3 ms·

Hey, folks. I'm Yoz Grahame, the chap in the article who coded and (very badly) ran the forum. Many thanks to Lewis for writing such a great piece, and to dnete

by yoz 12y ago

Hey, folks. I'm Yoz Grahame, the chap in the article who coded and (very badly) ran the forum. Many thanks to Lewis for writing such a great piece, and to dnetesn for posting it here! If you're interested in learning more about Starship Titanic and the Employee Forum, I recommend this MetaFilter post: http://www.metafilter.com/98848/The-Post-That-Cannot-Possibly-Go-Wrong http://www.metafilter.com/98848/The-Post-That-Cannot-Possibl... Rhaomi put together an amazing collection of links, including a guide to getting and running the game today. I also have a big mess of a comment halfway down the thread with some extra info and stories. My one main addendum to Lewis's piece: I was far from the only person behind the ST sites. The content was written by Michael Bywater, Neil Richards, and Alison Humphrey. Design & development by Alison Humphrey, Cynthia Miall, Claudio Calvelli and (whenever I got in before lunchtime) me.

shimfish 12y ago
TDV seemed to be a magnet for oddball online communities. One day, irritated with all the abject nonsense, requests for him to do their English homework, and speculation about the number 42, that was posted to his main forum, Douglas requested to add a "Half Witted Crap" forum. I promptly set that up and, rather than being offended by it, the community took to it with relish. I believe it also developed its own rich subculture but not being as brave as Yoz, I never dared look long enough at it to work out what was going on there. [edit: found link to original request for new forum: http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/thread.cgi?426,0 http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/thread.cgi?4... ]
nemothorx 12y ago
> "it worked fantastically – so fantastically that some people really did send the emails back, reassuring us that they hadn't looked at the site." I was one of those people! In fact, my email archive still has my response, where I attached the message to the reply, assuring that I'd not read it. I thought I was being so smart! Sadly, the original emails from "Ford" were lost from my archives somewhere along the lines. I suspect I got >< close to the forums too. The site is all very familiar to the memory, but I either didn't dig quite deep enough, or found it but didn't realise it was postable rather than a read-only forum with more play marketing. Still, it's truly fantastic that it's been kept alive so long, and I'm sure should a day ever come that you don't wish to (or unable to) continue hosting it, that there are a legion of fans who would happily take over!
Rhaomi 12y ago
Hey, yoz! Thanks for the shout-out. That is probably my favorite post of mine on the site (out of 100+ and counting). So wonderfully serendipitous and fun. Everything about that game is a joy. I was actually looking back into some of the Starlight Lines forum stuff a few months ago when I discovered with dismay that the original URL (starlightlines.com) was down. I was thrilled to figure out you'd managed to resurrect it! (Did you ever see that email I sent you back in September?) Anyway, the story of that hidden community is so great, I did my level best alerting anyplace that had originally picked up the story for a correction on the new URL so people could know it was still around. Apart from the fine folks at H2G2: http://h2g2.com/feedback/A388334/conversation/view/F47997/T8310537 http://h2g2.com/feedback/A388334/conversation/view/F47997/T8... ...I didn't get much success -- including no response from Kotaku UK when I mailed them offering help for their pseudonymous writer on H2G2 who had been asking for leads on the apparently dead forum: http://h2g2.com/entry/A452125/conversation/view/F55683/T8309967 http://h2g2.com/entry/A452125/conversation/view/F55683/T8309... It's good to see he ended up doing something with the story after all -- though it would be nice if he'd hat-tipped the MeFi thread where he apparently lifted that "sentient tomatoes" quote from verbatim (unless of course that's just a favorite turn-of-phrase of yours). Lately, MeFi needs all the Google juice it can get. Cheers, and thanks for all the great stories!

by yoz 12y ago

shimfish 12y ago

TDV seemed to be a magnet for oddball online communities. One day, irritated with all the abject nonsense, requests for him to do their English homework, and speculation about the number 42, that was posted to his main forum, Douglas requested to add a "Half Witted Crap" forum. I promptly set that up and, rather than being offended by it, the community took to it with relish. I believe it also developed its own rich subculture but not being as brave as Yoz, I never dared look long enough at it to work out what was going on there. [edit: found link to original request for new forum: http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/thread.cgi?426,0 http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/thread.cgi?4... ]

nemothorx 12y ago

> "it worked fantastically – so fantastically that some people really did send the emails back, reassuring us that they hadn't looked at the site." I was one of those people! In fact, my email archive still has my response, where I attached the message to the reply, assuring that I'd not read it. I thought I was being so smart! Sadly, the original emails from "Ford" were lost from my archives somewhere along the lines. I suspect I got >< close to the forums too. The site is all very familiar to the memory, but I either didn't dig quite deep enough, or found it but didn't realise it was postable rather than a read-only forum with more play marketing. Still, it's truly fantastic that it's been kept alive so long, and I'm sure should a day ever come that you don't wish to (or unable to) continue hosting it, that there are a legion of fans who would happily take over!

Rhaomi 12y ago

Hey, yoz! Thanks for the shout-out. That is probably my favorite post of mine on the site (out of 100+ and counting). So wonderfully serendipitous and fun. Everything about that game is a joy. I was actually looking back into some of the Starlight Lines forum stuff a few months ago when I discovered with dismay that the original URL (starlightlines.com) was down. I was thrilled to figure out you'd managed to resurrect it! (Did you ever see that email I sent you back in September?) Anyway, the story of that hidden community is so great, I did my level best alerting anyplace that had originally picked up the story for a correction on the new URL so people could know it was still around. Apart from the fine folks at H2G2: http://h2g2.com/feedback/A388334/conversation/view/F47997/T8310537 http://h2g2.com/feedback/A388334/conversation/view/F47997/T8... ...I didn't get much success -- including no response from Kotaku UK when I mailed them offering help for their pseudonymous writer on H2G2 who had been asking for leads on the apparently dead forum: http://h2g2.com/entry/A452125/conversation/view/F55683/T8309967 http://h2g2.com/entry/A452125/conversation/view/F55683/T8309... It's good to see he ended up doing something with the story after all -- though it would be nice if he'd hat-tipped the MeFi thread where he apparently lifted that "sentient tomatoes" quote from verbatim (unless of course that's just a favorite turn-of-phrase of yours). Lately, MeFi needs all the Google juice it can get. Cheers, and thanks for all the great stories!