Re: How to find history/origins/stats of a newsgroup??

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Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us)
Wed, 14 Jan 1998 23:42:32 -0500

Michael Current <mcurrent@carleton.edu> writes:
> I found a file there for comp.sys.atari.8bit, which contains two seperate
> bodies of text (I guess), dated 1991 and 1992 respectively. I'm quite
> confident c.s.a.8bit dates back well before that; my previous estimate was
> that it was created around 1986. I started reading it myself in 1989.
> Am I overlooking something obvious here?

The README at the top level of uunet's control-message archive points
out that the archive was only started in 1991. What you found was just
random sysadmins' local newgroup commands that happened to leak onto
the net.

c.s.a.8bit may have existed in 1986, but not with that name; the Great
Renaming in 1987 established what we now think of as the net-wide
hierarchies. Also, the voting mechanism for instituting new newsgroups,
along with the notion of newsgroup charters, was put in place later than
that (88 or 89 I suppose). Prior to that there wouldn't have been a whole
lot of reason to archive newgroup commands.

There's gotta be a FAQ on Usenet history around here somewhere...

regards, tom lane