The only official archive of AnonTalk!
Here, I, the author, summarize the history of how this Web site/board/forum/project/service came to be.
| Year(s)/time ▼ | Event(s) |
|---|---|
| 1995? | An obscure magazine explaining and listing a few local old-school BBSes initially sparked my interest, but having only a fax modem, I was unable to call them and there wasn't much for me to do about that at the time. |
| Early 1999 | I finally got an Internet connection and soon became fascinated with bulletin boards of all kinds, especially the simpler ones. |
| 2000–2006 | I experimented with and made many different BBS softwares for different purposes, a couple intended for distribution, but most tailored for specific communities, always striving to make the "perfect" Web forum, but, initially, much too inspired by popular/traditional Web boards, assuming that they did it "the right way". |
| Summer of 2007 | My final "traditional" board project launched. It was a very ambitious "Usenet killer", with dynamic categories that the user could pick and remove as he/she wished, presented in a rather clever manner. The structure was very similar, yet fundamentally different in some important ways, to what would become AnonTalk. It was not a success (although I may have ended it much too prematurely, like so many other projects) and this put an end to my attempts to ever make a successful "traditional" forum with usernames and categories. Having noticed that using identifiable handles or real names always creates all sorts of problems (not just because people unknowingly violate their own privacy, but also because malicious persons pretend to be somebody else in order to ruin their reputation), I gave up on this concept entirely. |
| Early 2008 | Very delayed, and originally intended to be released shortly after the main project (described above) as an experiment, a very minimal anonymous board goes live under the name of "Anontalk" (not even the title was polished!). Fully Unicode compatible, with no usernames, no registration, no categories, with a serious database backend (MySQL is for kids), it was a new challenge for me. Still, all the knowledge gained during the years was well put to use in this project (although blocking trolls without e-mail verification is not a simple task), and while it was very minimal and lacking almost every feature that you may take for granted today, it immediately started evolving, slowly but steadily, through hard work and determination. |
| The present | AT has endured literally countless attacks, "raids" and all sorts of harassments, including many death threats, as a result of its free speech and controversial discussions. Bigots are constantly trying to get it shut down. At times, during heavy attacks, the board actually ran on pure willpower. Yet, it is still up, stronger than ever, and with your help, it will not go down again. |
| The future | AT will never "sell out". Believe me. I'm not just saying this because it currently makes no money. I really care about this site as if it were my own child (and, in a way, it is). Unlike most other people, I am not just making something without a business model just to get it popular enough to sell out to one of the big players. The ads will never be obnoxious (at the very worst, there will be small, static (non-animated, non-interactive) images as an alternative to the text ads, but even that is unlikely). That's a promise! |
See also: Unserious fraud/scam companies and services.