The backbone cabal was an informal organization of large-site

news server A news server is a collection of software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. Access to Usenet is only available through news server providers. Articles and ...

administrators Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * ...

of the worldwide distributed

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically disti ...

-based discussion system

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

. It existed from about 1983 at least into the 2000s. The cabal was created in an effort to facilitate reliable propagation of new Usenet posts. While in the 1970s and 1980s many

s only operated during night time to save on the cost of long-distance communication, servers of the backbone cabal were available 24 hours a day. The administrators of these servers gained sufficient influence in the otherwise anarchic Usenet community to be able to push through controversial changes, for instance the

Great Renaming The Great Renaming was a restructuring of Usenet newsgroups that took place in 1987. B News maintainer and UUNET founder Rick Adams is generally considered to be the initiator of the Renaming. Motivation The primary reason for the Great Renamin ...

newsgroups during 1987.

History

As Usenet has few technologically or legally enforced hierarchies, those that formed were largely

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

. People acquired power through persuasion (both publicly and privately), public debate, force of will (often via aggressive

flames A flame (from Latin '' flamma'') is the visible, gaseous part of a fire. It is caused by a highly exothermic chemical reaction taking place in a thin zone. When flames are hot enough to have ionized gaseous components of sufficient density they ...

), garnering authority and respect by spending much time and effort contributing to the community (by being a maintainer of a FAQ, for example; see also Kibo, etc.).

Mary Ann Horton Mary Ann Horton (born Mark R. Horton, on November 21, 1955), is a Usenet and Internet pioneer. Horton contributed to Berkeley UNIX (BSD), including the vi editor and terminfo database, (see Acknowlegments section at end of file) created the firs ...

recruited membership in and designed the original physical topology of the Usenet Backbone in 1983. Gene "Spaf" Spafford then created an email list of the backbone administrators, plus a few influential posters. This list became known as the Backbone Cabal and served as a "political (i.e. decision making) backbone". Other prominent members of the cabal were Brian Reid, Bob Allisat, Chuq von Rospach and Rick Adams.

In internet culture

During most of its existence, the cabal (sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; those involved would often respond "

There is no Cabal ''There Is No Cabal'' (abbreviated TINC) is a catchphrase and running joke found on Usenet. The journalist Wendy M. Grossman writes that its appearance on the ''alt.usenet.cabal'' FAQ reflects conspiracy accusations as old as the Internet itse ...

" (sometimes abbreviated as "TINC"'), whenever the existence or activities of the group were speculated on in public. It is sometimes used humorously to dispel cabal-like organizational conspiracy theories, or as an ironic statement, indicating one who knows the existence of "the cabal" will invariably deny there is one. This belief became a model for various conspiracy theories about various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking over Usenet or the Internet. Spoofs include the "Eric Conspiracy" of moustachioed hackers named "Eric"; ex-members of the P.H.I.R.M.; and the

Lumber Cartel The Lumber Cartel was a facetious conspiracy theory popularized on USENET that claimed anti-spammers were secretly paid agents of lumber companies. In November 1997, a participant on news.admin.net-abuse.email posted an essay to the newsgroup. ...

putatively funding anti-

spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ...

efforts to support the paper industry. The result of this policy was an aura of mystery, even a decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 following an internal fight.

History

In internet culture

References

Further reading

External links