Talker: Encyclopedia II - Talker - Ew-too style all ages talkers

Talker - Ew-too style all ages talkers

Ew-too style talkers, which are originally based on LPMud have code that is very easy to use for people who are used to MUDs, and hence attracts many MUD users who are used to the interface. Regular ew-too users are sometimes referred to as spods, a term that is unfamiliar with NUTS users. Ew-too users were very unlikely to ever go to a NUTS talker, because the interface is so very different. Ew-too talkers were almost exclusively all ages. Ew-too users were more likely to go to a MUD or a MUSH than to go to a NUTS talker.

Talker - Cat Chat

Cat Chat was created by Chris Cat Thompson, who was a university student at Warwick University in England, as LPMud but without any of the monsters or the game element. It commonly had about 20 users on it at a time. It used the University's network to the internet via JANET (Joint Academic NETwork), which only connected to a sample of other Universities, and was never connected to the entire internet. It was shut down in February 1991 out of fears that the "JANET police", i.e. representatives of the Joint Academic NETwork might have found out about the talker and Cat might be prosecuted for stealing bandwidth and misusing the university's computer systems.

After it was closed, Daniel Cheeseplant Stephens, a user of the talker, was inspired to create his own talker, Cheesehouse in honour of Cat Chat, and thus talkers were born.

Talker - Cheesehouse

Cheesehouse was opened on 8 February 1991, using the same ports that were previously used by Cat Chat, and indeed a lot of the users to the talker were unaware that it was an entirely different talker. Whilst Cat Chat had been down for several months, a few Warwick University students tried out the old port number just in case, and thus the "refugees" from Cat Chat formed the basis of the early user numbers.

Cheesehouse was initially only opened whenever Cheeseplant was physically in the computer laboratories, however that was several hours per day. But as time went on and the code was developed and Warwick University was opened up to the internet in all of its glory, Cheeseplant made the decision to occasionally leave the Cheesehouse talker open when he was not in the computer laboratories.

On 4 February 1992, the Warwick University administrators, under the direction of the Director of Computing, closed Cheesehouse, removed access to the network port, and placed a banner message indicating that it had been withdrawn. Cheeseplant also received a threatening e-mail from Mark Brady, a system administrator from UMIST, requesting for personal information about the people who used Cheesehouse, as well as access to logs of what they said.

Cheeseplant was unable to respond to these requests, primarily because he had never logged any conversations, and as a result received a number of other threatening e-mails from Mark Brady, suggesting that the talker was a "hotbed of hacker activity".

On 6 February 1992, Cheeseplant was suspended from the Warwick University computer system, as penalty for operating the Cheesehouse talker on their network, and stealing their computer resources. Cheeseplant met with the administrators of the Warwick University computer services, and explained his case, which was successful in that he managed to get his computer account back. However, he would never again open his talker.

Talker - Foothills Elsewhere

Elsewhere, as it was originally called, was created as a kind of offshoot from Cheesehouse, and, like Cat Chat and Cheesehouse before it, was written by a university student at Warwick University, Simon Burble Marsh, and hosted there, with its original site name being lily.warwick.ac.uk 2010, thus making Warwick University being known as "the home of talkers".

The talker existed at Warwick University for 6 months, hidden from administrators due to its small size and low bandwidth, rarely having more than 20 users on at a time.

In November 1992, system administrators from Warwick University discovered Elsewhere, as they had similarly discovered Cheesehouse in February 1992, and they shut Elsewhere down.

It almost died then and there, if not for one of its users, Michael Footsteps Wheaton. Footsteps provided Elsewhere with a new site in Florida, loligo.cc.fsu.edu 2010. In acknowledgement of his efforts, Elsewhere was renamed Foothills, a name that it carries to this day.

With Foothills, as it was now called, hosted in USA, and a much faster connection speed, American users had a much faster connection, without the massive trans-atlantic lag, and the popularity of the talker, especially to users in America, increased exponentially, and before long it had as many users as Cheesehouse had had while at Warwick University a year earlier.

Footsteps left Florida State University soon after the talker was first hosted there, and, whilst its systems administrator initially tolerated it, early in 1993 he decided to boot the talker.

Footsteps gave Foothills a 3rd home, at backus.mtsu.edu 2010, however everyone knew that it would be for a short time only, as the University would eventually find it and shut it down.

Foothills moved to its 4th home at vulture.dcs.king.ac.uk 2010, thanks to another of its users, Jeremy Fox Doran, who hosted it at Kingston University. However, this meant that the talker was back in the United Kingdom and hence its lag was again terrible for American users, and its popularity suffered because of it. Eventually, however, for the 3rd time in its history, the system administrators blocked the talker from operating.

Another user, Rod Ecthelion Morgan found Foothills another home, at marble.bu.edu 2010. This was the site of largest growth for Foothills, as it had a very good connection, and the user base quickly grow to have over 200 users on at a time on a regular basis.

After 2 1/2 years of relative secrecy, Neil Althanasius Soveran-Charley placed the source code for Surfers on an FTP site, and soon Elsewhere-based talkers were everywhere.

Talker - Surfers Marble Madness

Surfers, originally called Marble Madness, was created using ew-too code in 1994 and was the first internet talker to have 1,000 users logged on at the same time, and is among the most popular talkers of all time. It is currently run by Demi, Sanman, Mike and Furry. Its current coder is Saraphale. It is currently (November 2005) the most popular ew-too talker among those charted in [23], having over 4,800 connections per day, and an average of 20-40 users on at any point in time according to [GRIM's talker list]..

A few of the superusers of Foothills became disenchanted with the way that Foothills was being run and stole a copy of the code to create their own talker, calling it Marble Madness, on shadowfax.surr.ac.uk 2010, named Marble Madness to reflect the super users' anger at the way that Foothills was being run on marble.bu.edu 2010. Marble Madness was never developed extensively while at shadowfax.surr.ac.uk 2010, but by November 1993 it was fully developed, when it was renamed Surfers and hosted on muscle.rai.kcl.ac.uk 4242 thanks to Ian Roosta Dobbie.

After Surfers was made public, there was a shift, European users started to use Surfers whilst American users continued to use Foothills by perference. Both talkers boomed, Foothills remaining the busier always, due to it being the oldest, and first thought-of, and also having the quicker link for the more numerous American users.

It is often closed to new connections [24] due to its high popularity, and a user must e-mail the administrator in order to log in for the first time.

The talker is run on http://www.surfers.org/ on port 4242, probably in reference to The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Its official advertisement [25] is of being "A talker inhabited by a group of lazy long-haired, tanned layabouts who bum around on the beach all day desperately trying not to do any work."

It is regarded as important to the history of ewtoo, and hence to the history of talkers, and is the primary focus of LiveJournal's spod community

Talker - Resort

Resort was created in 1993 by Neil 'Athanasius' Soveran-Charley, an administrator on Foothills, as a kind of approved spin off, and was designed in many ways to rival Surfers (Marble Madness), who had angered many Foothills users because of stealing of their code. It is currently administrated by Adam J. Foxson, and its coder is currently James Hawtin.

Resort was one of the first ever themed talkers, the theme being a ski lodge. Before this, most talkers were just "somewhere to chat" and the rooms were just a group of randomly inter-linking rooms. Resort had a theme, and the entire talker reflected this. This idea for themed talkers later became what almost all talkers used, and eventually led to the adult talker themed communities.

Resort began with an automated interface that would welcome new users as they came in. Users were guided through the process of registering, as if they were visiting a Resort, then given a ride on the chair lift and off they went.

Resort put in a big effort to be known to be newbie friendly, and hired staff with that aim in mind. This was the first time that a talker had hired admins purely so as to be friendly and welcoming - prior to this they were only used to register accounts and get rid of trouble makers.

Because of the extra burden, Resort had more admins than most other talkers of its era, with a ratio of 1 to 20 rather than the 1 to 50 or 1 to 100 of most other talkers of its time.

Marble Madness, in response to Resort being a themed talker, changed its name to Surfers, and used the very simple theme of being at a beach. Rather than Resort's idea of more admins, Surfers had the idea of less, claiming that Resort's admins hassled users too much.

The rivalry between the two talkers was highlighted by the belief that a user of Resort going to Surfers or vice versa was seen as a betrayal of their talker. The rivalry was also prevalent with their competing user numbers. They both had competitions and meet ups and all manner of other activities to try to attract users, and to try to beat the other one.

Both talkers reached well over 1,000 users on at a time by mid 1995, but at some point, mid-late 1996 their user levels started to drop, somewhat permanently.

As both talkers wanted to be better than the other, when one lost numbers the other capitalised on it, and this in turn meant that user levels dropped at a very rapid rate from both talkers.

Security issues on other talkers also affected the big two talkers, and in 1998 their user levels virtually halved instantly, and again in 2000. By 2005, their user levels had dropped to regularly be below 100, and today their count is typically less than 40 on at a time according to [GRIM's talker list].

However, they still remain very close to Surfers as the most popular ew-too talker in the world, being just one notch below at number 2.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ew-too style all ages talkers", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki