Weembaville: The First User-Created Newsgroup Community
By Catherine Kelley
(July 5, 1998)
Many have come across Weembaville and wondered about its origins and connection with alt.discuss.weemba! Penryn, a.k.a. pen, a.k.a. Mark, has come forth to take us through the history of "Weembaville," its founder, its purpose, and its connection to the Weemba newsgroup. Also, find out about penryn's ties to both entities. --CK
In March of 1997, as some of you may recall, WebTV initiated direct access to newsgroups. Penryn recalls the phenomenal success of the users response to the webtv.users newsgroup. "Hundreds of posts per day were common," he said. Another newsgroup (NG) followed shortly thereafter known as webtv.talk which penryn thinks was to relieve some of the massive posting to webtv.users. "It was supposed to be an unmoderated forum for the discussion of WebTV related issues." Initially, penryn felt webtv.talk was fun and stimulating. However, he said it changed into a "wild and crazy general discussion group. People of all kinds were there: liberal and conservative, gay and straight, religious and non-believers, and of course, people from every part of the country." Apparently it was close-knit in the beginning because the group started together and "were giddy with the excitement of a new experience." Penryn noted that eventually the group reflected their differences and it had its share of flamers and trolls attempting to disrupt the group. According to penryn, on April 26, 1997, Tito Barkman (tit0) found an empty NG on the Usenet called alt.weemba. Tito quickly spread the word with the help of "Charlie Cat." Penryn indicated that most of the original posters at webtv.talk moved to alt.weemba and that within 24 hours, it had 1000 posts. At this point, I wondered what was a "Weemba" and what was the significance and relevancy to that name. Penryn explained that information provided by "Charlie Cat" revealed "Weemba" is the online name of a fairly famous professor who has posted in the Usenet NGs for years and is known for his sharp mind and caustic wit. Penryn believes the NG was started in the professor's honor. Penryn indicated that the original "Weembans" felt they were settling in new territory. "The group had a small-town feel about it." Then approximately on May 21, 1997, "Mighty Joe" mentioned that he would be listed in the next edition of "Who's Who in America" at which time "HoofArted" and "Bertha35" suggested that alt.weemba should have a "Who's Who in Weemba." Evidently "Tito" read these posts and decided on obtaining a page at GeoCities. Thus the birth of Weembaville which was official by May 21,1997. "It was the first homepage for a WebTV NG and although it looks funny and old-fashioned now, it was considered quite a wonder when it was built," says penryn. "Tito built it entirely with his WebTV, and without knowing much HTML beforehand, which makes it all the more amazing. It was built with WebTV users in mind but primarily for the posters at alt.weemba." Penryn remarked that the Weembaville homepage was built prior to the days of HTML help groups or homepages. "Tito had to learn everything on his own, with help from fellow 'Weembans', such as 'n2play', 'GravitySucks', and 'Phil Dancer'. He wanted the page to be all about 'Weemba', so he included links to 'Weembans' homepages and (his pride and joy) the calendar page listing all the 'Weembans' birthdays, which took Tito weeks to build. The page also included links to 'HoofArted's Weembaville Gazette and Personal Start page in addition to 'n2play's Weemba Chat." On the first page of Weembaville, a message board announced and recorded not only birthdays, but anniversaries, proposals, marriages, illnesses and deaths. "In its heyday (May-August 1997), this page got hundreds of hits per day." According to penryn, as the Weemba NG continued to grow, it changed and lost much of the "original ambiance." He noted that the founding members began to leave one by one. "Tito became frustrated with the group, and even closed Weembaville down. He was encouraged to reopen it, but soon thereafter, he decided to leave the group altogether." (This occurred at the same time that penryn left the group.) Penryn did not have the same amount of time as Tito to spend on the upkeep of the homepage. "Most of the original 'Weembans' had left by now, and the remaining members decided to open their own homepage (Weemba-Land) for alt.weemba." Now this left penryn with a homepage with no home. He was not sure what to do with Tito's homepage at this point. He began to redirect its emphasis more towards the WebTV newsgroups in general rather than just on alt.weemba. He then added a list of the then "w" NGs. It was at this time that penryn became more involved with the "w" NGs (which later became the alt.discuss NGs) and became excited about their growth and success. He added that the former original "Weembans" founded most of the original "w" groups (alt.discuss groups) and some non-alt.discuss groups which included the following groups: my grandchild, n2play, disability, gay, mens-forum, home.cooking, katzanjammer, cats, politics, womens-forum, womens.issues, humor, football, talk-radio, gay-net gruppen and alt.x.y. Penryn's long term goal was to have a homepage about all the newsgroups that WebTV users use but did not do much about it until "WebBabe" gave him some encouragement. He had to decide whether to create this homepage as part of the Weembaville one or separate from it. "This was a difficult decision for me," says penryn. "I wanted to keep Weembaville for both sentimental and historical reasons as it was, after all, the first of the newsgroup homepages and sort of famous in its own way. But if I did make Weembaville a homepage about all newsgroups, I would have to change the name, because even to this day many people still think Weembaville is the homepage for news:alt.weemba." Since he did not feel right about changing the name or appearance, he built a separate page (Newsgroups HOME) on May 21, 1998 and added a link from Weembaville. The date was significant because it is the anniversary of Weembaville's opening. "It really wasn't finished (and still isn't), but for sentimental reasons, I wanted to open it on that day." Penryn's purpose for creating Newsgroups HOME was to bring some order to the chaos of the news:alt.discuss hierarchy. "There are over 200 groups in news:alt.discuss and it is difficult to know what is available. I felt that by putting the groups in areas, it would be easier to know them. I also included the non-alt.discuss groups that WebTV users frequent so that people would be aware of them."
Weembaville
Weemba-Land
E-mail: penryn@mac.com |
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