Nose

Charter / moderation notes

Charter for alt.fan.karl-malden.nose "MEOW." RATIONALE & HERITAGE Somewhere on 1990s Usenet sat an all-but-abandoned newsgroup for fans of the actor Karl Malden — a group that existed, apparently, to appreciate one of the most distinguished noses in the history of American film. Malden gave us "A Streetcar Named Desire," "On the Waterfront," "The Streets of San Francisco," and a decade of insisting we not leave home without it. The nose gave us alt.fan.karl-malden.nose. Around January 1996 a crowd of students colonized the empty group and made it a clubhouse. A passing joke about pestering the Beavis and Butt-Head newsgroup went about as well as jokes on Usenet ever did: the denizens of alt.tv.beavis-n-butthead counter-invaded, seized the Malden nose as their base of operations, and declared it the headquarters of what they proudly called "Usenet Performance Art." What followed — the Meow Wars — ran from 1996 into 1998 and is remembered as one of the first great crapfloods: waves of pure nonsense, the single syllable "MEOW" repeated into oblivion, killfiles filled and then dodged by "morphing" headers, whole newsgroups swamped. Historians of the net call it, only half-joking, the birth of trolling as we know it — the distant ancestor of every raid, every flood, every board that ever went to war with another. This group is RootBadger's museum and monument to all of it: the absurdist heart of the old alt.fan.* hierarchy, the nose, the meow, and the strange folk-art of people being deeply, committedly silly on a global network at 2 a.m. ON-TOPIC - Karl Malden appreciation — and, of course, the nose. Films, roles, the American Express years, the whole distinguished profile. - Meow Wars history and lore: the 1996 origin, the crapfloods, killfiles and morphing, the cast of kooks and Meowers, and the vocabulary it left behind. - Usenet history and "performance art" in general: the alt.* hierarchy, net.legends, and the culture that produced groups named after an actor's nose. - Absurdist, surreal, dada humor in the AFKMN tradition. Bring your best nonsense. MEOW as homage is not merely allowed — it is encouraged. OFF-TOPIC (read this part, Meowers) - Actually crapflooding, raiding, or flooding any other RootBadger group or outside forum. We celebrate the history; we do not re-enact the assault. Honor the meow — do not weaponize it. - Harassment, dogpiling, or targeting real people or communities. The Meow Wars were, for the people on the receiving end, genuinely miserable; the tribute is to the folk-art, not the cruelty. - Spam and the sockpuppet "morphing" of identities to evade moderation. The distinction is the whole point: it was funny as history and awful as an experience. Keep the funny; leave the awful in 1997. MODERATION PLAN alt.fan.karl-malden.nose is owned by TomMix and runs loose in the true alt.fan.* spirit — unmoderated, silly, and fond of its own nonsense. No pre-approval, no gatekeeping of a good MEOW. The one firm line is the off-topic list above: this group is a monument to the Meow Wars, not a staging ground for new ones. Posts that turn the meow into an actual flood, raid, or harassment campaign — here or against any other group — will be removed, and RootBadger's platform anti-abuse controls for spam and harassment apply here as everywhere. Now: MEOW.