Editing Backbone cabal (section)

{{Short description|Group of administrators on Usenet}}
The '''backbone cabal''' was an informal organization of large-site [[news server]] [[Sysop|administrators]] of the worldwide distributed [[newsgroup]]-based discussion system [[Usenet]]. It existed from about 1983 until around 1988.<ref>{{Cite web|title=
The History of the Net|url=https://www.cs.kent.edu/~javed/internetbook/nethistory/nethist.html|access-date=2024-11-14|website=KentStateUniversity|language=en-US}}</ref>

The [[cabal]] was created in an effort to facilitate reliable propagation of new Usenet posts. While in the 1970s and 1980s many [[news server]]s only operated during night time to save on the cost of long-distance communication, servers of the backbone cabal were available 24 hours a day. The administrators of these servers gained sufficient influence in the otherwise anarchic Usenet community to be able to push through controversial changes, for instance the [[Great Renaming]] of [[Usenet]] newsgroups during 1987.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Modern Usenet Newsgroup Hierarchies History|url=https://broadbandnow.com/internet/u/ui_modern.htm|access-date=2020-10-26|website=BroadbandNow|language=en-US}}</ref>