late `60s and early `70s, beginning
in '69
with Ken Thompson at Bell Labs(who wanted to play a game called "Space
Travel" began
the invention of an operating system that defaulted to lower case
characters.
There was no need to conform to standards at the start, since he only
wanted
to play a game and the owners of the system (GE) he was using wouldn't
release
the Op Sys. So he wrote his own. Then in '71 Dennis Ritchie rewrote
into C.
Thus developed Unix, and the
lower case format stood. Concurrent with this, the IBM became the
industry standard
as the home and small business PC (along with a nitch market in Mac).
These home/
small business standards kept up with the upper case format.
Eventually, the Unix`s were connected, systems nationwide, then world
wide were
tied together. This was the 'net. Open mostly to specialists in high
scientific
fields. Slowly edged in were home users (often the same specialists at
home, but
eventually anyone that could find in a tie in at home or work). This
spread began
to include home/small business PC's (and the nitch Mac's). Now with #'s
OF DIFFERENT
KINDS of systems COMMunicating ToGETHER, There BegaN to Mix the
DiffeRENT STAndArds.
Which is the OFFicIAl? Who KNows? BECAUSE they all co-exsist together,
though
somewhat flamed, but more often tolerated in a single exsistance. If
you are
an UPPER CASE USER, then it's the USENET. If you're a lower case user,
then
it's the Usenet. (after all, in English, the first letter of a proper
noun is in cap's.)
As for the "official" case, I don't think you'll find one. Because it's
more
based upon personal histories, more so than a standardized label tucked
away
in some official vault somewhere. And this could be easily attributed
to the
50/50 split you've run into.
Any other views?
Disclaimer: the above history was VERY oversimplified. However it was
to make a
point of comparison than to provide a history lesson. So please send
flames to
falling@bottomless.pit. <grin>
-JS
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