User:Gaditb/sandbox/Eternal September

Eternal September or The September That Never Ended is Usenet slang for a period usually considered to begin in 1993, when larger online service providers began giving USENET access to their many users, overwhelming the existing culture for online forums. It is commonly regarded as a watershed moment in the history of online communities, changing the dynamics to a new normal which we are still experiencing now.

Background
(Online services provided their own, in-house (often moderated to greater or lesser degrees), servers.)


 * CIX/CompuServe: Read only USENET gateway in 1992 (net.wars) // "at that time" (When Delphi opened Usenet access? Or when CIX opened Usenet access?) had 1.2 million (net.wars) // 1.5 million subscribers in late 1994 (at publish time of Netiquette)
 * Demon Internet: British direct-access ISP (so includes Usenet access through that), started up in mid-1993.
 * Delphi: first national commercial online service to open a gateway to the wider Internet (including Usenet), in early 1993. 100,000 subscribers at the time.
 * Prodigy: "at that time" (When Delphi opened Usenet access? Or when Prodigy opened Usenet access (sometime in 1993, Netiquette)?) had 2 million (net.wars) // "It was designed from the very beginning to attract mainstream users, and try to project an image of 'fun', as opposed to 'seriousness'." (Internet History Podcast)
 * AOL: 1 million users, Usenet access in 1994 (net.wars) // 1 million August 1994, 2 million six months later, kept growing (Internet History Podcast)
 * Genie:

"Those of us who got onto the Internet in the summer of 1993 were the earliest fringes of what became massive waves of commercial immigration from 1994 onward. We were probably the last newcomers to glimpse the Net as it was before the boundary disputes between cyberspace and the real world began in earnest."

Netiquette
(? A specific section on this concept, as applied to early USENET?)

Timeline
(? Is this the best name for this section?)

Naming
Cite the actual sources that named it here.

Early Discussion
Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net. Dave Fischer's Extension: 1993 was The Year September Never Ended [so far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence he's wrong...]

Impact
Talk about its use to understand current internet dynamics here.

"In between there have been enormous social changes as the size of the Internet population has shot from an estimated 30 million in early 1994 to as many as 60 million in early 1997."

Legacy
Talk about post-history of it here: when AOL finally turned off its connection to USENET, etc.