A question about Alex Birch

Just read the excerpt Ordalie.
As I have said many times before if it wasn't for the dear departed Alex, there probably wouldn't be a Jimisim.
His encouragement gave me the courage to go ahead and write spanking fiction. I had a few longhand stories tucked away in old Janus mags, but never dared to do anything about it.
My hands were literally trembling when I posted my first story-I had never written anything except for management reports and business letters before.
My proudest moment was when Alex encouraged us to enter the annual SSS competition and to my astonishment I won the 2000 word category.
When I'd finished reading the excerpt my eyes were damp too.

Ordalie:

I had no idea what his real name was. While Birch did seem amazingly appropriate, it is a quite common British surname.

@barretthunter
Clifford gave his real name when he told us of his death.

Back to Paul Melrose's "Let The Punishment Fit The Crime" (2 volumes). It's absolutely breathtaking!
This is an excerpt from Amazon's description:
"A fascinating and erotic look at a possible future in which Ursula Deedes is a lady with a mission: to clean up Britain's crime rate and give the criminals a lesson they will never forget!
With the Radical Action Party firmly in power, the courts begin to hand out firm sentences to offenders.
New detention centres are set up and new staff are recruited and carefully trained to give the painful lessons required."
You just wish it were true!

A little know factoid. I welcomed Alexis Birch to SSS back in the 90s, under the impression he was female. During our first discussion, he revealed that he, in fact, was male and shortly thereafter dropped the "is" from Alexis. He and I remaineds friends and during several flame wars he was involved in, I would sometimes email him and attempt to calm whatever the situation. I left SSS some years back and several years ago he emailed me and asked me to help him with the short story contest. I declined, advising him that I no longer go there. He understood. Now, I wish I had helped him out but at that time I was much too busy and just not interested. I only heard of his passing after becoming involved here with the library. Very sad to hear ...

Well, you can't help being busy and not interested. But I'm puzzled: I didn't know flame wars were waged, and above all that Alex, such a considerate man, should have needed to be assuaged.
I know nothing about what you're talking about, having only had my first PC back in 2002.
If you feel like it, could you enlarge a bit on that?

How to explain Usenet?

Okay, one of the first times I checked it out (back in 90s) I saw a post from someone saying "I like the M/F and F/F, but not the F/M and especially not the M/M - so stop posting stories on those theme". No, it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular, the poster wanted the rest of the internet to stop posting stories that didn't interest him.

And about ass (alt.sex.spanking) and SSS (sociology.sex.spanking), at times Grace posted there and (despite her posted disclaimer) people thought that she was offering childcare advice OR talking about RL situations where she had been in charge of minors - resulting in massive flames. If you don't know which Grace I'm talking about, just type the name in the author's box and you'll find thousands of her stories here.

Everyone posting anonymously, the few mods fighting a losing battle against flamers and spam. And unlike here, there was no "owner" to ban abusive folks. Or folks that claimed to be offering childcare advice. Or the ones who said "How can you sick fucks like spanking?????". Or the ones...

There's a reason usenet died - and it was the ability to post anonymously without moderators being able to effectively moderate.

Goodgulf

Actually the Usenet isn't dead, I visit there daily to certain groups. That said, I agree that it's terribly diminished and likely in its death throes. The reasons for Usenet's terminal illness are far more complicated than just lack of moderation. (I could go on, but this is a significant digression from the subject of the thread.)

"(I could go on, but this is a significant digression from the subject of the thread.)"
Well, it doesn't matter! I found Goodgulf's explanation very interesting, so do go on, please!

Oralie asks:

"If you feel like it, could you enlarge a bit on that?"

Sure, still kinda busy here but anyway, Alex had a bit of a quick temper and did not suffer fools gladly. At any rate, on occasion he would let loose and then disappear from the group for a while.

The deal with usenet is that anyone can post anything and unlike it's predecessor ASS (alternate sex, spanking), which had become litle more than a spam bucket, SSS was fully moderated but with strict guidelines allowing anyone to say anything. So...basically, SSS was only moderated for spam and to help out others such as newcomers as well as to keep the members up to date with newsgroup issues.

I really should say 'regulars' rather than members because it was not a matter of signing up for anything. SSS was really somewhat a rather dysfunctional family, basically, but there were many friends made and sometimes groups would take differing sides on various issues. There were some pretty extensive flame wars but they all eventually died off and oftentimes, regulars might leave the group after hard feelings over whatever issue. Sometimes, regulars simply faded away, sorta like I did.

I was a two time moderator around the turn of the century/millennium and it seemed to me that late in my association with the group, most of my close friends and favorite people were gone, not to even stress that the topics became quite mundane and boring to me. Finally, after a spat with Deja News, I simple left, never to return. Nobody even seemed to notice as the group had completely turned over.

Alex was the only person emailing me afterward. I'm sure many folks from SSS are around here and I have noticed a few but many may have changed their names, I believe. SSS was a raucous and enjoyable group back in the 90s and especially when the coup occurred during my first term as moderator. Some folks here may be able to expand upon that but my memory isn't the best anymore so I think I've said about all I can for the moment, Ordalie ...