
 USENET ORACLE - WHIMSICAL KNOW-IT-ALL OF THE INTERNET
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 by Kevin Savetz

Have you talked to the Usenet Oracle? He can answer all of your important
questions: "What's the meaning of life? Where does the dryer put the socks it
steals from the wash? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck
could chuck wood?" Or, he could <ZOT> you into a smoldering pile of ashes.
Either way, he's a great guy.

The Usenet Oracle isn't really a person. It's an electronic mail service run
by Steve Kinzler, a graduate student and systems administrator at Indiana
University. Send the Oracle your question, and within a few hours, you'll
receive an answer from the all-knowing one.

The Oracle is a cooperative effort for creative humor. When you send a
question to the Oracle server, your message is actually forwarded to someone
else who uses the program. He or she mails a (hopefully witty) answer back to
the Oracle server, which forwards it to you. Thanks to the server program,
all of this is done anonymously - the questioner (or "supplicant") and the
answerer (that is, the Oracle incarnate) never know who each other are.

The Oracle started as a program running on an Indiana University computer
system. The program became popular, so Kinzler, with the help of hacker Ray
Moody, created a network version of the service. The best questions and
answers - as selected by volunteer "priests" - are distributed in
"Oracularity digests" on the Usenet group "rec.humor.oracle." Oracularities
on that group are read by an estimated 26,000 people. Over 700 additional
readers (who presumably can not access the Usenet) subscribe to the Oracle
mailing list, receiving the Oracularities via e-mail. To date, over 10,000
people have participated by sending in a question or an answer.

Over time, the Oracle has developed his own personality. Writers incarnated
as the Oracle often blend in known aspects of his persona: an inflated ego, a
sense of humor, his girlfriend Lisa, and the propensity to <ZOT> his less
fortunate supplicants.

Why did Kinzler start the Oracle? "Well, it was fun most of the time.
Challenging frequently from a programming and system design perspective. But
mostly it was that typical hacker's motivation: when a great idea comes
along, it just deserves to be done. I thought an e-mail Oracle was a great
idea, had the resources and desire to do it, and so I did it. Part of my
interest in the Oracle was experimental - I wanted to see what would come of
it, what people would do with an interactive, anonymous system like this."

Kinzler (kinzler@cs.indiana.edu) calls the anonymous mail aspect of the
Oracle server a crucial aspect of its popularity. "Anonymity gives more
people the security to try to be witty or funny in their creative writing. I
hope to include people who discover through the Oracle they can and can enjoy
writing creatively. And the Oracle gives them a guaranteed audience of two,
and, if they're lucky, maybe tens of thousands."

For more information about the Usenet Oracle, send electronic mail to
"oracle@cs.indiana.edu" with a subject line of "help." To ask a question, the
subject line should include the words "tell me" and the body of the message
should contain your question. (If you don't grovel to the sometimes-egotistic
Oracle, you may find that you've been <ZOT>ted to oblivion, so you may want
to pander to his ego!) You should receive an answer in a day or two, probably
much sooner.

Once you ask a question, the Oracle may ask you to answer somebody else's
question, as a sort of payment for services. You should respond with the most
witty answer possible, so that the supplicant feels gratified in his or her
quest for knowledge. If you can't think of a worthy reply, do nothing and the
question will be sent to someone else. If you wish to answer a question
without asking one, just send a message to the Oracle server with a subject
line of "ask me."

If you don't have access to "rec.humor.oracle" and would like to receive the
Oracularities, send mail to "oracle-request@cs.indiana.edu." To get on the
distribution list, include a subject line of "subscribe"; to remove yourself
from the list of recipients, put "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

[Kevin M. Savetz is a recent graduate from Humboldt University living in
Arcata California. He needs a job. He can be reached at savetz@rahul.net]

