Farewell, Simpsons-L

Farewell, Simpsons-L November 1, 2010

      The first global forum for Simpsons fan discussions on the
Internet was the Usenet newsgroup alt.tv.simpsons. Rapidly increasing
number of Internet users in the 1990s made a.t.s. a very busy and
popular place, but also attracted trollers and other users who often
spoiled the mood for everyone else. In 1996, The Simpsons Archive
launched a moderated mailing list to serve as an alternative for
alt.tv.simpsons. The purpose of the mailing list was the same: a place
where fans from all over the globe may discuss episodes, share
information, news and opinions as well as receive answers to their many
questions about The Simpsons.
       Simpsons-L became very popular. In less than two years there were
over 1,000 subscribers and up to 100+ messages a day. There is also at
least one Simpsons-L marriage. A subscriber from San Francisco,
California and another from Winnipeg, Canada, met on Simpsons-L mailing
list, and eventually got married on January 1, 2000.
      The new decade brought web-based forums and the majority of
Internet users took their discussions to message boards rather than
"old-fashioned" Usenet or mailing lists. Most popular ones among
Simpsons fans were "Springfield Message Board" and "No Homers Club".
Gradually, alt.tv.simpsons and Simpsons-L became more and more quiet.
Additionally, the number of the kind of Simpsons fans who love the show
enough to find a place to discuss it has decreased in general. Not to
mention the rising popularity of social media over web forums recently.
      In light of these trends described above, a decision was made at
The Simpsons Archive to terminate the beloved Simpsons-L. The final
discussions are going on at the time of writing this, and the service
will close permanently during this week.
      If you want to keep up on what's going on at snpp.com, please
click "like" our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/thesimpsonsarchive) or
follow our Twitter feed (@SimpsonsArchive). For discussions, we
recommend No Homers Club (www.nohomers.net) and � of course �
alt.tv.simpsons.

From http://www.snpp.com/news.html

Jouni

"Jouni Paakkinen" wrote in message news:4ccf1605$0$32150$[email]...

Smell ya later.

According to L.I.S.A. FAQ the group was created "during the third week of March 1990" - which means we're late and nearly missed it!

But it's time to celebrate somehow. For starters, I'll post an "ATS 20 YEARS" graphic to snpp.com after next Sunday's THOH.

Would you or someone like to write a piece for www.snpp.com/news.html?

Jouni

According to http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.simpsons/about this group began in May 1990, not in March of that year. That page shows how many posts there were each month. (What happened in 1995?)

On Tue, 9 Nov 2010, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

That is't necessarily an accurate source.

Dejanews came online in 95 or 96, and that's when their archive started. They were dying in the early 2000s, so google bought the archive. Then later google found some other sources of archive material, and tossed that in. But it was never certain that the added archive was complete.

The place archiving this newsgroup may not have known about the newsgroup until some time later. It takes time for a new newsgroup to propagate, the moreso the further back in history you go. Or it might have been sporadic for a bit. I've seen things of mine that predate dejanews, but I also know that there were messages out there of mine from 1995 that are not at google.

The thing to do is look for the newsgroup creation message. That would be a more definitive source of the starting date.

Michael

Yes, that's right. Haven't heard from them in years.

You're welcome - although it's Gary Goldberg who's to thank for it (and so many other things). I just posted a hell of a lot and became Trissa's co-moderator a little later.

And now we're pulling the plug together. ;)

Jouni