[Home]History of UsenetCabal

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Revision 4 . . February 1, 2001 3:14 am by CliffordAdams
Revision 3 . . February 1, 2001 2:08 am by WojPob
Revision 2 . . (edit) February 1, 2001 2:04 am by WojPob
Revision 1 . . February 1, 2001 12:53 am by ChessyPig
  

Difference (from prior major revision) (no other diffs)

Added: 1a2,8

:There Is No Cabal, but there was an effective cabal in the early days of Usenet. This group was often known as the "backbone cabal", which consisted of a number of large "backbone" sites that distributed most of the Usenet traffic. Some of these sites paid thousands of dollars per month for the communication links servicing Usenet, often hidden in large telecommunications budgets. (Since the late 1990s, the growth of cheap high-speed Internet connections has made a backbone organization largely unnecessary.)

:Probably the last effective action of this cabal was the non-acceptance of the newsgroup "rec.sex" (around 1990?). The newsgroup was proposed and passed by the usual voting system. Several major backbone administrators refused to accept that newsgroup in the otherwise-"clean" rec.* hierarchy. The alt.sex group (and later sub-hierarchy) quickly became very popular and soon the "alt.*" hierarchy became common on many sites. (Several sites would be reluctant to subscribe to just "alt.sex", so they would get the whole hierarchy instead.)

:Of course, some people say the cabal is just hiding...


Changed: 6c13
Job done;-) - WojPob
Job done;-) - WojPob

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