gmane.culture.internet.history

The Well - "You own your own words"

Joly MacFie — 2013-05-18T06:21:32

A liitle off-topic, but since it's been mentioned

I only had a brief experience on The Well in the early 90's before
graduating fo the wide open spaces of the nascent WWW. One of the first
things I noticed was that everyone had a neat little sayings in their sigs,
I forget the term for them. Since my steady income at the time was selling
punk buttons off a stall at NYC concerts (pin money!), I immediately
commented that many of these sayings would make excellent buttons.  I was
immediately snapped at by a zealous gatekeeper in strident terms along the
lines of DON'T EVEN THINK OF COPYING ANYTHING YOU MIGHT SEE HERE!, citing
The Well's credo "You own your own words".

Coming from the free and easy world of the old hippie underground press
syndicate and punk rock anarchy where it was taken for granted that
everyone shared an ethic of "supporting the scene" and viral culture. I was
a little taken aback at the vehemence of this, and didn't bother hanging
around.

It was later that I came to further look into th

Re: History of Flaming

Larry Sheldon — 2013-05-17T21:38:54

My first contact with what now seems to be called social networks was 
with The WELL and with the USEINC BBS.  Both environments were pretty 
mellow and if there were incipient flamefests, the sysops came down hard 
on the miscreants.

It was via The WELL that I got access to the newsgroups and the vicious 
flamewars, of which MES is an example, but certainly not the only case, 
maybe not even the worst.

Re: History of Flaming

Bernie Cosell — 2013-05-17T19:06:14


Off topic for the list but perhaps interesting: I just started reading 
"Lies My Teach Told Me" / Everything your american history textbook got 
wrong.  By James Loewen

So far he's skewered Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller (!).  And now he's 
working through the myths (and lies) about Christopher Columbus [and the 
"discovery" (sic) and occupation of the Western Hemisphere by Europeans]. 
...etc...

The thing is he tries to assemble some picture of the "truth" [perhaps 
again, 'sic'] from the best sources he can find [which are never American 
History texts].  Things like Columbus's (and his crews) journals, and 
other evidence [e.g., that aside from the folks already here, North 
America was likely already "discovered" by the Norse and a millennium 
earlier by the Phoenicians].

Anyhow...  apologies the interruption/diversion: back to flaming... :o)

  /Bernie\

Images from 70s and 80s?

Andrew Russell — 2013-05-17T18:37:35

Hi - 

I'm writing an article for IEEE Spectrum on the history of OSI, which should run in the August 2013 issue, and the editor would like some images from the 1970s and/or 1980s to add some life to the story.  So - does anyone have pictures from the 1970s or 1980s that are from OSI meetings, or other networking standards-related activities such as IAB or IETF meetings?  It's important (for obvious reasons) that you hold the copyright, and that you'd be willing to sign it over to IEEE Spectrum.  

Thanks in advance, and please contact me off-list if you've got something you want to share.  The editor also is interested in using a few quotations, also to add some life to the story - but I know that's stirring up a hornet's nest with this crowd :-)  Nevertheless, please do send any reflections you'd like to share, particularly if you can indicate the nature and scope of your involvement with OSI.  

Thanks!

Andy

Re: History of Flaming

John Day — 2013-05-17T18:19:28

This is a common problem I find with historians.  In fact, I was 
reading a quite interesting article last night on how this same 
problem had distorted histories of the English Civil War and 
Cromwell's role.  Over the past  3 centuries, the view of the 
conflict and its causes has changed at least 3 times to fit the times 
of the authors.  None of which it appears was the case at the time. 
A real problem of historians tending to ascribe today's motivations 
to yesterday's motivations.

As I was always taught:  one must look at things from the point of 
view of the organism not the observer.

This has been even worse with the history of the Internet, where many 
Just-So stories abound.  Many times I have read completely fictional 
accounts of history in this field based on "it must have been like 
this."  The tendency to create the history based on the outcome is 
far too common or where myths seem to be all too prevalent.

As to whether flaming has changed, it is hard to tell.  I doubt that 
any of us ha

Re: History of Flaming

Dave Crocker — 2013-05-17T14:29:35

I believe msggroup was the first arpanet-wide mailing list. (I sometimes 
confuse it with hdrpeople, since it was also about email, but it was 
more technical, as we were developing format standards for mail.)

Anyhow, msggroup is the one I had in mind when I described the learning 
process, to reduce flaming, that we all went through, except for a 
couple of people...

FWIW, I think that the tone and style of flaming hasn't changed much, 
for flaming among an 'organized' group.  That is, a group that can be 
called a community.  I believe having some actual association to each 
other produces some limits on what is posted, even though it might not 
seem like it.

In contrast, the sorts of things posted by random people on public lists 
today sometimes has no limits at all.



Sure.  I've been offering roughly the same summary for probably 30 years...


d/

Re: History of Flaming

Laboha — 2013-05-17T13:43:20

Hallo and thanks a lot for your helpful information.

I think there must have been some flaming in the mgsgroup - can anyone
remember this? I have found some kind of flaming in the header group.

perspective vs having been there.
John: This is an interesting point. Those of you who followed early
versions of flaming - would you remember them for being more reserved from
today's point of view?

Randy: Which ones would you call the best classic flames?

Dave: Can I quote you, from what you wrote? I think you nicely summarized
the beginning of electronic flaming with the reply button!

Larry: Yes, the name Mark Ethan Smith already appeared in my inquiries,
also the fact, that there has been flaming in BBS, though I'm still looking
for good examples.

Best regards
Boris

Re: History of Flaming

Dave Crocker — 2013-05-16T22:17:28


Email in the form we now know it, started in the early 1970s.  Flaming 
appeared immediately.

Certainly as soon as the Reply command appeared -- called Answer in its 
first incarnation, with John Vittal's MSG program, flaming became a 
regular occurrence.  Easy replying facilitated overly-quick and 
underly-considered responses.

The fact that the target of the flaming is not immediately present means 
that we are really responding to our internal model of what they said 
and meant, and internal psychological models differ from reality wildly. 
  Clarification interactions are expensive for email; so we tend just to 
react.

The earliest mailing lists, also from the mid-70s, saw flaming in force. 
  Group dynamics in an email context seem particularly fertile for 
growing flames.

I used to summarize that it took each of us about 6 months to get a 
reasonable degree of control over the flaming impulse; not perfect, as 
continues to be clear to this day, but at least /some/ control. 
However, we did eventu

Re: History of Flaming

Dr Eberhard W Lisse — 2013-05-16T20:34:53

I think they were allowed to use Pascal but not to eat Quiche :-)-O

el

On 2013-05-16 21:09 , Brian E Carpenter wrote:
[...]

[...]

Re: History of Flaming

Craig Partridge — 2013-05-16T20:35:58

There was one in 1984 regarding a networking interface card vendor.
A BBNer (name eludes me and not sure he'd want canonization anyway)
commented on an ARPANET list that the product was lousy and was sued.
He settled.

Thanks!

Craig

Re: History of Flaming

Brian E Carpenter — 2013-05-16T20:09:35

Right, and "Real programmers don't write Pascal" was almost in the same
class, also originally paperware I think. It's to be found (undated and
unattributed) at http://www.gotterdammerung.org/humor/real-programmers.html.
Apparently it was in Datamation in July 1983 in a slightly different
version, but it's also attributed to S. Bassett in "USUS News and Report"
December, 1983.  "USUS" was the UCSD p-System User's Society.

It might also be interesting to look for the earliest libel actions over
on-line statements. The earliest I knew of was Godfrey v. Hallam-Baker
but somehow I doubt it was the first.

   Brian

Fwd: [Air-L] Internet Historiography

Joly MacFie — 2013-05-16T19:04:34

History:
http://www.amazon.com/History-Digital-Formations-Niels-4gger/dp/1433104687

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam Fish <rawbird< at >gmail.com>
Date: Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:29 PM
Subject: [Air-L] Internet Historiography
To: AoIR mailing list <air-l< at >listserv.aoir.org>

Dear AOIRers,

Anybody know of articles or books analysing 1) the political historiography
of the internet. Who has criticized the historiography of the internet as
being written for political gain?

Secondly, any research on 2) the space shared by classic liberalism,
technology, and history?

 I am writing this piece on how Obama’s statement on “the internet… you
didn’t build that,” celebrating social liberal federal investments in
technology, has been (mis)interpreted by various political actors.

Any leads?

Best,

Adam Fish, PhD

Media and Cultural Studies

Department of Sociology

Lancaster University, UK

LA1 4YT

p. 01524592699

a.fish2< at >lancaster.ac.uk

< at >mediacultures, mediacultures.org

http://www.research.

Re: History of Flaming

Craig Partridge — 2013-05-16T13:27:11

I agree older flames are generally better.

If you want to get truly serious about the genre, I think, in terms of
influential flames "goto considered harmful" ranks high and, that was a
paper letter to CACM in 1968.  Recall it opens with "the quality of
programmers is a decreasing function of the density of go to statements in
the programms they produce."  (I always thought that part of what made
a good flame was an opening sentence that viciously grabbed the attention).

Thanks!

Craig

********************
Craig Partridge
Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
E-mail: craig< at >aland.bbn.com or craig< at >bbn.com
Phone: +1 517 324 3425

Re: History of Flaming

John Day — 2013-05-16T12:49:17

Hardly.  ;-)  There was a fair amount of email floating around before 
mail lists got going full tilt and some very early what we now call 
IM programs in the early 70s.

A little thing like bandwidth does not deter an engineer who knows he 
is right!  ;-)

There were online discussions prior to 1985, I know some as early as 
1972-74 that got pretty intense.

What is more interesting about this note is how looking back changes 
your perspective vs having been there.  History, like science, has to 
rely on the data, not on "what it must have been like" or Just-So 
Stories.

Take care,
John

At 12:44 PM +0100 5/16/13, Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:

Re: History of Flaming

Dr Eberhard Lisse — 2013-05-16T12:51:09

That is true,

Quality vs Quantity :-)-O

el

on 2013-05-16 13:32 Randy Bush said the following:

Re: History of Flaming

Randy Bush — 2013-05-16T12:32:06

and the best classic flames came from that era

randy

Re: History of Flaming

Dr Eberhard Lisse — 2013-05-16T11:44:26

However,

the smaller the bandwidth the less flaming, me thinks :-)-O UUCP
with 9600/2400/1200/300 baud *DID* exist in the very distant past...

el

on 2013-05-16 12:14 Ioannis Korovesis said the following:

Re: History of Flaming

camille paloque berges — 2013-05-16T11:41:31

Hello,

I have written a long article about the history of trolling on Usenet, with
examples of flames before 1985. It's still in the works, and I am currently
in the process of revising in order it to publish it in a scholarly
journal, but I would be happy to share examples of early flames with you.

Don't hesitate to write me for more details.

Best,
Camille Paloque-Berges

--
Post-doctoral researcher at LabEx Hastec
Associate researcher at laboratoire DICEN (CNAM), Paris, France


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Ioannis Korovesis
<ycor< at >iit.demokritos.gr>wrote:

Re: History of Flaming

Ioannis Korovesis — 2013-05-16T11:14:20

This phenomenon arose in earlier networks such as BITNET, USENET, also  
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_%28Internet%29
yannis

History of Flaming

Laboha — 2013-05-16T10:46:12

Hi, I'm new to this mailing list. I'm a German technology journalist and
blogger. I'm very much interested in the history of internet, that is why I
joined this list. I'm currently working on an article about the history of
flaming or flame wars. I have found several, but mostly after 1985. I had
difficulties to find examples of flaming earlier - any tipps on that? Boris

Re: MX and A records

Craig Partridge — 2013-05-01T10:41:39

Hi John:

This is from memory, and I wrote RFC 974 over 27 years ago, but
my recollection is that the fallback to A was motivated by transition but
also included as a permanent fallback/bootstrap feature.  That is,
as I was crafting how MX RRs would work, it was clear we needed to
fallback to A records as a transitional matter, but some person (don't
recall who) observed that there was no reason to sunset the fallback scheme,
as it provided robustness -- if someone forgot to create an MX for a new host,
email could still get there.

Thanks!

Craig


********************
Craig Partridge
Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
E-mail: craig< at >aland.bbn.com or craig< at >bbn.com
Phone: +1 517 324 3425