With the migration of many employees from SGI to Netscape (especially that of
Jim Clark who left
SGI for
Netscape along with several other SGI employees), much of the company
traditions went with it. One of these traditions was was the '*.ba' newsgroup (or mailing list). While it serves as a place for
employees to vent on various subjects, within Netscape, it served as a place for Microsoft lawyers to go digging about in search of evidence of
incompetence that caused Netscape to fail in competing with the browser market.
The newsgroup of sgi.ba (in the days where I was able to read it) was filled with complaints about the stock price (in the teens and eventually in the threes) and the occasional party for those that are still there (bring your own beer, the company won't pay for it). The occasional suggestion of bringing stock certificates priced in the $45 range be brought to use as either toilet paper or tinder for starting a BBQ.
While this newsgroup was rarely monitored by managers (the manager tampering with the equivalent of it at Netscape caused it to fail), the CEO for SGI at the time (Ed McCracken) announced at one of the all hands meetings that he read sgi.ba every day as a barometer of the morale. Several 'wins' did come from this forum though, including the addition of vegetarian food to the menu and pedestrian safety measures for people walking between buildings in Mountain View.
The end of sgi.ba was seen with the introduction of Rick Belluzzo who instituted much of the HP culture to replace that of SGI's culture. Additionaly, the 10% layoff of SGI employees caused many to fear posting material to sgi.ba.
At Netscape, the bad attitude forum was destroyed with the institution of rules and policies and rumors of management reprimands for flames within the forum. The Netscape badattitude newsgroups eventually got subpoenaed by Microsoft and while I have no personal knowledge, I doubt that Netscape has continued with this tradition since its merger with AOL. Any such lists that would exist are probably (and best off) hidden on some mailing list server that doesn't archive messages.