Skirv and unihigh.*

The story of unihigh.* is a painful one, at least for me. It was one of those all-important times/actions/lessons that we all go through a few times in life - you know, the ones that essentially plot out your life and times. Yet, I've never quite written down the whole thing, for one reason or another - probably because I have too much evidence squirreled away to make it short, and not enough to make it comprehensive. But still, perhaps it's time to try.

Creation

I learned about Usenet in late 1993, and started getting involved in uiuc.* shortly thereafter - not too much at first, mind you, but enough to give me the impression that I should give up MUDding and play with this new toy. Soon enough, I decided that we needed our own newsgroups to play in. Not content with a single group (would I ever be?), I decided to push for an entire hierarchy of groups to be created on the UIUC servers. And so when Peter Folk (one of our sysadmins, and a classmate) asked me what groups we should create, I was ready:

unihigh.agora	       Agora Days discussion and announcements.
unihigh.alumni	       Discussion, contact w. and announcements for Uni alums.
unihigh.announce       General announcements. (Moderated)
unihigh.arts	       Performances, shows, exhibits. (Moderated)
unihigh.classifieds    For Sale/Wanted/Trade/Lost/Found.
unihigh.clubs	       Clubs and organizations.
unihigh.comp	       Computers at Uni: questions, requests, complaints.
unihigh.freshmen       Freshmen issues discussion and announcements.
unihigh.gargoyle       Gargoyle articles, information, opinions, etc.
unihigh.gargoyle.d     Discussion of issues discussed in the Gargoyle.
unihigh.juniors	       Junior issues discussion and announcements.
unihigh.library	       Library discussions, announcements, suggestions, etc.
unihigh.misc	       Anything else.
unihigh.monitors       Lab monitor information, discussion, and policy.
unihigh.parents	       Discussion with, about, and for parents.
unihigh.policy	       Discussion of Uni admin, social, academic, etc policies.
unihigh.questions      Uni High help (computers, admissions, classes, etc).
unihigh.seniors	       Senior issues discussion and announcements.
unihigh.sophomores     Sophomore issues discussion and announcements.
unihigh.sports	       Sports announcements and schedules.
unihigh.sports.scores  Sports scores and highlights. (Moderated)
unihigh.subfreshmen    Subbie issues discussion and announcements.
unihigh.yearbook       Yearbook articles, information, opinions, etc.

This list was, of course, insanely long - but what did I know? I knew that I would post to at least a half dozen of these groups, and be interested in all but 2-3; I knew of others that would be interested in some of these topics; what reason did I have to believe that not everyone was quite like me? But still, Peter took the list and passed it up the chain; it made it to UIUC's news administrators, and they said "sure, why not?". After all, they hadn't heard me of me yet, not really. And so the groups were created, in mid-late 1994.

A few new groups have popped up through the years. None have been deleted. And I still read them. But that is not the story.

Early Days

Not too many people read unihigh.* when it was first created - a few teachers here and there, a couple of University students, but mostly my classmates and those of the class below me. We were all Unix novices, but willing and able to learn; we all used nn for our news reading and vi for our editing (well, 2-3 of us used emacs). As far as kids of that era went, I suppose we were fairly tech-savvy (fairly? I should give us more credit). But more importantly, we were voracious, competitive, and especially we were young.

In my early days on Usenet, my social graces were slightly better than those of the stereotypical B1FF-style hacker - I knew how to write, but that was the only real difference. Also, I was a devout and fairly recently converted Libertarian; I had discovered the philosophy on WWIVNet and -Link, and learned how easy it was to argue with the world's general population when you firmly believe that you are *right*. However, the general population of Uni was a tad bit more intelligent than the average right-wing Christian that dialed up to a BBS to talk about how God wanted us to outlaw corkscrews. So, really, I hadn't dealt with anything like this before.

More than that, though I didn't realize it at the time, most everyone else was in the same boat. Nobody knew what they were doing. Nobody *could* know what they were doing. The stage was set for war.

The Flamewars

The flamewars began, as I recall, as a fight over gun control. I was pretty rabidly against it (and still am, for that matter); the others, while not exactly rabidly in favor of it, were certainly closer to center than I was. It escalated over time, as flamewars are wont to do, and eventually got into larger weapons - tanks at first, then nuclear weapons. Being horribly stubborn, I insisted on the insanity of trying to stop people from getting them; at this, some of the others decided that I had gone a bit far. And so things started to get ugly.

We were all posting from the same systems, so we all knew what the others were doing. That was half the fun. For days on end, we would all spend our time online; we would read our news, followup to what seemed relevant, and then restart our newsreader to discover that there were more posts posted in the last 45 minutes than there had been when we first started reading! There were hundreds of posts a day, often 20-30 per person, with me generally the top poster but not really by all that much. It was insane - gleefully so, IMO, though I'm not sure others agree.

But some people took it more seriously than others. I was one of them, that's just natural; but if there hadn't been a second person, perhaps "tragedy would have been avoided" or something like that.

Theft of Identity

If there has been one successful attack on me online, it was an early April Fool's prank played on me back in 1995 by the unihigh.* community. It was too simple - everyone changed their name to "Tim Skirvin" in the From: line. It was meant to show me how arrogant I was; however, it didn't quite have that effect on me. Instead, it essentially shattered me.

I'm not sure I can properly explain what happened, ever. Was I too wrapped up in my personality? Too upset to see myself mis-represented? Afraid others would misinterpret it? Just a bit too much into trying to figure out who I was anyway? Perhaps it was all of them. But this almost sent me into a full breakdown. I've seen further reports of people falling prey to similar attacks (including Bill Palmer), so I know I'm not completely unique on this, but...

I'm not willing to go into it much further. Search on-line if you wish.

Hannah and Anand were two of the major perpetrators. Truth be told, I don't know if I ever really forgave them. Anand, maybe; Hannah, I doubt it. It did lead to the creation of my full killfile, which is certainly something.

It is worthy of note that the administration did take note of this fight, though they didn't do anything about it, and I only learned this by talking with one of the friendlier members of staff, Ms. Hellyer.

Essays

There was one other point of great interest from that time - my Essays. They started in January of 1995, New Year's as I recall; I was tired, but determined to write, and so I did. It became a regular thing; for a while I posted them weekly, until eventually I started mailing them to Jenne instead (shortly after the Identity Theft, as I recall; Jenne was one of the few people to not get involved, and this did not provoke my [then limited] wrath). She took them in good graces, and I kept on writing them because it really did make me feel better. They did eventually stop, but I almost regret having done so. It was good to write those things. Perhaps it was better than my Livejournal now...

Summary

I got into a lot of fights. I got in well over my head. I got hurt. I got hurt a lot. I did a lot of hurting back. But I learned to write, both for an audience and for myself.

Eight Years Later...

It's been a long time since I graduated from Uni. The groups have been mostly silent ever since; there are twice-annual posting flurries as the tech and library staff forces the kids to go through a Computer Ethics section that involves posting, but that's about it. I've tried posting during those periods a couple of times (once I got Frances' express permission; I don't want to corrupt the kids unfairly), but there hasn't been a real response. Usenet just isn't sexy enough for the poor kids. They don't even use nn anymore...

So, essentially, unihigh.* is dead. It had its time, and now it's gone. Maybe someday some new kid will appear and make as much of a mess of things there as I did. With luck, I'll even be there to watch it.

Closing Thoughts

Yes, I'm sure I've overstated the saga just a bit. Quite likely, I'm the only one that remembers it with anything resembling fondness, even if it is the fondness that starts with "look how dumb I was!". I'd love to be proven wrong on this point, mind you; please, if you happen to have been there and remember it, give me a mail.

But as far as I'm concerned, unihigh.* taught me how to deal with people. It really did. Sure, it was primarily by making horrible, horrible mistakes; I doubt that I would go through that experience again willingly. But, my Gods, was that effective or what? Look what it made me! Even if it was just the first steps, it got me talking with people that I actually knew... that's what really made all the difference.

(Oh, what I wouldn't give for archives from that era...)