Subject:
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Re: Arcane technical history of LUGNET
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.nntp
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Date:
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Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:46:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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87 times
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In lugnet.admin.nntp, "N. W. Perry" <nateomatic5@netscape.net> wrote:
> > You have a very keen eye!
> That, or an insistent mind. ;-)
Both are good!
> I now think that I'm just mis-remembering what I'd read before. I think
> that when that header was first implemented, it was also applied
> retroactively to existing posts, so anyone who had already been posting
> had it appear from day one.
Hmm, ya, unfortunately we didn't keep records on that, but I *think* it only
applied forward...but if anything retroactively were applied, I reckon it would
have been only in cases where someone had disclosed the association at that
point. Can't remember, though! There's probably a note about it somewhere in
the newsgroups.
> A little later, you added the registration process, where users had to
> supply their real names and other data in a form before being allowed to
> post, so from then on the X-Real-Life-Name header is always present
> (well, except for in gatewayed mailing list messages).
Ya, at that point, the normal operation became that it inserts the header at
article-injection time. The C News server is mostly Bourne Shell and AWK
scripts dating back to 1985-1987, and was pretty easy to modify to add custom
stuff. :-) Fun fact: The name C News doesn't mean that it was written with
the C programming language; the letter C denotes that it was intended to be a
replacement for B News. It was first presented formally at the USENIX Winter
1987 Conference. Pretty wild that it still runs after 40 years, with minimal
changes. We did have to fix one small Y2K bug in it!
> It's actually pretty fascinating to follow the decision-making process
> of how things came to be, when and why various sub-groups were added,
> and so on. It feels similar to the process used to date early LEGO
> elements, catalogs, photos and so forth.
Ya, it's fun to take a trip down memory lane here. Did you know that prior to
the October 1998 launch, there was a late-September 1998 test-run of about 500
newsgroups? It involved (I think) about 10 or 15 testers hammering on the NNTP
server for three or four days. The whole thing was then wiped and replaced
with the newsgroup structure that exists today. Since participants knew that
it was a test installation that was going to be wiped, there were some silly
things posted. :-)
--Todd
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Arcane technical history of LUGNET
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| (...) I did, actually. The Wayback Machine has also been helpful in my trip down memory lane, and an early "What's New on LUGNET" page mentions it. :-) (...) 'Twould be interesting to read, I've no doubt! I mentioned before about the RTL archive, (...) (1 week ago, 12-Jun-26, to lugnet.admin.nntp)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Arcane technical history of LUGNET
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| (...) That, or an insistent mind. ;-) (...) Yeah, this is what I was noticing earlier, that I thought might be a clue to the problem. (I now think it's a mirage, a nothing-burger.) "Recently added" turns out to be 9/30/98, two days after launch; (...) (2 weeks ago, 11-Jun-26, to lugnet.admin.nntp)
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