AI-generated summary of Usenet

An AI (Claude) wrote this page from a local archive of the Usenet newsgroup alt.college.college-bowl (1993–2003). It is not a QBWiki article. Nobody at QBWiki, and none of the people it mentions, has reviewed it, and it may get facts, dates or emphasis wrong. Claims are footnoted to the original posts on Usenet Rewind, and quoted posts are shown word for word from the archive: check those before relying on anything here.

alt.college.college-bowl/2000–2003

From Usenet Quizbowl Annals · AI-generated summary of Usenet
alt.college.college-bowl in 2000–2003
The empty room
Posts766 (2000: 531; 2001: 80; 2002: 74; 2003: 81)[1]
Quizbowl postsabout 10
Busiest monthApril 2000 (133 posts, mostly one cross-posted flood)
Last on-topic exchange3–4 March 2003 (main archive)
Last post30 December 2003 (spam)
← 1998–1999

In its last four archived years, from 2000 to 2003, alt.college.college-bowl received 766 posts, of which perhaps ten concerned quizbowl — and five of those were one poster's reposts of articles from 1994 and 1995. The community had long since moved to a mailing list and then to Yahoo-hosted groups; what remains is a record of what happened to the room it left behind. Football fans read the name as a guide to bowl games, bowlers as a guide to bowling, spammers as a guide to college; the cross-posters who had flooded the group in 1996 came back to tour it, nostalgically; and every so often a lone quizbowl player knocked on the door and was answered with silence or a forwarding address.

2000

On 23 January Stanford's Brian Palmer asked whether anyone had contacted "R." about gating the mailing list to the newsgroup. No reply is archived; it is the last trace of the 1999 revival plan.[2] April's 133 posts were almost all a single 109-post "Meow." flood on an eight-group Newsgroups line, aimed at quite another newsgroup.[3]

On 10 July Myron M. Meyer posted five "Classix", reposts of a.c.c-b articles from 1994–95 with no commentary: a review of flashcard software by Matt Colvin, Pat Matthews's ten rules for a first tournament, a 1994 thread on the value of "our kind of knowledge", James Dinan's notes on writing for a GW tournament, and two joke bonuses John Sheahan's team had written for a 1995 ACF regional.[4] Nobody replied. They are the last substantial quizbowl prose on the group, and all of it was five years old.

From late October an Oklahoma fan posting as "Flak" wrote weekly college-football commentary, first to a.c.c-b alone and then cross-posted with rec.sport.football.college. Some ninety posts of ordinary, mostly civil fan argument followed, about the BCS, Oklahoma's unbeaten season and Notre Dame's Fiesta Bowl bid.[5] The era's most active good-faith conversation took place because a football fan took "college-bowl" literally.

2001

In January a seven-group thread titled "Mission." reposted, under Matt Bruce's name from a parody domain, the 1996 proposal to "invade" alt.tv.beavis-n-butthead that the cross-posters regard as the start of the meow wars.[6] Old hands reacted knowingly, and a poster signing as Shawn Pickrell, a 1996 regular, turned up to chat with the cross-posters about whether they still needed a.c.c-b as a buffer.[7] In May a cross-posted thread quoted in full a history titled "MEOW", credited to Tim Young and hosted on a GWU page, tracing how a.c.c-b was overrun from 1994 to 2000. Its last paragraph says that as of August 2000 the group's role had been entirely taken over by a moderated "Yahoo! Quizbowl Club" founded by David Levinson.[8] At the end of May a post linked to a message on a Yahoo! Clubs "quizbowl" board.[9]

2002

May 2002 had no posts at all. In January a player whose coach was new asked whether the group had anything to do with quiz bowl, since the Stanford packet archive was all the player could find; nobody answered.[10] In September Michael R. Kesti asked how a group comes to be home to spammers and trolls, and then, for anyone still on topic, offered free plans and source code for an eight-player microcontroller game-show controller with lockout, countdown and tones.[11] The only reply was a taunt cross-posted with a white-power music group; that exchange, and spam for a racist web site, made September the busiest month after 2000. In December a cross-posting regular posted a sightseeing "tour" that pointed out a.c.c-b, completely empty.[12] One reply answered with Horace's lament for the fleeting years.[13]

2003

The last genuine quizbowl exchange in the main archive came on 3–4 March 2003:

Loading post from the archive…

The reply came from an unnamed poster on Case Western's news server.[14] In July a post titled "Does anyone still read this site?" remarked that the group used to be fun. Its one reply came from someone who read it occasionally but did not know what it was about.[15] The last post in the main archive, on 30 December 2003, is a chain letter.

After 2003

The Internet Archive's copy of the group continues with 272 posts from 2004 to 2014. One of them begins a genuine on-topic thread: in June–July 2004 a reader asked when Ken Jennings had played for BYU, and Archie Leach — a regular of both the football and flame groups who had kept a real interest in quizbowl — remarked that it had taken a Jeopardy! champion to get an on-topic thread going. That thread is not in the local archive app, and so is not linked here.[16] The last on-topic exchange of the group's life is therefore not the one in March 2003.

Major threads

  • "Meow." (April 2000) — the era's single biggest event, with no connection to a.c.c-b except its place on the Newsgroups line.[3]
  • Flak's football season (October–December 2000) — the largest good-faith conversation, about the wrong kind of bowl.[5]
  • "Classix" (July 2000) — the old articles re-shelved, unanswered.[4]
  • "Mission." (January–March 2001) — the cross-posters' origin story, re-enacted as nostalgia.[6]
  • The "MEOW" history (May 2001) — the clearest account in the archive of why the group died, and the only one in the era that says where the community went.[8]
  • The tour (December 2002) — the cross-posters' own epitaph for the group.[12]
  • "Regional Tournament Packets (RCT)" (March 2003) — the last real question, answered with a referral.[14]

Tournaments and results posted

No contemporary tournament results, standings, scores or statistics were posted to the group in 2000–2003.

ItemDateWhat was postedRef
2003 CBI Region 2 tournament22 February 2003A competitor asks whether packets are available; the one reply says College Bowl packets generally are not released[14]
Reposted 1994–95 material10 July 2000Writing notes from a 1995 GW tournament, joke bonuses from a 1995 ACF regional, hosting tips from Penn Bowl V[4]
Game-show controllerSeptember 2002Plans for a home-built eight-player lockout system[11]

People

The quizbowl people of the era can be listed almost in full: Brian Palmer (Stanford), with an unanswered January 2000 question; Myron M. Meyer, archivist rather than conversationalist; Kristina, the player with the new coach; Michael R. Kesti, the buzzer builder; "mp", the Region 2 competitor; the unnamed Case Western poster who answered; and The Drunken Master, who remembered when the group was fun. Boundary figures include Archie Leach, at home in both the football and flame groups, and a 2001 poster signing as Shawn Pickrell, probably but not certainly the 1996 regular. A 2000 poster using the name of Petrea Mitchell, from a different address, cannot be identified with Mitchell and is not attributed here.

Notable posts

See also

References

  1. ^ Counts are from the local archive and its per-year statistics. The content estimates come from a rough classification of all 766 posts and should be treated as approximate.
  2. ^ Brian Palmer, “Anything done about the revival?”, alt.college.college-bowl, 23 January 2000 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–1.
  3. ^ a b Anonymous cross-poster (unreadable display name), “Meow.”, alt.college.college-bowl, 20 April 2000 [Usenet Rewind].
  4. ^ a b c Myron M. Meyer, “Classix: Review: Flashcard Programs -- LONG!”, alt.college.college-bowl, 10 July 2000 [Usenet Rewind]; Myron M. Meyer, “Classix: Ten things you have to do for a start-up tourney”, alt.college.college-bowl, 10 July 2000 [Usenet Rewind]; Myron M. Meyer, “Classix: Valuing our kind of knowledge”, alt.college.college-bowl, 10 July 2000 [Usenet Rewind]; Myron M. Meyer, “Classix: Lightheared GWJCV info”, alt.college.college-bowl, 10 July 2000 [Usenet Rewind]; Myron M. Meyer, “Classix: Re: ACF regionals: Tech's round and miscellany”, alt.college.college-bowl, 10 July 2000 [Usenet Rewind].
  5. ^ a b Flak, “Quite a weekend”, alt.college.college-bowl, 22 October 2000 [Usenet Rewind].
  6. ^ a b Unknown (posting as "Matt Bruce" from a parody domain), “Re: Mission.”, alt.college.college-bowl, 9 January 2001 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–11. Parody of Bruce's name; not Bruce's post.
  7. ^ S.T. Pickrell, “Re: Mission.”, alt.college.college-bowl, 2 February 2001 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 4–6.
  8. ^ a b Anonymous cross-poster (as "The Spanish Inquisition"), “Re: Meow-meow Presidents of the United States of America meow kitty?”, alt.college.college-bowl, 5 May 2001 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 3–10, 111–117. The history reaches the archive triple-quoted inside a troll thread; the final paragraph is signed "Edmund", so its authorship is unclear, and its claims are its own.
  9. ^ The Original Archie Leach, “THE SMRTEST RSFC IDOT OF ALL CONQUERS UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN COLLEGE BOWL”, alt.college.college-bowl, 31 May 2001 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–3.
  10. ^ Kristina, “does this have anything to do with quiz bowl?”, alt.college.college-bowl, 27 January 2002 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–5.
  11. ^ a b Michael R. Kesti, “Quiz bowl/Jeopardy hardware”, alt.college.college-bowl, 9 September 2002 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–26.
  12. ^ a b Cross-poster "The 2-Belo", “And here, folks, if you look to your right....”, alt.college.college-bowl, 11 December 2002 [Usenet Rewind]. Line 0.
  13. ^ mimus, “Re: And here, folks, if you look to your right....”, alt.college.college-bowl, 11 December 2002 [Usenet Rewind]. Line 5.
  14. ^ a b c mp, “Regional Tournament Packets (RCT)”, alt.college.college-bowl, 3 March 2003 [Usenet Rewind]; Anonymous (via Case Western news server), “Re: Regional Tournament Packets (RCT)”, alt.college.college-bowl, 4 March 2003 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–6.
  15. ^ The Drunken Master, “Does anyone still read this site?”, alt.college.college-bowl, 25 July 2003 [Usenet Rewind]. Lines 0–2; Top Shop, “Re: Does anyone still read this site?”, alt.college.college-bowl, 29 July 2003 [Usenet Rewind]. Line 8.
  16. ^ Internet Archive copy of alt.college.college-bowl (mbox dated 25 February 2014), thread "Ken Jennings", June–July 2004. Not included in the local archive app.