An alt.discuss Timeline

Occasionally, a bit of misinformation gets posted about how we got to where we are as an on-line community.

For those unfamiliar, alt.discuss is a collection of newsgroups initiated by WebTV subscribers accessible only by WebTV subscribers that take all of the diversities you could think of in the world and plop them right in front of a large captive audience, who for the greater part enjoy the benefits of staying within the firewalled discussion groups rather than out in usenet where they not only open themselves up to the e-mail address harvesters (spammers) but are often attacked merely for having an @webtv.net address.

As different as the number of groups and opinions, so are versions of history down the road. This article seeks to present a chronological look into the evolution of our community. It is far from "all-inclusive" and it's accuracy is limited to my recollections, records, submissions and searches. So, if you have any additional information (specific dates, posts, milestones, etc.) or corrections to this information, they will be both greatly and graciously appreciated.

In the beginning...

In February 1997, WebTV subscribers acquired the ability to access newsgroups. There was one set up specifically for and accessible only by users of WebTV, quite fittingly called webtv.users. A moderated newsgroup, it soon became the hub for on-line information about the little black box. As the number of posters increased and as an outlet for those who were wanting to post more socially than just questions and answers about the service, a second unmoderated group was opened: webtv.talk.

webtv.talk was the greatest documented on-line apocalypse on webtv up to that point. Quite a few of the serious discussers had moved to abandoned regular usenet groups by the time that the final massacre was over and on Tuesady, May 7, 1997 the visitors to webtv.talk were greeted by a single post.

At the end of May, beginning of June, due to intense subscriber feedback and the work of a dedicated employee, not only did WebTV have unmoderated firewalled access again, groups would be created upon subscriber demand. This post from the first couple of days of w.talk is the cornerstone of where our groups came from.

A couple of dozen groups opened and flourished as a disjointed, though still connected community. In those early group creations, there was the ability to set up moderated newsgroups. A post made to config recounts my best recollection of the mod groups. Moderated newsgroups soon became a thing of the past with the first post from "Nobody" on Friday, November 7, 1997 which appeared in several newsgroups announcing the conversion from w.groups to alt.discuss.groups and that for now there would be no mechanism to create new groups. It was followed shortly that afternoon with a 'Goodbye' to the w.groups, which not only suggested the possibility of a future system for setting up new groups, but also marked the 'Goodbye' of a dear friend to the early community.

Here is a list of the original w.groups that were converted to alt.discuss groups on Nov 8, 1997.

The new system came to pass in the form of an automated system to propose, vote and create new newsgroups. The center of activity for newsgroup proposals is alt.discuss.config. Through subscriber input at config, a set of newsgroup creation rules came to be, and through continuing subscriber input, these have been updated to the current newsgroup creation rules, which were posted Jan 23, 2000. (Articles pertaining to this transition are on the alt.discuss Timeline Modern History page.) Earlier versions of the rules may be seen here.

For a few short weeks, there existed a special "no-rules" hierarchy. It was designated "no-rules" in the sense that there was no voting -- just send the proposal in and it was automatically created. Some people took that to mean "no-rules" in terms of individual behavior and/or content. Here are the no-rules Creation Guidelines. Because of continued subscriber abuse, the "no-rules" hierarchy became history on Monday, September 14, 1998. Net4TV ran an extensive article on this incident, "WebTV Nukes No-Rules Groups, Cites Legal Liability Concerns", written by Laura Buddine and Dexter Davenport on September 27, 1998.

WARNING: Several of these newsgroup-names may be considered somewhat offensive. Please do not click this link if you have fragile sensibilities. Here is a list of the alt.discuss.no-rules groups.

One of the changes in alt.discuss is that groups with no articles posted for 14 days are now considered dead and automatically deleted. This first took place on Saturday, November 27, 1999. Here is a list of groups deleted from alt.discuss.

Config became a semi-moderated group on Jan 31, 2000, running on the machinery of the then upcoming "club" groups. Articles pertaining to this change, the development of "club" groups, developing changes in group creation and most recent announcements may also be found on the Modern History page.

The alphabetical alt.discuss group list portion of The alt.discuss Companion contains direct links to every currently available alt.discuss group displayed on a convenient single scrolling page, as well as links to the Voting Pages and other alt.discuss resources.

For further information about alt.discuss, please investigate the other links on the sidebar. Other pages on alt.discuss history may be found on the Links-Misc page.

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