XPost: alt.usage.english, nl.taal   
   From: peter@pmoylan.org   
      
   On 19/12/25 20:05, athel.cb@gmail.com wrote:   
   >   
   > Ruud Harmsen  posted:   
   >   
   >> Thu, 18 Dec 2025 15:13:52 +0100: "s|b"    
   >> scribeva:   
   >>> (Why did you add alt.english.usage twice in your crosspost?)   
   >>   
   >> I intended to change one to ‘alt.usage.english’, but didn’t.   
   >>   
   >> That makes me wonder: why do both groups exist? Isn’t that   
   >> confusing?   
   >   
   > That's been a puzzle for at least 20 years. It's just history.   
   > alt.english.usage is a better name, but alt.usage.english was too   
   > firmly established to be discarded. Most of us cheerfully post to   
   > alt.usage.english, but a few -- Steve, Anton, maybe some others --   
   > continue to prefer alt.english.usage.   
      
   It all started because some news servers were permissive. You only had   
   to mistype the name of a newsgroup, and they would create it for you.   
   That's why Usenet had so many silly-looking group names, with zero   
   traffic (even back in the busy days of Usenet).   
      
   alt.usage.english has that order because it's part of the alt.usage   
   hierarchy. As far as I know there was never any provision for an   
   alt.english hierarchy. But one day someone accidentally typed it the   
   wrong way around, and hey presto the group was created.   
      
   The big attraction of AEU was that it had low traffic (because lots of   
   servers didn't carry it; officially it didn't exist). Back then AUE had   
   between 100 and 200 articles per day, and occasionally 300, and some   
   people found that too many to read, so they were more comfortable with   
   the low-traffic group.   
      
   --   
   Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org   
   Newcastle, NSW   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)