Talk:Eternal September

Christmas Modem Kiddies

A related expression to this, in the BBS communities of the 1980s where I am from, in Canada, was "Christmas Modem Kiddies", or CMKs. Just as university networks had their intakes of new members in September, the public BBSes had their intakes of new members when people got computers and modems (300 or 1200 bps) at Christmas time. I'd like add a reference to this phrase, but I wonder how widespread it was. Do other people recognise the phrase "Christmas Modem Kiddies"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.235.233 (talk) 08:58, 22 November 2004 (UTC)

The BBSs I was on referred to them as "ruggies", i.e. rugrats (though this was not necessarily Christmas-related, the term came to be associated with Christmas due to the influx following the holidays) and "Christmas newbies." Jerry Kindall 22:32, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

has the 'Eternal September' really ended?

Just a thought...

If the reference made by 'Endless September' is the proliferation of AOL users on Usenet, then it officially is.

But an argument can also be made (apologies beforehand to Usenet vets) that 'Endless September' refers to the influx of newbies entering the Internet (specifically the Web) in general; and if taken in that sense then the 'Endless September' is still not over. And I personally hope it never will, as it will mean continued growth in global interactive participatory culture (in opposition of spoon-fed conglomerate-dominated media culture).

Again, just a thought...

--Lemi4 06:59, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC) [my mind-dumpster]

I am old enough to have been there. Pre that September, fully half the denizens were PhD laurates or candidates. One could reasonably expect to strike up a conversation with someone from Dryden on desmodromics(Hi Nancy). It will never be that way again.

Thoglette (talk) 14:41, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not old enough to have been there, but even if the term only should apply to Usenet it is clear that the September has not ended, and will most likely never do so; the majority of people in general and their associated stupidity have ruined the Internet forever, as society in general continuously becomes increasingly dependent on the Internet for arbitrary services the problem is thus only getting worse.

I think the "September that never ended" is actually a very significant peripetia in the history of the Internet; this is because it signifies a turning point in the sense that everything went downhill from there -- i.a. "average Joe" types of persons would influence the network everywhere, not just in Usenet, but everywhere, and ruin every community as if spreading like a plague, the academic nature of the Internet started a steep downhill journey into a bottomless pit, all services quickly started to deprecate only to be replaced by ugly hacks upon HTTP upon HTTP upon HTTP ad infinitum and commercialization of the Internet really accelerated.

I assume the next logical step will be that net neutrality is rendered null and void -- also ultimately a result of the September that never ended.

Perhaps the September that never ended was beneficial for the majority of the people -- i.e. "average Joe"; but it was certainly not a good thing for everyone else, and especially not for the community that existed on the Internet prior to the September who had their entire community robbed from them; much in the same way the BBS community were robbed of their community by the Internet.

Posix memalign (talk) 13:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

My random thoughts

Usenet, in a lot of ways, was (and, yes, I mean "was"; Usenet is dead. Let me take that back. Usenet has become a fire sharing network; Usenet as a discussion medium is dead) a big clique. There was a lot of useful information there, but there was also a lot of attacking of newbies and people with different opinions in a lot of forums. I remember a 1994 article (back when Usenet was the internet) about Usenet, comparing the behavior of members to the rites of street gangs. The whole "anti-AOL" and the resulting attitude which resulted in jokes like "Eternal September" (as I recall, AOL didn't have Usenet until mid-1994) was just one symptom of this cliqueish. IRC was another big clique; the pre-dot-com internet was very cliquey (actually; let me take that back. The Free Chess servers always had nice people; people could express their agression by kicking my butt at Chess instead of being a cliquey snob).

There are some things I miss about Usenet. I miss being able to use Leafnode to download a few Usenet newsgroups to my laptop over a modem, taking my laptop to the library and reading and posting to Usenet while studying; I would have my posted articles uploaded to Usenet that evening when I was online again. Usenet did not need a continuous online connection to be usable. Then again, more and more libraries have wireless internet access.

One of the positive benefits of the dot-com revolution, besides making it so that a given hot girl you see at the pool now has a web page, is that the internet is not the clique it was. I strive to make Wikipedia non-cliquey, and, in fact, remind seasoned members of Wikipedia:Newbies when I see any signs of this cliqueishness. Samboy 08:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Should it be mentioned somewhere...

...that "perpetual September", as suggested by Rolf Schmidt, the former editor of MMFHoH, is a good seven-syllable seasonal reference for spam-themed haiku? =) [1] --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 22:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

If your going to rename it anyway, you might as well rename it to "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" -_- --n00b 30698700:50, 30 September 1993

Me too! Bwanderson (talk) 08:48, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Wait, wait...

You mean Usenet was overrun by illegal immigrants from AOL?

--Aggieben

Who exactly is "You"? Hackwrench 18:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Immigration is related

I don't know why someone apparently without a registered username thought that immigration isn't related, but the concept of "Eternal September" can be expressed as a continual immigration into a community such that the community can never integrate them and maintain a stable state. Hackwrench 17:49, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

No, it’s not. Tuvalkin (talk) 14:26, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Computing SeptDate

I've added a hacked together computation for the current SeptDate, I couldn't find a good reference to how to do this (help?), please see if you can find a problem/fix it.

it's { {#expr:2679+((({ {CURRENTYEAR} }-2001)*365.24) round 0)+(({ {CURRENTWEEK} }-1)*7)+{ {CURRENTDOW} } } }

 = 11418

Explanation: Since 2000 was an exception to the leap year rule I start at 2001.

• 2679 - The last septday of 2000.
• 365.24 - Number of days a year (including leap days).
• round 0 - Round down "partial" leap days.
• (CURRENTWEEK-1*7)+CURRENTDOW - For some reason CURRENTDOY didn't work for me, it works alone but not as part of an expression.

Motti 07:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I remember all dates from this calendar onwards observe the following: leap year every fourth year that doesn't end in a multiple of 100 (ie. all 4th years have leap years except 1800, 2000, 2200, 2400 etc.). Either way, this article is 100% correct. Netiquette is as lost an art as etiquette, seen amongst a similar fraction (>1%) of the community.Nazlfrag 11:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's a page, with source code that converts all dates to their Eternal September date. According to it, the script here is off by two days.Slipgrid (talk) 20:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Diff with Unix timestamp and avoid leap year calculations, like so: 11417.49125. — Dispenser 14:00, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Sources and references

There's been some dispute on the sources and notability... Mrsaius, could you explain your reasoning on that point here? Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert 01:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Repeat insertion of OR related to Google Groups

The section relating to Google Groups continually returns, after repeated removals. Justify the OR and the citation here, don't just keep putting it back. David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 15:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Addendum: rather than quote the OR of one minor blog/site, how about elaborating with a NPOV discussion of the DejaNews web access prior to Google? More references could be found for that. Again, discussion here is recommended before restoring the section. David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍)

Concur with removal. Just because it may be (and even if everyone "knows" it to be) true, we really need a good source to support it. DMacks 19:09, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Dejanews did not add much to Usenet as far as users posting through it. AOL did, and their users have earned the nickname "AOhellers" on Usenet for very good reason. If possible, Google Groupers are even worse. At least, AOLers had some dim realization that they were posting to some other hierarchy - Google Groupers think they are in a fan site. I am on Usenet several hours a day. Take it from me, what I said is true. The problem is finding references. I will not reinsert the section again until I do. -- Elaich ^talk 03:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Your own experience is valid and we can respect that, but it is also OR. (I'm no saint, I've run afoul of this myself a few times.) I've had the same experiences, I was online and on the beach when AOHell opened up its USENET gateway, and it was indeed a #(@*ing monstrous mess. The first 30 newsgroups were bombed to teh stone age with inane luser posts. There was fallout even to us CompuServer users, as any "online service" user got painted with roughly the same bias. BUT ... if you can find reliable sources that document the Google Groups Effect, groovy. Feel free to post drafted text here to get feedback. :) David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 21:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Over in 2005?

The article says "On February 9, 2005, AOL discontinued newsgroup access through its service (this was announced on January 25, 2005[6][7]). September 1993 is thus, according to some, finally over." Actually, in the later 90s, the usenet died out when it became so flooded with spammers on every group that it was unusable. I think this is completely relevant to the logic of this article. Basically September didn't so much as end, but usenet kind of died thanks to spammers. William Ortiz 00:27, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

On a lot of groups (certainly all of the ones I was on), experienced regulars used clients capable of getting rid of most spam in the late 90s by dropping messages cross-posted to more than 2-3 groups and simple filters we could update by hand as needed. Based on what it looked like from the users' side, in 2000 or so, spammers switched from posting a handful of messages from their homes to a dozens of newsgroups at a time from their basements, to renting a server from a commercial provider running software that flooded countless newsgroups with dozens or hundreds of spam at a time and changed the words/phrases so frequently that users/filters couldn't keep up. Xyzzy☥Avatar (talk) 11:10, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

A small note on the final quote

I edited the original article as the one that cited the last sentence, "It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended." didn't realize the dot between "net" and "history". I think this is a small joke to refer to "net history" as another Usenet News Group. Corrected now to fully quote the original.

Using a dot in that manner was very common among IT geeks in the 90s. FWIW the dot was spoken aloud. Robert Brockway (talk) 01:54, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Dated External Links

The external link, "September that never ended in Ursine's Jargon Wiki," is broken. Doesn't seem like that domain host a wiki anymore. This link should be removed.Slipgrid (talk) 20:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

so do it? wtf —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petchboo (talk • contribs) 14:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Inculcate vs. indoctrinate

Typo; I meant to explain my recent reversion more. Inculcate was the right word to begin with. Indoctrinate is POV-y and a loaded word, it has sinister connotations that are not relevant here.  Xihr  05:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

And where do you end up if you click the inculcate link? - Denimadept (talk) 14:41, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Start with the fact that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Continue with the fact that Wikipedia is not in and of itself a reliable source. What a redirect on Wikipedia points to has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Ask, say, m-w.com -- y'know, an actual dictionary -- the same thing and you'll see what the difference is; see definition 2, for which there is no equivalent for the the word inculcate. Indoctrinate has negative bias connotations; inculcate does not.  Xihr  23:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

uhh, "disruptive newcomers" also has negative bias connotations. fixed Asdf98761 (talk) 23:39, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Ref specifically supports that the disruption was a key aspect, not just that there were new users. Whether that's negative or not, that's what the ref supports--see WP:NPOV. DMacks (talk) 23:58, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Eternal September Anthem

Someone wrote a poem to describe the phenomena:

https://groups.google.com/group/rec.humor.oracle.d/msg/1ce643db0ffa4354

144.32.48.87 (talk) 17:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Should Demon Internet be included?

In Septmber '93 Demon was still shipping ka9q to its dial up customers; unlike AOL it required a certain amount of nous to access usenet and Demon didn't pretend that usenet was its own forum service. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.134.105 (talk) 18:11, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

This article reads like a essay.

THis article reads like a angry college kids essay. Statements like -To many "old-timers", these newcomers were far less prepared to learn netiquette than university students. Sound ridiculous. --98.87.94.57 (talk) 01:57, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Did you check the references? That's a pretty accurate summation of what they say. Sorry if it annoys you. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Link

this link might be useful for this article http://motherboard.vice.com/read/its-september-forever • Sbmeirow • Talk • 21:01, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

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Major error in the text

AOL did not invade in 1993. It was GEnie that first invaded, in October if I recall correctly. AOL didn't invade until 1994. Cite: http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/pages/chapter03/ch03_.html

'AOL was a lot smaller--only a million users--and far from the market leader in March 1994, when it set up its "Usenet feature," which allowed a seemingly endless stream of people to tap nervously on their newsreaders, type out, one after another, "Hey, is this working?" and then hit the SEND button to relay this world-shaking message to all of Usenet.'

It was called the "Endless September" because just when the September Newbies seemed to be petering out, the GEnie Newbies showed up. Then as the clues started flowing into the GEnie userbase then the WELL granted Usenet access to its users. Then the wheels started to come off of the train, so to speak. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.236.138.2 (talk) 06:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Who said it first? Nobody of any importance cares.

To editor Srnec: I have reverted your re-insertion of original research. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:07, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

To cite a webpage and quote it is perfectly acceptable original research, since no claim beyond that the webpage says what it can clearly be verified to say is being made. I removed the claim that it was the first time anybody said it. Srnec (talk) 23:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

The source you cited fails WP:SPS. Calling that source "firstuse" and the placement of the text within the article is WP:NOR. I can understand your belief that your addition is neutral but I'm seeking ensure the narrative is covered reliably. This prohibits what you've done. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:41, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I guess somebody of importance cares enough to write about it after all. Srnec (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:10, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Why "more citations" tag?

An editor User:Susmuffin has placed a "more citations" tag on the story - unnecessary in my opinion. There are more than sufficient citations. If no explanation appears, i will remove the tag. I am also returning the useful pop-culture references, which are well sourced and show the extent to which this phrase has spread.- DavidWBrooks (talk) 10:44, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

This article has five paragraphs. Two of them lack citations. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 17:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

That's your argument - a paragraph count? Pretty lame, man - I would normally remove the tag as being misapplied but we'll leave it for a while and see if anybody else cares. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:22, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Rewrite addressing disputes

I spent today rewriting this page. It's my first major edit (be gentle!) and I've tried to address a number of issues in the talk page. I've tried to source the material, and hopefully it doesn't border too much on original research.

From what I can piece together from Wendy Grossman's book, and several other sources, the timing on the AOL access to usenet seems at least somewhat incorrect. I've created a dispute section to discuss the issue. The best source I could find is a 2nd hand press release on technologizer from 1994. (Anyone have access to old press releases?) The usenet posts around the time that I dug up to source never mention AOL, only Delphi.

Grossman's book also includes a quote from Thomas Seidenberg's FAQ on alt.culture.usenet from October 1995, where he includes a section on "September" where he defines it as follows:

The time when college students return to school and start to post stupid questions, repost MAKE MONEY FAST, break rules of netiquette, and just generally make life on Usenet more difficult than at other times of the year. Unfortunately, it has been September since 1993. With the growing sensationalism surrounding the "Information-Superhighway" in the United States, the current September is likely to last into the next century.

The google groups archive seems to be missing a chunk of messages from the newsgroup around the time of the last edit. It's visible on faqs.org, which is blacklisted, and unfortunately it's plain text so not verifiable except Grossman's quote. I had to revert back to Grossman's book as a source for that. I've tried digging up some of the higher quality sources, but there's a general lack of sources.

I dug through some of the older magazines on archive.org, and I can find references to AOL offering newsgroup access in 1994, but none prior to that, but it's collection of source magazines is limited. Geosoco (talk) 10:37, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright, but what is going on with this article now User:Geosoco? I see that User:Drmies took out a fair amount of material recently. I'm not really familiar with this article and don't want to judge, but I mean the article is not too long. As the years progress, it'd make sense to add more detail to articles I would think. So right off three problems I see is:

1) It's not at all clear that the picture of the shirt has anything to do with the subject. The person who posted it to Flickr says so, but that's his own personal interpretation maybe.

2) The lede doesn't get straight to the point of what we're talking about here, should open with something along the lines of

Eternal September or the September that never ended denotes a perceived major and fairly sudden change in social media culture, which occurred around the latter part of 1993.

I say "social media" rather than just "Usenet" because at this time Usenet *was* a major player in internet social media at the time (altho it was not called "social media" yet). After all, AOL and Prodigy and Delphi were just being born at this time, the WWW didn't exist, and even email was not super popular yet I guess, and of course MySpace etc were decades away. Sound like Usenet was the giant of human interaction over the internet? *This* is why the eternal September matters. Willing to be corrected on this point.

3) It's not made clear what is the significance of the month of September. The first paragraph of the main body covered this:

Prior to 1993, Usenet was largely restricted to colleges, universities, and other research institutions. Every September, when the new school year began, incoming students would acquire access to Usenet for the first time. Many would post without taking time to become accustomed to Usenet's standards of conduct and "netiquette". Over time these new users would either learn to comply with the networks' social norms or tire of using the service. The yearly September student influx would eventually calm, but starting in 1983 the influx of new users from many online services continued. Usenet's existing culture did not have the capacity to integrate the sheer number of new users.

This seems fine, but User:Drmies removed it, which I have to wonder about excluding this information helps the reader. He also removed several paragraphs of following material (edit summary "NO. I mean, no. That entire section needs to be condensed into a sentence, or maybe two. first of all it's excessively detailed, and second, it is not even clear how exactly this is relevant to the subject of the article"), which I'd like to hear about more about that and how including this material would be a net negative for the reader's experience. Herostratus (talk) 01:10, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Good question User:Herostratus. In my last edit, I tried to address 2 in the first sentence which got reverted. 3 should definitely be addressed and was on my to-do list, but given the changes after mine, I'm not motivated to spend any more time on it since most of my edits weren't valuable. I can't speak much to the image as it was here before I entered the picture. I tried to clean up some of my initial rewrite including addressing point 2, and that triggered User:Drmies to revert and flag it as a test (it wasn't). They seem to have made a number of additional cuts, none of which I feel were useful or improved the article, and the intro could've just addressed the grammar problems rather than reverting.

I agree that article should be succinct and accessible, but I think the additional detail is important to many people, especially around the dispute. I've seen the phrase being used more, and I think the history of the event and phrase is useful.

Plus, many of the articles we're citing around about AOL and September 1993 aren't themselves sourced, and about half seem to have been written after the Wikipedia article was edited to include AOL and Sept. 1993. I think it's possible we have a self-reinforcing reference loop with the underlying facts being wrong, which makes it difficult to correct with single sources. That's obviously research and beyond the scope of the article, but I think it's worth mentioning the disparity between sources. Geosoco (talk) 02:07, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

What I removed was unverified material/material sourced to forums/Google groups etc. And let's face it, we're not talking about the fall of Constantinople here--we're talking about a little phrase with limited currency. If that currency is somehow not limited, that should be proven by way of reliable secondary sources. Geosoco, I said "test" because I was being diplomatic, or trying to be. The first bit I removed was littered with grammatical mistakes, and the big section was mostly not directly relevant to the topic. If "Background" takes up more than the actual article, then we have a problem--and it should be noteworthy that the sourcing in that Background section was infinitely better than the sourcing for the rest, which in turn suggests that we are NOT dealing with a very important topic here. Drmies (talk) 02:15, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

What's this "today" table on the page?

How is this useful at all? Hunter Hutchins (talk) 08:03, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

It identifies what today's date is according to the calendar that is the article's topic. It's comparable to {{Year in various calendars}} in other calendar articles, but it's a specific day not just a year. DMacks (talk) 12:54, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

@Hunter Hutchins: Read the article. It'll make sense then. If not, let us know what's unclear. - Denimadept (talk) 18:25, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

It does make sense now. Completely unencyclopedic. And not useful. It is literally a joke. Hunter Hutchins (talk) 06:35, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

It fits the tone of the article and provides some (very minor, admittedly) context. "Encyclopedic" doesn't have to mean boring and dry. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:09, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

And in case Hunter Hutchins is instead commenting about the article's topic itself, "encyclopedic" is determined by WP:NPOV and WP:V, regardless of how serious a topic is (or how serious any one of us thinks a topic is). For example, according to the cited refs, it was still being mentioned over 20 years later. DMacks (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

"Great September" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Great September has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 11 § Great September until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 07:02, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Time clock needs fixing

It's just after noon on Thursday May 9 where I'm at, in Central time zone. The clock was reading Weds May 8 until noon hit, and yes, I had both reloaded the page and clicked "refresh" before then, and it kept saying it was Wednesday. I double-checked to see whether any other time zones actually were still in Wednesday, but I don't think there are any. It's just after 17:00 UTC, so I think someone who understands how it's coded needs to fix when this clock thinks it is. (I can't do it myself as I don't do that sort of coding.) Thanks ahead of time to whoever can sort it out! Critterkeeper (talk) 17:15, 9 May 2024 (UTC)