Research: Internet Origins, Protocol Culture, and Legendary Growing Pains

This repository is a topic-driven research pack: we capture primary sources, extract bounded quotes, turn them into claims, and then distill recurring socio-technical patterns (e.g., bikeshedding, Eternal September) that still govern modern distributed systems and communities.

What we are building (deliverables)

1. Evidence ledger: a curated catalog of sources with provenance, evidence weight, and deduplication/aliasing.
2. Quote pack: short compliant excerpts mapped to claims (avoid long verbatim extracts).
3. Pattern library: each “legend” becomes an explicit pattern with conditions, symptoms, and countermeasures.
4. Timeline spine: dated events linking technical evolution + social scaling shocks.
5. Matrix: mapping from stack component (BBS/Usenet/email/web) to stressors (moderation, identity, replication, etc.).
6. Ontology: an RDF/JSON-LD schema that makes the above machine-readable and composable with the broader Socioprophet knowledge fabric.

Repository layout

• kb/
  • sources/ — source registry (YAML) + derived JSON-LD
  • patterns/ — pattern pages (Markdown) + instances (YAML)
  • quotes/ — extracted quotes (bounded) + locations
  • claims/ — claim statements tied to sources and quotes
  • topics/ — topic taxonomy and research domains
• ontology/
  • internet-legends.ttl — core classes and properties (RDF/Turtle)
  • context.jsonld — JSON-LD context for the same vocabulary
• matrix/ — crosswalks and comparison tables
• timeline/ — timeline artifacts and event records
• scripts/ — validation and conversion helpers

Principles (non-negotiable)

• Primary-first: RFCs, institutional exhibits, archival publications outrank wikis/blogs/forums.
• Quote-bounded: keep excerpts short (and always cite location).
• Claims > vibes: every assertion is a claim node that points to supporting sources.
• Dedup explicitly: same artifact hosted in multiple places must be linked via alias_of.
• Commons semantics: neutral, non-enterprise framing; focus on open civic/cultural knowledge.

Quickstart (local)

We keep local repos under ~/dev/<reponame> by default.

mkdir -p ~/dev
cd ~/dev
# put this repo directory here, then:
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initialize research pack: internet legends"

Status

This repo is scaffolded; the next commit wave is to fill kb/sources/sources.yaml with the complete enumerated list, then generate kb/sources/sources.jsonld and start extracting quotes for P0 sources.