Editing Eternal September (section)

==History==
[[File:Internet is Full - Go Away t-shirt.jpg|thumb|A 1994 t-shirt commemorating Eternal September]]
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Usenet and the Internet were generally the domain of dedicated computer professionals and hobbyists; new users joined slowly, in small numbers, and learned to observe the social conventions of online interaction without having much of an impact on the experienced users.

The only exception to this was September of every year, when large numbers of first-year university students gained access to the Internet and Usenet through their university campuses. These large groups of new users who had not yet learned [[Etiquette_in_technology#Netiquette|online etiquette]] created a nuisance for the experienced users, who came to dread September every year.

However, each year the tide of new users would eventually abate, as everyone learned to get along and assimilate into existing communities, or found the place not to their liking and quit using it. Once ISPs like [[AOL]] made affordable Internet access widely available for home users, however (in particular, offering Usenet access as a sign-on service, like [[AOL Mail]]), a continuous influx of new users began, making it feel like it was always "September" to the more experienced users.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/its-september-forever/|title=It's September, Forever|first=Jason|last=Koebler|date=September 30, 2015}}</ref>

The full phrase appears to have evolved over a series of months on two separate alt.folklore newsgroups where a number of threads exist lamenting what they saw as an increase in low-quality posts across various newsgroups. Several members of the newsgroups referenced aspects of the "September" issue, typically in a joking manner. 

In a thread on January 8, 1994, [[Joel Furr]] cross-posted asking "Is it just me, or has [[Delphi (online service)|Delphi]] unleashed a staggering amount of weirdos on the net?", which garnered a reply from Karl Reinsch "Of course it's perpetually September for Delphi users, isn't it?"<ref name="Reinsch" /> The day before, Furr had also posted the same message to alt.folklore.urban, where David Fischer responded with a joke call-to-action where he referred to the increasing numbers of Delphi users as the "Never-Ending-September".<ref name="Fischer1" /> Fischer also replied to a different thread on January 25, 1994, in alt.folklore.computers saying, "It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net history as the September that never ended."<ref name="Fischer2" /><ref name="Isaacson" /> This quote has been suggested to have been the first reference.<ref name="Forever" />

Possibly the first use of the "Eternal September" phrase was a newsgroup post by John William Chambless in February 1994. He posted a rant including some excerpts of low-quality articles he found in one of his newsgroups that day, but titled the post "The Eternal September".<ref name="Chambless" />