Globally 0.29% of people suffer from schizophrenia (lifetime risk of 1%) so it shouldn't have been surprising Usenet (or, really, any forum system without moderation or some similar kind of control) would experience their presence.<p>Why wasn't Henry Spencer listed as a Usenet personality (the good kind)?
Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 40 years ago when discussing online forums:<p>>I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do.<p>This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The network's design has several flaws, most importantly no way for any central authority to completely delete posts (admins in moderated groups can only approve posts), since back in the late 1970s Usenet's designers expected that everyone with the werewithal to participate online would meet a minimum standard of behavior. Usenet has always had a spam problem, but as usage of the network declined as the rest of the Internet grew, spam's relative proportion of the overall traffic grew.<p>That said, there are server- and client-side anti-spam tools of varying effectiveness. A related but bigger problem for Usenet is people with actual mental illness (kstrauser mentioned one); think "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". Usenet is such a niche network nowadays that there has to be meaningful motivation to participate, and if the motivation is not a sincere interest in the subject it's, in my experience, going to be people with very troubled personal lives which their online behavior reflects. Again, as overall traffic declined, their relative contribution and visibility grew. This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet.<p>[1] I am talking about traditional non-binary Usenet here
Was that before or after he got kicked off arpanet?
This is consistently true across all human organizations larger than a handful of people. Its a limitation of human communication and alignment<p>I saw that happen to the ultramarathon subReddit which I founded and I’m the lead moderator. And when I was running a radio station it was consistently the same people who would call in. I see it even in some of the smaller group chats that I’m in<p>You cannot have a stable community without these types of issues coming up beyond a few or so dozen people
I can't stop laughing at the first entry and this simple joke:<p>> he gained international notoriety for his claims that [...] mass and time are equivalent. (With regard to the second claim, it was suggested on the "sci.astro.amateur" newsgroup that his demise be observed with a gram of silence.)
Happy to see Erik Naggum on this list - its the one I really remember the posts, mostly in a very "particular style" which was very entertaining to me (reading it a few years later).<p>I <i>kinda miss</i> that style of poster and understand it cannot come back. But if the world is big and diverse then I prefer that that kind of people can exist.
I'm going to disagree with the summary of Serdar Argic. My belief is that the Turkish government financed a grad student at University of Minnesota, Ahmet Cosar, to do the spamming. It is as well known that Uunet, and early ISP, had a "pink contract" with Cosar that allowed him to spam. Cosar lost his student visa, had to return to Turkey.
> skiing enthusiast banned by court order in 1999 from posting on the Usenet discussion group "rec.skiing.alpine", after engaging in a flame war with other online posters. The heated exchanges lasted for months, eventually escalating into death threats, until a police detective from Seattle posted a request for all involved to calm down. All involved did except Abraham...<p>I'm sorry, this was probably annoying to all involved, but also so hilarious. Not least of which picturing a detective, who joined the force thinking he was going to solve murders and maybe even get a lead on D.B. Cooper sighing as he posted on a message board.
<a href="https://groups.google.com/g/rec.skiing.alpine/c/frIx-J1XpnI" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/g/rec.skiing.alpine/c/frIx-J1XpnI</a><p>Reading one of the original threads involving Scott is...really something. Boy, the early internet was very weird.<p>Also, that dude is completely nuts.
Most of these are negative in some way, except for the "Other personalities" section.<p>There's a lesson here somewhere.
I am very convinced that a number of early X-Files plots (or sub-plots) were inspired by threads on Usenet.
I have the dubious distinction of being in the Net.Legends.FAQ. I'm glad I didn't rise to the level of ending up in this Wikipedia article.
I'm starting to think Archimedes Plutonium was wrong about his Plutonium Atom Totality conjecture.
Wow, what a nostalgia trip. We had our fair share in the comp.sys.amiga.* groups.<p>I feel bad about one in particular. Don't get me wrong: he was incredibly annoying and liked to jump into nearly every single thread and turn it into some persecution complex thing. I was unkind to him, as were many others.<p>Looking back, it seems obvious to me that he had some mental issues and was battling demons the rest of us didn't see. I wish younger me had the wisdom to just killfile him and pretend he didn't exist. Whatever his problems, I'm sure I didn't make the world any nicer by yelling at him.<p>Sorry, man. I'd have handled that differently now.
B1FF sounds like he would have been right at home on weird Twitter
As far as I know there is no link between, say, talk.bizarre and weird Twitter, but it's a sign that the same basic impulses are universal. I'm sure that in 1776, a few dedicated oddballs were creating snarky weird in-jokes on broadsides that nobody read except them.
I doubt it is a thing anymore, but if you were in a NOC and said, "...there is no cabal." you could expect at least some portion of the people present to turn around and hail, "Long Live The Cabal!" It was a usenet admin shibboleth that I still laugh at every time I hear it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Cabal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Cabal</a>
Didn't John Titor also post his warnings on Usenet?
The list lacks Derek Smart, so it's not a real list.
I was looking for this and finally found it in the comments.<p>Derek Smart [1] is the indie developer behind the ambitious (and buggy) space sim Battlecruiser 3000AD [2]. He is known for his legendary Usenet presence in the 90s, and engaged in massive, aggressive flamewars with anyone who criticized his game or physics engine. He adopted the "combative game dev" archetype long before social media existed.<p>Now that he has been mentioned, there's a small chance he will drop by.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Smart" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Smart</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD</a>
I mean, there are certainly similarly odd and known HN personalities.