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Ask HN: What is the origin of the term “post” (e.g. blog post)?

2 points by laumars ↗ HN
I have a few theories on this but was unable to find any evidence to back any of them up

1) It could be a reference to snail mail. However I think this is the least likely to be true

2) It's a reference advert postings. Which originate from when literal posts were nailed in front of shops.

3) It was used because HTTP POST requests were modifying data rather than reading it. So it was a term used by nerds that slowly became common slang. This used to be my assumption but thinking about it now, I think we used to post stuff to bulletin boards in the pre-web Internet.

4) Something else I hadn't considered.

I know this might seem an odd question but it's something that has puzzled me for sometime as it's a weird term to use when you look at the literal meaning of "post" in the pre-web era of publishing (or maybe it was commonly used then as well but I'd just never encountered it used for whatever reason?)

7 comments

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Tomte
See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/post and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/post
laumars
I had but found they were too generalised and go too far backwards to cover how internet messages - specifically - came to be known as "posts". So they don't discuss the evolution of the word and how it crossed over to the digital era. eg did it cross over from early shop keepers nailing physical posts outside and just became a colloquialism for advertising that way? Or was it a reference to telegraph poles (posts) used to relay messages that then because slang for transmitting messages but later become a noun - like the reverse that happened with Photoshop (noun: Adobe product) / Photoshop (adjective: edit an image).
mtmail
Can't be (3) because it pre-dates the internet. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system "Christensen patterned the system after the cork board his local computer club used to post information like "need a ride""
laumars
Sounds like it originated from literal sign posts (guess 2) then.

Assuming, of course, that the Wikipedia entry isn't just retro-fitting a modern term that wasn't used in that context in that era. However I don't think that's likely.

microwavecamera
"Post" was the old timey term for a public announcement or message. This is why so many old newspapers have the word post on their name.
microwavecamera
I'm pretty the term originated with BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) which were patterned after a literal bulletin board. Back in the day we used bulletin boards for posting public messages. Seriously, before the internet we used to just stick pieces of paper to a cork board with a thumbtack that was displayed in public places.

From Wikipedia:

"The first public dial-up BBS was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess. According to an early interview, when Chicago was snowed under during the Great Blizzard of 1978, the two began preliminary work on the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS. The system came into existence largely through a fortuitous combination of Christensen having a spare S-100 bus computer and an early Hayes internal modem, and Suess's insistence that the machine be placed at his house in Chicago where it would be a local phone call to millions of users. Christensen patterned the system after the cork board his local computer club used to post information like "need a ride"."

paulrpotts
I think this is the most likely - you "post" items on a bulletin board.

I remember both the blizzard of 1978 and bulletin boards :)