/m54 I thought that seemed familiar. I am so embarrassed it took so long--and I'm in the testimonials, too! (well, my Frankenstein puppet it) [oooh, shame! self-promotion on BoingBoing!!!!!]

Real Performance Artists wear an Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie: the best way to ward off trolls.....

It can't be stressed enough how important it is to have the shiny side pointing out. This is needed because the shiny side is most reflective to psychotronic radiation, while the dull side can actually, in certain environmental conditions, absorb it. However, as is illustrated in the instructions above, it is also wise to complement this with a layer of foil pointing shiny side in. This will keep your brain waves, which are also reflected by the shiny side, from being picked up by mind-reading equipment. There is a small number of aluminum foil researchers who believe that this may cause an alpha-wave harmonic to build up in the skull resulting in memory loss or pseudo-religious visions, but their findings have never been replicated by the aluminum foil research community at large. Even if their findings are validated, the risk involved is small compared to the potential of mind-intrusion.

Dear DjMaryPat,

Nice screen name. Is that a real performance name? Do you spin Barney records for a preschool? How about you and the rest of homosexual complainers go read another blog and leave us alone.

If it's not on the BBS-thread, please go here for the "generic" BB discussion.

Dear 'Xeni'-

If you're terribly concerned about trolls, then maybe, just maybe, the very juvenile Macki was a poor choice of guestblogger?

Would seem to me to be you were conciously FARMING for them.

Raid: Solid Gold Pet Foods - Sep., 1989

Address: 1483 N. Cuyamaca, El Cajon, CA 92020

Phone: (619) 465-9507 (Sissy Harrington McGill, Owner)

Reason: FDA had been harassing McGill over labels on her holistic pet food products. In March 1990, an FDA agent seized products from her store without a search warrant and shut down her store. On July 12, 1990, after being indicted, she chose a jury trial. Upon appearing for her trial, she was clapped into leg irons, put into a Maximum Security Federal Prison for 179 days, and fined $10,000. While incarcerated she suffered a near fatal stroke.

Outcome: McGill sued the Department of Justice and won a victory on Feb. 20, 1992. She expects to file a $25,000,000 lawsuit against the FDA.

Edited by author 09-19-2003 09:42 PM
Things have really hit an all time high here. I am starting to get the feeling that none of you appreciate the work Cory and I have put into this site. Do you think I like plugging this site and my work on it, when you trolls fill the discussion boards with rubbish threads? I think I understand now why Cory tried to kill himself last weekend. It is asking too much for him to keep calm while he witness' all his hard work go up in flames, because of fucking trolls.

I am not one of those stupid moron who don't know what I am doing. I know about FDA. FDA raids hundreds of small businesses every year that deal with alternative medicine or therapy. They take away your computer, seize your $200,000 inventory, and drive your company totally out of business in no time if they ever approach you. My prices are very low and reasonable. One phone call to the FDA by an unsatisfied customer then I'm in BIG trouble. The reason why I insist on publicizing the Eternal Life Device is because this really works!! This is the most incredible medicine in the world! I have to publicize it just for the sake of it! I have no choice but be brave and face the danger and laughter! So please don't email me insults. If I don't deserve your belief, at least I deserve your respect. If you are not satisfied with the products, you have 90 days to refund them. I believe that I can earn more money by selling "How to make one million dollars in one month" report. Why should I sell a device which is believed to allow eternal life? This is a very risky business, and most people don't believe me. There is a good reason why I am doing all this. BECAUSE IT WORKS!!! Isn't that cool? I'm selling eternal life right off of internet. If you want it, get it now! If you don't, its cool too! If you think I'm crazy, email rave@feist.com, orMichael RAZOR@msn.com, or Dorothy dorothy@jps.net. They are users of my devices, and they will tell you the truth!

On the actual topic of this thread: I don't see many bbses from back in the 80's for central CA (209 area code). I wish I had my old bbs lists from then, as I'd add them. (Also lost in the mists of time are my hardcopy transcripts from when I bbs'd from a daisy-wheel teletype in my bedroom, which my mom HATED. 11 cps clatter going all night drove her insane :-)

I think I do however have some old printouts from the early 90s of the nixpub and pubnet lists, which have some bbs's on them. I'll be sure to add them if I can dig them out of the archives. (Interested in old Internet Services Lists from before the web? I know I've got hardcopy of at least one of Yanoff's List from 92-93 era).

Veering back to the boingboing discuss discussion:
You CAN get to old bb quicktopics, at least ones you've read in the past, by clicking on "My Topics" while signed into quicktopic.

Oh and if bb was run on the slashcode, users certainly could customize the front page to exclude topics or posters they didn't care for. In a fit of geek overkill, when I moved my personal blog off of blogspot, I installed the slashcode on a colo server an old friend is letting me use, so I've got current experience with it. You just need to make sure you've added ALL of the categories and topics you're gonna post (which you CAN of course add to, but it's a pain).

Edited by author 09-19-2003 06:12 PM
Doesn't anyone else find these discussions great? I just wish they had left the other discussion topics open, even if you couldn't post to them. I could read them again right now and would still laugh so hard I would cry. Seriously, I really don't have much going for me in my life right now but this. If anyone is willing to meet discreatly for a mutual rimjob exchange, I live in LA. Also, you have to be accepting of me as I am and not have high physical expectations. Although I have lost 35 pounds, I still weigh 345. I have a big heart and it isn't all from the fluid building up around it. Be my love god.

Ok, it has been established that Cory is a bitch and Zeni is a mediawhore.

Mark Crane, please spare us from your bloated posts.

I have to agree with Andromedon, every time Cory feels threatened or "violated" he starts fussing like he needs a nap. That is understandable if it happens infrequently but his consistent bitchy patterns are more regular than period. Cory, are you stuck in permanent PMS? Stuff a rag in it and stop fucking with the discussions.

This is the most active discussion BB has had in months. I'm amazed that the editors ignore the community going on here, and that they throw away the kind of lively talk that most blogs would pay for.

Cory doesn't have a fever all the time, but he acts like a dick when crossed all the time. Do an archive crawl for many many examples of a grown man throwing all his toys out of the pram, taking critisism personally and generally crying like a baby.

I would love to see a metafilter composed of the readers of this
blog all posting stuff. Say, 10-15 core readers/submitters. All you'd have to do is look through the archived postings to see who submits the best stuff and invite them to a group blog and see
what happens. Although i really like cory's postings, and xeni's as well, and although both of them get obsessive at times with
Disney and Sars, they would cease to be interesting if they
didn't have those obsessions. Go read Hawthorne's "The
Birthmark." If you remove the obsessive stuff, BB will fade
away.

Also, C. mentioned that he was sick with a fever during all this, so perhaps that played a factor. I would like to see a public
discussion as well.


---------------------------
cranema@uvsc.edu


On 19 Sep 2003, QT - Xeni wrote:

>.....|Date: 19 Sep 2003 01:50:08 -0000
>.....|From: QT - Xeni <qtopic+23-xgzWkFUx6zzD6@quicktopic.com>
>.....|To: cranema@complicity.uvsc.edu
>.....|Subject: When I think of Computer History...
>.....|
>.....|
< replied-to message removed by QT >

A slashdot system would probably work. At least you can weed out the lamer posts. But I don't know if that would let you filter
the front page. What is important is that so many people do
care, and BoingBoing needs to move from the control of Walt
Disney and be given to the residents. Or not, just trying to
make a DAOITMK reference.

---------------------------
cranema@uvsc.edu


On 19 Sep 2003, QT - ernie wrote:

>.....|Date: 19 Sep 2003 02:19:23 -0000
>.....|From: QT - ernie <qtopic+23-xgzWkFUx6zzD6@quicktopic.com>
>.....|To: cranema@complicity.uvsc.edu
>.....|Subject: When I think of Computer History...
>.....|
>.....|
< replied-to message removed by QT >

Long time members of the Well and Usenet describe the same
phenomenon. There's an article out there called, "the six stages of online community" but I keep losing the link.

---------------------------
cranema@uvsc.edu


On 19 Sep 2003, QT - Shan Fenderson wrote:

>.....|Date: 19 Sep 2003 06:36:52 -0000
>.....|From: QT - Shan Fenderson <qtopic+23-xgzWkFUx6zzD6@quicktopic.com>
>.....|To: cranema@complicity.uvsc.edu
>.....|Subject: When I think of Computer History...
>.....|
>.....|
< replied-to message removed by QT >

/m35 I found the BoingBoing Mailblog, but that's the mail version of BB. no discussion (I presume--I haven't signed up).

But you could set up a new groups easy, require moderator approval before first post (only way to keep spam-bots out). But you'd have the same problem--do you moderate out annoying people? Or just try to ignore them? The problem is, annoying people just like seeing their long annoying emails in their own inbox under the group heading, so it still won't work. An annoying version of erotomania where the fixation is not on a single individual, but on the self filtered through a group.

The star just means you're registered to QT. The late Boingboing discuss links requred registration to post, this thread apparently doesn't.

To get a little back on topic: I don't remember the BBs I used having this raging troll problem. I think they were maybe too hard for most psychotics to work. Plus, identities were more controlled and stable. And kids WALKED three miles to school in the freezing blizzards.

As far as alleged fake identities go, would it be so hard or wrong to disallow IDs that are the same as current ones except for capitalization/punctuation? I'd be for it.

Edited by author 09-19-2003 09:23 AM
the real me has a star, (but /m24 doesnt for some reaon.) Oh well, whatever. In the future if theres no star, blah blah...

Xradio - What about yahoogroups? has anyone looked into a QT alternative? Can't anything cool last ?

I think we should just all give up.

In the meantime, I amuse myself with visions of an army of xeni and cory clones, fresh out of one of david's nano-assemblers, marching forth to take over the world.

that wouldn't be so bad.

p.s. we are all "xeni"!

Is ernie Cory? He talks like Cory. Same playground, I guess.

I miss 'discuss' links on all of the posts. There've been some really cool posts lately too...

:-/

Fangs, maybe you should make it more clear if you are being sarcastic or not. JohnJon, fuck you asshole.

It seems like the quality of post on BB has gone way up once the discussion links went away. Yay BB crew!

ernie, i think you are missing the whole point. look at Xeni's whole posting history and hold this one in context. it seems to me that he/she doesn't care about BB or the discussion forums. i think this last post was just another way to play games with anyone who reads the QuickTopic threads. so maybe you and the rest of team windowlicker should stop acknowledging their posts. if everyone does this, they will eventually get bored and go somewhere else. unfortunately this won't work unless cory can control his girly emotions and stop feeding them ammunition with statements like "suck my balls". also, cory, don't expect any Hugos if your going to keep writing about Disneyland. you can feel the anticipation when it is announced that Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling or Palahniuk are releasing a new book. the only reason I knew you had a new book out was your self-promotion. nice cover too.

Hey, tomwhore. Yeah, mindvox was good. I guess what happened to it was like a small-scale version of what happened to the bbs scene as a whole, only faster and hotter. I'd pretty much forgotten it 'till I saw your name there. kewl.

"The Haters" were certainly around in the old BBS days too. "I'm sick of all the backbiting, the bullshit, the idiots ruining it for me, and I am ceasing work" sounds a lot like what I heard more than one sysop say. Only now with this crazy global interweb thing, they outnumber the sysop by a wider margin.

Just so it's clear.... I do read all the messages people post. I don't just drop the link and walk away.

The incessant off-topic messages and infighting unrelated to my particular guest blog are entertaining to me personally, but I'll be gone in a week or two, so obviously I don't have a very good perspective on how horrible it must be to post an interesting link about old Automats or recent events at a conference and all your discussions just end up with ad hominem attacks and sputtering rages at imagined windmills.

As you might be (not) shocked to hear, a website that gets tens of thousands of visitors like textfiles.com gets its share of critics and attackers too. I ended up writing about it in an essay called The Haters, The Haters. I think it captures the whole problem in a nutshell.

Regardless, I thank everyone for writing me and also writing in here. Keep it going, I enjoy it very much.

Much like the oldskewl BBS there are still folks username jacking or identify cloaking.

Everything old is new again...just like in the long long trailor

Old Time BBS Hijinks, YOur Soaking In It

Now where is the philez section and what the u/d ratio here?

+()/\/\\/\//-/[]/~3

For the record, the correct login for me is "Cory Doctorow." The correct login for Xeni is "xeni."

The identity-hijacking troll who's playing around below is an antisocial, whining infant.

That is all.

"I have asked Cory to make some kind of public statement about what has been going, but he refuses. He seems to think taking down the discussion areas and censoring what few do come up, is enough to drive the trolls off. It might, but at what cost? If we drive them off, who else will we lose? I think we should all demand a public disscusion on what direction the site should take. Does a site like boingboing, which revolves around the open information sharing of many, need one person to have so much control and influence? I would bet there are plenty of people that would help maintain and run the site, which would take away any argument Cory could start that he is too important to remove. I think all of of could live without all the Disney posts and name dropping too."

Fake Xeni/ SpoofNazi,
Do you really expect them to take the abuse you hurl 10 times per day? This fake name shit is cute, and we all impressed with your brave photoshoppery but the fact is you fucked this up for the rest of us. Now you apparently miss it too?! Idiot.

"Xeni" , star or no star is FAKE
"xeni" small case WITH STAR is real.
that is all.

Eli, it is the other way around. The lower case one is the troll, and mine is with a capital X.

DaveW, there really isn't any flame war going on between Cory and I. We just disagree about certain topics which has led to some harsh words this last intense week. I hope this should help clear a few things up.

This board was obviously created, body and soul, by Mark and Cory. Before I started moderating here, I was a dedicated enthusiest. I did and still do love boingboing. But I do have to agree with Tom Foolery and Zwack that Cory is mainly responsible for this painful period. Against Cory's wishes, I would like to reveal a few things about the board in it's current state. I hope everyone reading this post will copy it and repost it if Cory decides to censor me, again.

First off, let me state that I am NOT for the censorship of this site and it's disscusion forums. If anyone hasn't been able to tell from my recent posts, my adoption of Nazi like ideologies has been a farce. I think it does relate on a real level though. Why should we take down any discussion threads because they don't agree with Cory or my beliefs, or insult either of us? We shouldn't, and I would like to state now, I didn't.

Cory started taking down the posts that annoyed him last week. What started out as minorly irritating trolling caused by Macki's guest-blogging, soon grew. Once these trolls figured out that they could get such an easy and public rise out of him, they launched a much more intense campaign. I can't say that I liked most of their posts, but I wasn't for taking them down. Cory is set on controlling the content of BB now and seems to think it is HIS board alone. When did this all start? It seems to me that his "reign" started once Mark left the picture.

I have asked Cory to make some kind of public statement about what has been going, but he refuses. He seems to think taking down the discussion areas and censoring what few do come up, is enough to drive the trolls off. It might, but at what cost? If we drive them off, who else will we lose? I think we should all demand a public disscusion on what direction the site should take. Does a site like boingboing, which revolves around the open information sharing of many, need one person to have so much control and influence? I would bet there are plenty of people that would help maintain and run the site, which would take away any argument Cory could start that he is too important to remove. I think all of of could live without all the Disney posts and name dropping too.

When I think of BBS History, I think of THE WORKS.

TELL US ABOUT THE WORKS, JASON!

Craniac (/m11) Xeni's login is 'xeni' (all lower case). The
capital X one is a troll.

As for Tom Foolery's assertion in /m16:

"Cory feels that because he unselfishly posts all of the things he likes on his site every day, readers should not question him, he has ultimate editorial over what's written."

I don't think that's it at all. I think Cory's position is,
if you don't like 'em no one is forcing you to read them, so
why are you whining about them?

I don't care about tom foolery in the quicktopics... I miss the "Discuss" links and I want them back!

Waaaahhhh....

Edited by author 09-18-2003 04:27 PM
FOllow the Generic BoingBoing Discussion here: LINK!

There are trolls on all the major discussion groups, and BB has it's fair share. The most noticable difference between the other sites and BB is Cory himself.

Cory feels that because he unselfishly posts all of the things he likes on his site every day, readers should not question him, he has ultimate editorial over what's written.

He once questioned "the temerity" of those who dare question the subjects he posted. How dare they.

The SARS art debacle attracted a huge amount of critisism, as did many of Xeni's writings and subject choices. Cory's reaction to all the critics was to brand them as trolls. He regulary swore at critics. When swearing broke out in the discussions, Cory often started it.

Cory's bad behavior certainly baits trolls. A bored loser who posts random crassness will soon leave a site if ignored. Cory's juvenile responses of "suck my balls, fuck off and read someone else's blog, assholes" started a huge trollwar that lasted until he pulled the plug on the discussions.

It's a shame. His intolerance of critics is bad enough, it smacks of petulant control freak.

For a writer to resort to bad language and angry public raging shows a lot about his character, and truly belittles the man.

The Xeni bashing is getting old.

Edited by author 09-18-2003 03:11 PM
The first BBS I had any experiences with was Body Shot, a trans-gender sex board started in LA. I met quite a few lovers on that site and had to make many trips to the doctor because of it. I have a lot of great stories about those days if you are interested. If you would like you could interview and film me for your movie, I would be more than willing. I could even document the whole thing in my phoneblog!

I went to a geek-ful O'Reilly conference afterparty back in April, wearing a shirt I'd made myself. It said "LOTEK" on the front and "WHACK" on the back, across my bum. Nobody, nobody got the joke (although one or two did follow the instruction!).

You know, the thing I miss most about my dim and distant past on BBSs was the conversations, the discussions, the talk...

Sure they mostly had some file sharing upload/download section but that wasn't important.

I remember playing MUDs on JANET, I remember using UNaXcess based in Bradford... I had friends with accounts on uk.ac.ed.tardis (yes that is the RIGHT way round)... I remember the joys of discovering FIDOnet and the hassle required to become a point on a node.

But the thing that tied it all together was the DISCUSSIONS. The conversations, the interaction with other humans. Without that it would just have been a list of files (probably mostly pornographic gifs and bad shareware)...

Conversation, Discussion, Interaction... I seem to be missing that somewhere else now. :-(

Z.

So, has Xeni's QT login been permanently hijacked, or am I missing something?

Here's a generic quicktopic/boingboing discussion thread that anyone can use to discuss any thread they want. I'll kill it when there is an alternative:

http://www.quicktopic.com/23/H/8GYXFWRuKDf

If the discussions are gone forever the Quick Topic logo at the bottom of the blog is kind of vestigial.

I was looking for a very popular BBS in the Fort Lauderdale, FL area in the 80s but didn't see it listed. It was called "Moonshae" and it was run by Scott Brinker. I can't remember many details, but I googled Scott and found him here. Any info on that whole scene? My memory is hazy, but I thought he made quit a bit of money selling the MUD we wrote for it. Ooo, looky here.

Much love to your BBS projects.

Im an oldtimer at 39 who since the late 70's have been thorugh various school systems, the plethora of early days BBS's (anyone remembers Ed Gelbs bbs?) specificaly the old east coast ones, Sea Opus and Fido and then on to the net in the late 80's. Your list is very much the written history of my years online. I can not wait for the Documentary.

My wildest ride online was back on the old Mindvox bbs that latter turned pro ISP, one of the first in NYC and one of the early spin outs. In a way Mindvox preboomed and pre busted, it was a true pioneere:)- It was an amazing transitionl place where old skewl BBS mindsets slipped onto the "net" and then went batshiz crazy. Things really got nuts when users became employees, and yea I was part of that bit of fun. Waffle never was pushed so hard.

I look forward to your guest blogging

-tomwsmf

Thanks, MD. Glad to have missed out on that.

The discussions were removed because a bunch of trolls started baiting Cory and Xeni. Cory reacted with his usual fury and ignited a trollwar and it got very murky from there.

I am pleased that you listed most all the BBS's I've ever frequented in my misspent past in your rosters ... I'd like to know how you collected all that data. Some of the best friends I've had in life I've made on BBS'es, and I do miss the sense of insider-ness and intimacy to be had on BBS'es that the internet totally lacks.

I remember how excited I was, too, lo these many years ago, scoring a 2400 baud modem for $25 when the going rate was around $100-150.

I'd be pleased to read anything you'd care to post, and would be especially interested in some sort of overview of your documentary. The bits you're leaving out sound interesting, too.

As an unrelated aside, I must confess some curiosity to the sudden lack of discussion links on BoingBoing. I don't wish to hijack this forum, but an explanatory post in the main blog would be nice.

Edited by author 09-18-2003 06:19 AM
Good plan! Where did the discuss links go and why?

OBbbs: I think I came in late to the BBS scene, but I blame that on growing up in Shrewsbury in the UK. For those that don't know Shrewsbury (that's most of you) the best way I can describe it in computer terms is that it was like growing up in a giant urban equivalent of a infinitally large field full of geology teachers.

Anyway, through a range of interlinking underground tunnels that acted as a secret passway to somewhere more exciting (but only just) I managed to get hold of a magazine called "Imagine" which was produced by math teachers and came at a time when mixing articles about puzzles, text adventure games, early computer games and "Create your own story/path game books" didn't seem so odd.

Each month in that magazine there was a multi-page spread about the latest goings on in a MUD (I assumed it was the only one that existsed!). Now to someone who was generally surrounded by people going "look at the exciting rock composition of that hill" a text adventure game where many different people played at once sounded like a dream come true, much better than playing Castle of Riddles on your own.

I also played Car Wars from Steve Jackson Games on the back page of the instruction booklet it mentioned "join us on our Illuminati Online BBS". (and get busted I guess).

I digress, each night I dreamt about somehow connecting to other computers. Now I knew the math teachers had modems, but the geology teachers only had small hammers which just wasn't any good. There was only one thing for it...

...escape to University! I had a friend who'd escaped the infinite field the year before, when I'd gone to visit she showed me this room, it was small, dark, open 24 hours, accessed by using a small ID card, full of VT100 terminals glowing green and orange and, well, smelt slighty odd. I instantly fell in love and knew what I had to do.

Next year I was all packed and ready to go, 14 pairs of knickers, 8 vest tops, 1 CD walkman, 6 crates of Mountain Dew and a can of Air Freshener. I was set.

Now I ended up at Staffordshire University. This place has something of a history in UK computers, they did big things and great discoveries here (so I was told), they had banks of Mainframes all down in Staffordshire. The place was full of 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of your typical computer geeks and about a few 1000 more electronics students and ummmm... about 3 gurls, they moved all the nurses up about 3 years later to redress the balance.

So I joined in the local Uni MUD and was of course showered with swords and shields and scrolls and spells and visits to LARs basement. I was Queen, no, Goddess of the MUD, adored by all, I loved the ascii text churned out by the blinking green cursor and it loved me back. I signed up to io.com, I discovered The Hive BBS (a telnet BBS based up in Glasgow), the Foothills BBS followed as I started to drift around the world, in-dial, out-dial, gopher and pad. I found phrack (of course) and The Unplastic News that I'd send to the dot matrix so I could take it back to halls to read.

I'd finially done it, I'd escaped the big wide open green fields and found the small dark hot sweaty terminal rooms, I was free!

I just wanted to say that I love textfiles.com. I used BBS' for many years, and it saddened me greatly when the Internet started to kill them off. I think they were the high water mark for digital communities. I tried to bring my Renegade BBS back up via Telnet but it just WASN'T THE SAME.

I also think it's great that you're trying to teach people who never had the opportunity to experience a BBS how amazing they really were. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

Craniac, I wish you would respect the fact that this is our guest blogger's discussion forum. If we wanted you to have a forum, to discuss the lack of forums, we would give you one. Then we would censor it to make sure you were posting ideas only relevent and ok to the topic subject. Your IP has been noted and you have been added to the "To Do List" portion of the Final Solution. We must have purity! Zeich heil!

Quick--let's hijack this and talk about the absence of Quicktopic on the main board. I'm shocked---shocked!