Usenet Celebrity - Other Personalities

Other Personalities

These people are known for their exceptional and widely read contributions within their respective Usenet communities.

• John C. Baez – mathematical physicist at the University of California, Riverside, known to science fans as the author of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics an irregular column on the web featuring mathematical exposition and criticism, which he originally started in 1993 for the Usenet community and which now has a worldwide following. Baez is also known on the World Wide Web as the author of the crackpot index, a humorous numerical method for rating scientific claims and the individuals that make them.
• Torkel Franzén (1950–2006) – Swedish academic who worked at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, in the fields of mathematical logic and computer science. He was known for his work on Gödel's incompleteness theorems and for his contributions to Usenet.
• Tilman Hausherr – German poster who is well-known among critics of Scientology for his frequent Usenet posts and for maintaining a website critical of Scientology. He is also is credited with coining the term "sporgery".
• James Nicoll – science-fiction reviewer and retired game-store owner. As a Usenet personality, Nicoll is known for writing a widely quoted epigram on the English language, as well as for his contributions of concepts like the Nicoll-Dyson Laser and the "brain eater" to Usenet groups like "rec.arts.sf.written" and "rec.arts.sf.fandom"; and for his accounts of suffering a high number of accidents (known collectively as "Nicoll Events") recounted in these groups.
• Brad Templeton – software architect, civil rights advocate and entrepreneur. An early luminary of Usenet, Templeton founded ClariNet Communications Corporation and created the newsgroup rec.humor.funny in 1987 and moderated it from 1987 to 1992.