Well, at least the links are links in this one (unlike this).
Anyhow, someone mailed me a link to one of the articles and I started perusing the rest of the selection. I think you could spend years reading it all. I never saw Usenet in its glory days before spam and advertising took over, is this what it was like? posted by OneBallJay at 7:32 PM on March 14, 2001
Okay folks, no need for the snarkfest... posted by Avogadro at 8:17 PM on March 14, 2001
Indeed, a'boy, upon that time were it ever so. Nah, not really. Many newsgroups were really high-quality places; many others, well, weren't. The comp.* hierarchy was always pretty good, if you discounted things like permanent floating Windows-OS/2 or Windows-Mac flamefests. There are still some individual newsgroups that are havens of high quality. There aren't as many unique little communities, though.
Yarchive here actually has one of my own favorite posts. Yay! (There are photos that help explain that post.)
My lamented favorites, though, were places like ... well, there's this in-joke, you see. A newsgroup was started named alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (Muppet reference). Then other newsgroups were started like alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die. So one day someone started alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb ... just as a joke. It lay around, a one-off joke it seemed. Then one day a few of us started posting jokes ... and quickly developed a vocabulary. Every single post had to be in the form alt.[adjective].[noun].[verb][verb][verb]. Well .. just take a look. posted by dhartung at 10:09 PM on March 14, 2001
alt.fun.read.glance.glare.grin posted by Ms Snit at 10:54 PM on March 14, 2001
Uhm...why is glassblowing/cutting/etching/etc under metalwork? Just nitpicking.
The alt. hierarchy was always fun.
alt.picard.sexy.bald.captain comes to mind. *.verb.verb.verb was alway the best. The FAQ's hilarious. There's nothing like true commitment to taking a joke out to the extreme.
posted by waxpancake at 6:30 PM on March 14, 2001