Eternal September

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Eternal September ( German  Perpetual September , also: English September that never ended / September that never ended or English endless September / endless September ) is Usenet - jargon for the period from September 1993. Behind the use of these terms the view that the level of discussions and general behavior in Usenet groups has decreased significantly since September 1993 due to the steady flow of new Usenet subscribers. The term is often used in the English original, but also sporadically in the German translation.

history

When Usenet was established as a discussion medium, universities in particular had access to it. Every year in September, new students who initially knew nothing about common behavior and netiquette were given access to Usenet. September was the period of the year that brought the greatest number of beginners to the Usenet medium. After a while, usually towards the end of September, the newcomers generally learned to adapt.

In September 1993, the large, commercial network provider AOL gave its customers access to Usenet for the first time. From the point of view of many long-established Usenet participants, these newcomers were much less able to acquire the customs than the freshmen. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that AOL did not educate its customers about the customs. Also, newsgroups looked like another AOL service to AOL customers. Last but not least, it was the sheer number of new participants. The long-established users were simply overwhelmed by having the usual discussions with all newcomers who they accused of lacking netiquette and knowledge of the correct use of the medium. However, since AOL complaint management against its own users did not act adequately in the opinion of many Usenet participants, AOL was once on the verge of a "Usenet Death Penalty" (UDP), the "Usenet death penalty", which the majority of the others received Usenet server no longer passed on AOL-based postings and thus isolated AOL from the rest of Usenet.

Since then, the Internet's dramatic increase in popularity has resulted in a constant stream of new users. Therefore, from the point of view of pre-1993 users, the normal September influx of newbies never ended, and the talk was soon of September that would never end .

On January 25, 2005, AOL announced that it would discontinue its own news server , mainly due to a lack of interest from average customers. On February 9, 2005, AOL officially ended this offer.

distribution

As an homage to this term, some computer programs such as Mutt are able to display the date as a function of September 1, 1993, if they resort to modified date programs such as sdate . For example, October 27, 2014 was September 7727, 1993. Even today, Eternal-September.org is a news server that keeps this phenomenon in mind.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ronald Hitzler, Anne Honer, Michaela Pfadenhauer (eds.): Post-traditional communities: theoretical and ethnographic explorations . Vs Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-15731-3 , pp. 128 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 24, 2011]).
  2. ↑ Michael Fertik, David Thompson: Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier . Mcgraw-Hill Professional, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8144-1509-2 , pp. 39 f . ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 24, 2011]).
  3. ↑ Jens Ihlenfeld: Usenet Death Penalty against AOL required. In: Golem.de. Klaß & Ihlenfeld Verlag GmbH, May 29, 1999, accessed on March 14, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Norbert Luckhardt: Usenet ban against AOL required. In: heise online. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, May 27, 1999, accessed on March 14, 2011 .
  5. ^ John Oates: AOL ditches newsgroups. In: The Register. January 25, 2005, accessed March 14, 2011 .
  6. ^ Never Ending September Date. Retrieved April 24, 2011 .
  7. ↑ Website of the news server "Eternal September"