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From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: I miss Gerry Quinn
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2024 10:53:24 -0400
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On Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:23:52 -0000 (UTC), vallor <vallor@cultnix.org>
wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 17:17:24 -0000 (UTC), Ross Ridge wrote:

>> Spalls Hurgenson  <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>Of course, Google's archive isn't complete; it only goes back to late
>>>1994. There are probably earlier "Mike S." posts that are, sadly, now
>>>lost to history. 
>> 
>> For me, the Google Groups archive for this newsgroup goes back to
>> when it was created in early 1993.  That includes a post from a "Mike
>> S." about Carrier Command on November 1, 1993, so I think maybe you got
>> your years confused.

>> 	https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/c/
>0F1kP8yklS4/m/QOfilI3U_acJ

>> The earliest "Mike S" post (without the final period, so maybe a 
>diferrent
>> person) I could find was this one on the subject of "DoD License Plate
>> Frame in PostScript for ftp'ing", dated August 6th, 1991:

>> 	https://groups.google.com/g/tx.motorcycles/c/5sEvzCnnYDo/m/
>42FA4F2TWm4J

I limited myself to searching just c.s.i.p.g.a since -as you noted-
"Mike S" isn't really that unique a nom de plume (sorry Mike! ;-), and
in the two cases above they _definitely_ both refer to different
people based on the information given in each post. And neither of
them are necessarily "our" Mike S. 



That search actually sent me down a long rabbit hole of re-reading old
csipga posts. (Even I'm not immune to nostalgia! ;-). It was sort of
fun seeing how the character of Usenet changed over the years. A few
things I noted:

   - Usenet was undeniably more active back then, but -wow!- 
     a lot of the content was duplication of stuff already 
     said. Somebody would introduce a thread, initiating a 
     response and discussion, ten posts later somebody would 
     respond to the original post making comments already 
     debunked, which people would then respond to again, and 
     then ten posts later the cycle would repeat. And once 
     all that was done, somebody else would come in and 
     start a _new_ thread that basically said exactly the 
     same thing as the first poster.

   - Related to the above, Usenet was -in some ways- a lot 
     _slower_. Propagation of messages between the various 
     nodes (servers) could take days, hence the late arrivals 
     to some threads. Even disregarding aforementioned the 
     duplication issue, it just took longer for discussions 
     to complete. That's not to say that there weren't a lot 
     of spur-of-the-moment off-the-cuff comments, just that 
     the messaging protocol limited how fast others would see 
     them and be able to react.

     - In terms of discussion, you can really see how the 
     availability of easy search (Google) and quick access to 
     information (WWW) has changed how we write about things 
     now. There's a lot more certainty; modern Usenet discourse 
     feels a lot more objective. We can more easily point to 
     evidence supporting our cases, whether that's a news 
     article, a link on Steam, or whatever. There was a lot 
     more guesswork and supposition and unspoken "trust 
     me"-isms 30 years ago. It all felt a lot more ephemeral.

   - Signatures were cool. Often annoying too, but cool. They 
     were a hint at the personality of the author, and it was fun 
     to see them change over time. I'm halfway inspired to make 
     one up for myself again. ;-)