Re: I miss Gerry Quinn

On Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:23:52 -0000 (UTC), vallor <vallor@cultnix.org>
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 17:17:24 -0000 (UTC), Ross Ridge wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson  <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Of course, Google's archive isn't complete; it only goes back to late
1994. There are probably earlier "Mike S." posts that are, sadly, now
lost to history.

 
For me, the Google Groups archive for this newsgroup goes back to
when it was created in early 1993.  That includes a post from a "Mike
S." about Carrier Command on November 1, 1993, so I think maybe you got
your years confused.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/c/

0F1kP8yklS4/m/QOfilI3U_acJ

The earliest "Mike S" post (without the final period, so maybe a

diferrent

person) I could find was this one on the subject of "DoD License Plate
Frame in PostScript for ftp'ing", dated August 6th, 1991:

https://groups.google.com/g/tx.motorcycles/c/5sEvzCnnYDo/m/

42FA4F2TWm4J

I limited myself to searching just c.s.i.p.g.a since -as you noted-
"Mike S" isn't really that unique a nom de plume (sorry Mike! ;-), and
in the two cases above they _definitely_ both refer to different
people based on the information given in each post. And neither of
them are necessarily "our" Mike S.



That search actually sent me down a long rabbit hole of re-reading old
csipga posts. (Even I'm not immune to nostalgia! ;-). It was sort of
fun seeing how the character of Usenet changed over the years. A few
things I noted:

   - Usenet was undeniably more active back then, but -wow!-
     a lot of the content was duplication of stuff already
     said. Somebody would introduce a thread, initiating a
     response and discussion, ten posts later somebody would
     respond to the original post making comments already
     debunked, which people would then respond to again, and
     then ten posts later the cycle would repeat. And once
     all that was done, somebody else would come in and
     start a _new_ thread that basically said exactly the
     same thing as the first poster.

   - Related to the above, Usenet was -in some ways- a lot
     _slower_. Propagation of messages between the various
     nodes (servers) could take days, hence the late arrivals
     to some threads. Even disregarding aforementioned the
     duplication issue, it just took longer for discussions
     to complete. That's not to say that there weren't a lot
     of spur-of-the-moment off-the-cuff comments, just that
     the messaging protocol limited how fast others would see
     them and be able to react.

     - In terms of discussion, you can really see how the
     availability of easy search (Google) and quick access to
     information (WWW) has changed how we write about things
     now. There's a lot more certainty; modern Usenet discourse
     feels a lot more objective. We can more easily point to
     evidence supporting our cases, whether that's a news
     article, a link on Steam, or whatever. There was a lot
     more guesswork and supposition and unspoken "trust
     me"-isms 30 years ago. It all felt a lot more ephemeral.

   - Signatures were cool. Often annoying too, but cool. They
     were a hint at the personality of the author, and it was fun
     to see them change over time. I'm halfway inspired to make
     one up for myself again. ;-)