Hercules and Xena |
Herc/Xena Newsgroups Are Easy To Find...Sort Of | Hercules and Xena essays |
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Hercules and Xena |
Herc/Xena Newsgroups Are Easy To Find...Sort Of | Hercules and Xena essays |
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Herc/Xena Newsgroups Are Easy To Find...Sort Of
Note: Because of extensive flaming and abuse in the newsgroups, Xenite.Org no longer endorses their use by fans. We encourage you to visit our moderated forums at SF Fandom.How many Hercules and Xena news groups are there? We may never count them all. As a FAQ writer and owner of XENA ONLINE RESOURCES I've tried to keep up with them all, but it's really not possible considering that many groups are not carried by most ISPs. They may be in regional hierarchies, special secondary hierarchies, or just poorly propagated due to malformed newgroup messages or otherwise improper creation. Most systems seem to carry at least 10-12 newsgroups of interest to fans of Hercules and Xena. But there may be as many as 20 such groups. Of course, I'm including groups such as alt.fan.bruce-campbell and alt.fan.hudson-leick. Bruce's career spans moves and television series, and he was well-known before he originated the role of Autolycus, King of Thieves in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. But Hudson Leick was virtually unknown until she originated the role of Callisto on Xena: Warrior Princess. The first group, so far as I have been able to determine, was created in 1975 and named alt.tv.hercules-legendary-journeys. It's still around, but unfortunately at the time of its creation there was a rule concerning the names of newsgroups. No segment of a newsgroup name could be more than 14 characters long. So the day after the group was created, a control message was sent out to remove it. About six months later, most systems carrying the group dropped it. Another oddly named group is alt.hercules_legendary_journeys. I've only found this group listed on one server, but there may be more out there obscuring keeping the name alive. This group may never have been as well propagated as the first one. About eighteen months after alt.tv.hercules-legendary-journeys was created a new group, alt.tv.hercules, was created to replace the original. We spent about six months begging ISPs to carry this new group. It's actually taken almost two years to get traffic back into it. The fans fled Usenet for message boards and mailing lists when the first group vanished from their systems. Bringing them back to Usenet, where one is vulnerable to unwarranted attacks, having one's email address scooped up by UCE providers, and other horrendous fates, has not been an easy task. Xena fandom was better organized in the beginning. A few months after alt.tv.hercules-legendary-journeys was created someone proposed and created alt.tv.xena (I came across it in December 1995 and have been there ever since). The Warrior Princess, it seems, was quite popular with system administrators around the world. The group quickly propagated and fans began pouring into it. Today alt.tv.xena can garner up to 3-400 articles a day. By contrast, alt.tv.hercules may get only 30-40. Of course, one of the problems for the Hercules fans is that many of the ISPs which still carry alt.tv.hercules-legendary-journeys simply refuse to carry alt.tv.herrcules. So you'll often find (if your ISP offers both groups) nearly identical threads in each group as the fans discuss their favorite aspects of the show. The older group gets about 1/3 the traffic of the newer group, but to help bring fans together I often cross-post to both groups. Only America Online users seem to be prohibited from cross-posting to both groups, so this scheme often works well. There is an alternative discussion forum, and that is alt.binaries.multimedia.xena-herc. This group was created for images, sounds, and discussions of both shows. Although the group is quite active, I don't really see much discussion of the shows in it. Most of the non-binary threads seem to concern where people can find certain images, how to post, etc. In 1997 the fans of Xena: Warrior Princess often debated the existence of the Subtext, the implied deeper relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. Some of the pro-Subtext fans got tired of the constant arguing and asked for access to a previously unsuccessful group called alt.tv.xena-subtext. This group had been created in 1996 but at that time people agreed it should not be used. By 1997, however, many Subtexters wanted a place where the Subtext was simply assumed to exist for their own discussions. So I boosted the group and it became popular right away (without drawing off any significant traffic from alt.tv.xena). This group successfully brought people back to Usenet and helped to spawn a whole new generation of newsgroups. By the end of the year, fan fiction fans had proposed and created alt.tv.xena.creative, alt.tv.xena.creative.mature, and alt.tv.xena.creative.subtext. The hierarchy was created more-or-less at one time to save time and reduce discussion. Although fan fiction is immensely popular among online fans, these groups have been experiencing slow growth because most of the fanfic is published on Web sites and mailing lists. But I see activity in them and still hope they'll grow. An alternative Subtext group was proposed and created in 1998. There are many aspects to subtextual interpretations of X:WP, and the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle is the primary focus of the original subtext group. So alt.tv.xena-subtext.misc was created to provide for discussions of all types of subtext. It receives steady traffic and promises to stay around for a long time. Every now and then fans ask why there aren't special newsgroups devoted just to the stars of the shows: alt.fan.lucy-lawless, alt.fan.kevin-sorbo, alt.fan.michael-hurst, alt.fan.renee-oconnor. The short answer is that while these stars are primarily known for their work on Hercules and Xena, the groups devoted to these shows are the best places for their fans to discuss their careers. Of course, these actors all have longer careers, and fans of Renee have already created alt.fan.renee-oconnor. I suppose it's only a matter of time before other personal fannish groups are created, if they don't exist already. A special problem in creating a newsgroup is persuading ISPs to carry it. They don't always agree that their customers will want access to the group. And some ISPs don't respond immediately to customer requests for certain news groups. To help fans find these groups, I've created special Information Pages for as many of the groups as I could find Web-based access for. There are certain ISPs who provide access to Usenet through the Web. I'm always on the lookout for more of these providers. Most offer some free access, and the pricing plans that I've looked at are all reasonable. These can be good supplemental providers, although the quality of the interfaces varies. And you may need to turn on Java in your browser to use a couple of these providers. To see a complete listing of the Information Pages, look at Xenite.Org's Usenet Index (index has been discontinued). Each page contains the group's charter, information about the ISPs which carry the group, and links to the groups on those ISPs' services. Of course, not everyone visits the Xenite.Org Usenet Index, so I've also tried to list the various groups and providers in a FAQ called "The World of Hercules and Xena" which is posted about once every five weeks to many of the groups, as well as rec.arts.sf.tv, alt.fan.created-worlds, and alt.fantasy. I may discuss the various FAQs in a future article, as they provide a wealth of information that curious fans appreciate. |
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