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On August 7th, 1987, after an interesting history, I created the newsgroup rec.humor.funny on USENET. Twenty years later, on its third moderator (Jim Griffith) it's still alive and kicking, though USENET has faced some decline.

To commemorate the event, I wrote up a bit more of the history in some web pages. They link up to other bits of this history I had written up before.

One thing that may be special about this anniversary depends on how people define the term weblog. Tim Berners-Lee, who defined the web, definitely included newsgroups (along with gopher, email and other systems) as part of the web. RHF began as a rather unusual newsgroup, publishing jokes that I found around the net (notably on rec.humor) that I felt were the best. Though the name would not be invented for another decade, RHF was a blog, and thus may be the oldest one in existence. (An earlier moderated group devoted to finding the best of the net and pointing it out, mod.ber, gets the title of world's first blog, but it did not last more than a few months.)

You can read the story of the creation of RHF here:

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/history.html

And there you will find links to articles about how RHF was banned, how it led to ClariNet, and how to define a blog.

There is also a blog post pointing to these things, where you can leave comments:

http://ideas.4brad.com/my-worlds-oldest-blog-20-years-old-tomorrow-aug-7-2007

My thanks go out to all of you who have read, supported and contributed to the group over the 2 decades. Thanks in particular go to Maddi Hausmann, who edited from 92 to 95, and most particularly to Jim Griffith, the current moderator who has put in more time than she and I put together.

The decision to make RHF has played a large role in the direction of my life. What a long, strange trip it's been.

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