A shame that you decided to not support your own country. Imagine how much you could have done whilst explaining this issue!
The second-most prolific self references were blovating across all and any groups I felt like. Nothing has changed.
I can take the moral high ground here because my bloviating was at least in relevant groups. But still, bloody hell, younger me was (mostly) an idiot.
Now, 35 years later, a lot of other stuff has mercifully decayed, but people keep bootstrapping these Usenet archives as pet projects every year, and there's never an option to opt out. Today, agents make it easier than ever to build a dossier on anyone you don't like, so this data is bound to cause some harm. And I guess when I die, the best-preserved memory of me that my grandchildren and grand-grandchildren will be able to pull up will be snarky posts from a 15-year-old on some unix-related discussion group.
Yeah, I know there's a bunch of posts there that are of genuine historical interest. But I'm just not a fan and I don't mind burning karma to speak my mind.
And some of it still is public from way back then -- including dumb and ugly comments, stupid flamewars, teenager stuff, and phone numbers. It doesn't bother me.
I don't feel remorseful for having once been a kid and doing some of the dumb things that kids sometimes feel inclined to do, and those landline telephone numbers stopped being relevant to me decades ago.
(Actually, I wonder if the Prodigy forums got archived...)
I might suggest that "projection" is a primary motivator, although I work to avoid projecting on my own time.
(Edit: To disambiguate without vagueness: When some fucking party or other is talking about "cancel culture," they usually seem, to me, to be projecting about their own fucking party's fucking ugly policies and tactics.
And in a sane and pure world, I'd like to wish that they'd be recognized as being fucking scumbags for behaving in this way.
But it is my observation that we do not always live in a sane and pure world.)
Turns out storage wasn't free and the the following generations did not have the same appreciation for everything 80s and 90s, so much of it is lost forever.
Yes, I should have known better in my teenage years about it. And also yes there was no reason for me to expect that everything I wrote would be easily available to some AI panopticon 30-40 years later
Just make a bunch of really good posts and put your name on them
Usenet Archives
I haven't checked it out myself but I've heard that some posts were removed from this magnet.
If I remember rightly Google bought the data when they shutdown and incorporated it into Google Groups.
It's sad that it's now powered by only four usenet backbones.
1996-01-17: first post! a reply to a thread in alt.music.bjork
1996-03-11: first mention of my website/homepage
No links to avoid my own embarrassment.
There are only 7 posts in alt.music.bjork on the first date, and one of them has your name on it. There's 1 post with your name on the second date, and it gives a website. The earliest wayback entry for that website redirects to another wayback location that exists.
I got curious again to find my old posts and figured I could download and grep the mbox files from Internet Archive instead.
May I ask how you collected the data? Usenet is not fully archived anywhere. No one has a complete set.
I am aware of:
* the NewNews disc series on CD from '91 - '93 which has a substantial text feed for the big groups during that era (most of these are on IA.org, but some are not!)
* The Dejanews archives via Google up to c. 2013. Also up on IA.org These are lacking large amounts of early posts, and are highly spotty before about 1994 (when Dejanews started).
* The Utzoo tapes over at https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive cover a part of '81 - '91 but only from one host. "Far parts" of Usenet over in Japan or Europe are barely covered.
* Some groups preserve per-newsgroup histories scattered all over and tending to drop offline over the years
* fj.* is well-archived but it's Japanese
The chart speaks for itself I think as to coverage: https://i.imgur.com/WCQm4od.png
I got so desperate as to go scanning zip and tar files on old ftp sites for anything with a Usenet header. That scored a few hundred thousand articles mostly from the 90s.
The big spike in the early 90s is from those CDs archives in the months where I had access. It gives an idea for how limited those Giganews/Google and other surviving archives are.
I figure less than 50% early text Usenet survives, unless someone has vast hordes of data that they are not disclosing.
As for the Utzoo archives - they're legally encumbered and some of the posters sue anyone who hosts them. (They're not available from the IA - taken down.)
You have a takedown page but the legal and copyright issues were one of the main back-burner items keeping me from making my archive live. Some of the more eccentric Usenet personalities are still alive.
Same with privacy issues. I notice you have full text search. I was reluctant to do that for privacy reasons.
I discovered very early on how to index by email but that felt quite invasive. I took that out, and built a graph of all the X-refs: which turned out to be more interesting (walking the discussion trees) and somewhat more privacy preserving in that you can explore but not search.
I was also thinking of an AI-based content warning filter, because I have a "random post" button and it is sometimes wild what that lands on.
