Posted by At first glance, the recreation newsgroup of UseNet, known colloquially as rec, could be perceived as a group that has an anything goes mentality, due to its topics that arise out of popular culture, but after digging deeper, one soon finds that regulation of a newsgroup is crucial to both the vitality of the group’s discussion thread, as well as community member retention. On a more focused scale, the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.starwars.info gives insight into what regulation truly stands for within the circuit of culture. As a niche newsgroup with only 849 messages, one is able to read through its discourse in its entirety, subsequently allowing for trends within conversation monitoring to be recognized. Regulation can be seen in action within the rec.arts.sf.starwars.info newsgroup through the frequent posting of the group’s written bylaws, human moderation of messages, and the overwhelming nicheness found within the member’s discourse that attracts only the most dedicated Star Wars fans.
The third message ever sent on this newsgroup is titled “Welcome to rec.arts.sf.starwars.info,” and it serves as the group’s bylaws by outlining specific information about proper message submission.[1] These regulations pertain to both the technicality and the content of the message. Regarding technicality, the bylaws state, “Submissions must be in plain ASCII format, with lines wrapped somewhere between column 60 and 79; 72 is recommended. Any attached images or other binaries will be removed by the moderation software, and HTML submissions will be converted to text. Submissions which do not convert cleanly to plain ASCII will be rejected.”[2] The concreteness of this formatting ensures that all newsgroup members use the same software techniques when constructing messages. As a result, the messages were able to be posted more efficiently since the newsgroup was not overwhelmed from processing various types of formats. As to the content of these messages, one of the first lines within the newsgroup’s bylaws cites that “this newsgroup will be a moderated group for the dissemination of information on topics pertaining to Star Wars.”[3] By placing this declaration near the top of the page, it signifies that the rec.arts.sf.starwars.info discussion thread was focused on maintaining adherence to its topic, while simultaneously warding off viewers who came to this site with an intent to talk about non-Star Wars content. Lastly, these community bylaws were posted roughly every month, and often bi-monthly, which emphasizes the extent to which its members value the regulation of messages in order to maintain proper discussion flow.
While the stating of bylaws and the encouragement of rule following can be an effective measure in maintaining peace within an online chatroom, there comes a point in which human message moderation must take place in order to keep the newsgroup’s discourse flowing naturally. Since its creation in 1997, rec.arts.sf.starwars.info has had five different moderators over the years. Out of this group, Brian Edmonds arose as the most prominent mitigator and poster of content. While it is impossible to see messages that have been taken down from the newsgroup, it can be inferred that Brian prioritized sifting through unwanted messages due to the extremely small quantity of spam messages being present within the site. After a complete reading of all 849 messages on this newsgroup, there were only nine messages that included non-Star Wars related content, and this emphasizes the smooth flow of conversation within the newsgroup as a result of this content-cleanliness. Most of these spam messages were simply ramblings about political or religious ideology, with some messages aiming at persuading the newsgroup’s members into joining these belief systems. Additionally, these spam messages were sent to multiple newsgroups outside of this particular one about Star Wars, and this signifies that the sender was trying to bypass regulation techniques via increasing the quantity of message recipients. One particular message sent across various UseNet groups states, “The unforgiveable sins this earth must confront and overcome are Nationalism, capitalism, and hoarding. The idea of every nation should be forgot, price should be struck from the commons, and princes should be seen for the devils they are.”[4] The presence of such an outlandish message in the context of a strictly Star Wars related chat emphasizes that while Brian got close to keeping the newsgroup spam free, complete and total regulation of a newsgroup is impossible due to the public nature of this site, regardless of its niche-ness.
When comparing the total message quantity of rec.arts.sf.starwars.info to other newsgroups, one realizes that this community is incredibly small. Other movie-related newsgroups, such as alt.movies.hitchcock have nearly 34,000 messages, while rec.arts.sf.starwars.info has 849 messages. This niche-ness allows for regulation through member retention rate because only dedicated Star Wars fans were able to keep up with messages due to the detailed knowledge base that was required for understanding the content within various posts. A small newsgroup correlated with lower amounts of spam because the members present within the chat were more dedicated towards keeping the conversation flowing, rather than posting spam as clickbait towards large newsgroup audiences. The members of rec.arts.sf.starwars.info used this newsgroup as resource share point, and since the tone was more informative than opinionated, a lack of spam occurred as a result. Additionally, this newsgroup occurred during a lull in the Star Wars world since the original trilogy was over a decade old and the prequel trilogy had not been produced or released yet. This lack of mainstream content correlates to the retention of a smaller group of die-hard members, rather than bandwagon come-and-go fans. A small quantity of incoming messages allowed for regulation to be a more thorough affair due to the increased time that moderators had between receiving and posting a message, and this resulted in a more meticulous effort to eliminate spam from the newsgroup.
Rather than a bureaucratic approach to regulation, the UseNet community rec.arts.sf.starwars.info incorporates an efficient approach to filtering unwanted content through the use of group accountability through bylaws, human moderation of spam, and niche-ness built through member retention. The dedication of this newsgroup’s members as well as its moderators formulated an environment with very little distraction from Star Wars discourse, and this allowed for conversation to flow naturally, enabling members to progress the discussion forward in both an enjoyable and informative manner. Although rec.arts.sf.starwars.info did not boast the largest UseNet message thread or have the highest number of members, it achieved what many overflowing newsgroups could not: a near total regulation of unrelated message content.
[1] FAQ Autoposter, “Welcome to rec.arts.sf.starwars.info,” Thunderbird, October 27, 2003, http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/rec.arts.sf.starwars.info/.
[2] FAQ Autoposter, “Welcome to rec.arts.sf.starwars.info.”
[3] FAQ Autoposter, “Welcome to rec.arts.sf.starwars.info.”
[4] Karol Wojtyla, “Last rites declaration of Ioannes Paulus PP. II (Karol Wojtyla),” Thunderbird, April 2, 2005, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/index.htm.
Bibliography
Autoposter, FAQ. “Welcome to rec.arts.sf.starwars.info.” Thunderbird, October 27, 2003. http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/rec.arts.sf.starwars.info/.
Wojtyla, Karol. “Last rites declaration of Ioannes Paulus PP. II (Karol Wojtyla).” Thunderbird, April 2, 2005. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/index.htm.
Cultural History of the Internet 