Klarinet Archive - Posting 000580.txt from 1995/05

From: Lisa Clayton <clayton@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: FW: politically incorrect...
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 12:29:52 -0400

> John Baetens asks:
>
> > Hey, wait a minute, what's wrong with posting from AOL?
>
> I don't know what it is about posting from AOL, but from this side of
> the atlantic, the perception is that more than 95% of all spams
> originate on AOL.

Actually, The Great AOL Mishap is an interesting bit of Net lore,
specifically Usenet. America Online decided to introduce the Usenet
News into their regular services. So they built a nice interface,
fed in most of the hierarchies, and unleashed them onto their
substantial customer base, thereby increasing the Usenet population greatly

The problem was that nobody in AOL thought to give any of their members
a bit of a lesson in Usenet etiquette. Newsgroups, most of which usually
have a pretty loyal and vocal following, were all of a sudden inuindated
with messages like "what does alt.2600 mean?" "what's Linux? Is
that a character on Peanuts?" and so forth. At first the Usenet
denizens pointed to their Frequently Asked Questions list, but after
about 50 or so of these kinds of messages, they got a bit testy about
the whole thing. This, of course, erupted into the inevitable
flame wars and AOL users have since gained a reputation for being
amazingly ignorant, even though since then most users are no better
or no worse than your average Usenet denizen from any other domain.

Prodigy learned from AOL's mistake and gave all their members some
Usenet pointers, like where to find a newsgroups' FAQ, don't flame
unnecessarily, make sure to use smilies :-) to show when you're being
funny or ironic, etc. Not too many people these days will hold your
AOL status against you, but one mistake and you *will* be reminded.

____ Lisa K. Clayton Geek |GS/M d-- H++ s:++ g+++ p3 !au a32 w+ C++++ P--
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"There is nothing more onanistic than playing the bass clarinet by yourself"
-Steve Trier