Questions about the Old Forums

[Collisteru]

I just recently joined, so please forgive me if this question is clueless. I've gotten curious about the old message boards.

It looks like this is just the last of many iterations of Zompist boards -- the oldest I could find is the Virtual Verduria message board https://www.zompist.com/board/ (2000-2002). The banner at the top of that board helpfully redirects us to the next one on spinnoff (2002?-2012?). The original URL is down but this forum is (barely) archived by the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20061117125 ... &start=100). After that comes the Incatena Board (http://www.incatena.org/viewforum.php?f=3&start=750) (2012?-2018) which is happily still up and is fully accessible. Despite starting use in 2012 according to Wayback Machine snapshots of incatena.org, some posts on that board are dated as far back as 2002.

A few questions arise from this sleuthing:

- Does the Incatena Board duplicate all the posts on the spinnoff forum, or are some posts lost? Does this duplication explain why some posts are timestamped as early as 2002? If not, where do these posts come from?
- Are there any zompist forums that are missing in the summary above -- especially something before or after the spinnoff board?
- What happens to posts that were culled? Are they still accessible anywhere?
- Has the history of the zompist forums been documented anywhere?

It would be a shame for the records of over twenty years of communication and conlangery to be lost forever!

[zompist]

- Does the Incatena Board duplicate all the posts on the spinnoff forum, or are some posts lost? Does this duplication explain why some posts are timestamped as early as 2002? If not, where do these posts come from?

Yes, the ZBB dates back to 2002. It was at first hosted by my friend spinn, and then by Lore. When those were no longer available I was able to copy the database over to incatena.org.

That board got messed up, so I started this one. However, the incatena database was recovered and wrestled into shape by bradrn.

The old board was pretty regularly pruned, as I was using friends' servers. That's why you see really old posts on the Almea forum, and only one post on Ephemera.

- Are there any zompist forums that are missing in the summary above -- especially something before or after the spinnoff board?

The board on Lore's server; but as explained, posts from the earlier board migrated to incatena.org.

- What happens to posts that were culled? Are they still accessible anywhere?

Nope, unless you have luck with archive.org. (Frankly I think you'd find it less edifying than you might expect.)

It would be a shame for the records of over twenty years of communication and conlangery to be lost forever!

I haven't pruned this board since it hasn't been high-traffic enough to be necessary. But I'll issue one of my periodic reminders to back up your work, and posting it to the ZBB is not backing it up.

[Collisteru]

Very interesting, thank you for the reply!

[sasasha]

It's nice to revisit the old boards sometimes. The wayback machine's copy of the main page of the spinnoff forum happens to capture some online users I remember well. I remember one of them, Soren, from a Leeds meet in ≈2005.

Whether the history of the zompist boards has been documented much is something I'd also be interest to know.

I can think of a few reasons why zomp might say he suspects it would be less edifying than you expect – for one thing, the demographics were much younger, and I for one would no doubt be highly embarrassed by my 12-year-old ravings.

But there was much good stuff going on there and I have a feeling this board has been influential in quite a few people's lives. (Many people also used the CBB going back, though I wasn't one of them.)

Here’s my contribution to ZBB historiography. You'll no doubt guess, Collisteru, that the old boards were kind of hopping. It started before facebook, reddit, etc... which today soak up a lot more of the casual conlang chit chat. Back in the day, that was all on the ZBB and CBB, and it could be a fairly heated environment when everyone was online. Plus, it was before smartphones, so people were bored and looking for new likeminded people to add on e.g. MSN messenger. I made a few lasting friendships that way from here. There were also some... personalities... which added to the rich tapestry of it.

Today’s board is probably much better for the blood pressure (which, of course, wasn’t a consideration back then)! But it was and has always been a kind of special place online IMO, and whilst I’ve had long periods of not posting, it’s been quite a big part of my life, really. I remember talking about it in my university admissions interview... And I got in, so. Cheers all.

[sasasha]

This thread might be of interest, Collisteru ‒ or anyone who hasn’t seen it.

viewtopic.php?t=206

I just want to say, too, Vardelm, that I really enjoyed the paper.