I was a contracted research assistant at Bradford Elec Eng where UNaXcess was developed and resurrected. I was therefore #2 only to Minter (Bobo) the programmer and Loomes (non-participant on the BB) the Sun network root sysop. I was Fairwitness'Avatar' - the only staff member and FW apart from Bobo, the rest of the FWs were students.
Upon launch we only expected it to be a fleeting novelty for a dozen or so students plus maybe a dozen more from JANET-connected Univs. How word spread I don't know, (no cellphones or Facebook then) but by its 1st Birthday (for which we had a 'meet' at Bradford attended by about 40, the membership (participants, not subscibers) was over 1000. Huge for its day, and maybe still the single largest such forum until literally--wordwide chat boards started on the internet.
The early days were a bit of a melee, because the student fairwitnesses thought the net was their free wild west - I had to firmly break it to them that if any member of staff read their wild west language the board would be shut down summarilly. We had to behave as hosted guests.
The Fairwitnesses job therefore was to read all posts, delete any which might have got us shut down and either move others to moree relevant topics or suggest or set up new topic to streamline the discussions.. Simple, right? The only Fairwitness usernames can remember are Hatman, Dylan and Drizz.
The other fascinating early development was that the network sysop David Loomes hated the board at first, but did a 180 about it when he discovered that within a month IS network was now such a high-traffic site in the country, that it won high 'bandwidth notoriety' and the advantages thereof.
Where I can clarify the story is that the idea to raise funds (the Sun server and workstations were great on campus, but with weight of popularity made it slow elsewhre) was to assign 'renice' speeded-up service in exchange for a subscription. It was completely optional. I was the only one who voted against it (selling university resources is not wise) but dozens signed up for it.
Bradford UNaXcess never made it to its second birthday. The reason it disappeared forever one afternoon is that Minter had become more and more cranky when he knew he was moving away from Bradford (was never told if he initiated the move or was asked to go. I guess the former because computer admins were rare and much in demand for a lot of money. He was sick of being second fiddle to Loomes). On his last day he marched in to the host server room and announced he was shutting UNaXcess down. Clearly he was crazy - the monster board had long outgrown it's Dr Frankenstein and would keep going without him. For now I played along, let him strip its net connection, and waited for him to leave so I could re-install it.
Then a funny thing happened.
As soon as it was gone, we all felt a great weight had been lifted from our shoulders. It took a lot of time and a lot of work to moderate a thousand-user board, and althogh heavily addicted we were blessed to be rid of it. So we never reinstated it.
The money? Months later, with the assent of the off-site members who had other means of contact (MUDs etc), the on site student FWs spent it on 'a massive party'. I had also left by then so nobody knew how to contact me. Again, I'd have voted against the party and sought a better legacy.
Frankly, Bradford Elec Eng deserves a blue plaque for its contributions to early computer communications culture. It was years ahead of its time to combine Elec Eng with Computer Science and shed its dependence on the room-sized behemoth compuers and line printers elsewheree on campus. For a few golden years it as one of the top five most UCCA applied for elec eng departments in the country.
Even the entire department is now DEFUNCT thanks to moronic 'budget cuts' (let's face it, media studies, peace studies, animation, game design etc. are all FAR more impotant than science, engineering and the course I later taught to pan-discipline final year engineers on Renewable Energy Resources, right? What the world needs most is more film-makers and TV administrators, not scientists working on climate threats and energy shorttages, RIGHT??)
The legacy of UNaXcess was a SHARP learning curve of netiquette, plus learning to navigate a 'free speech' bulletin board but in a hosted environment, plus a very sharp appreciation of what all net users learn the hard way - that typed words on a page convey only 10% of the all important mood, humour, anger or levity of a message, and we all had to learn net diplomacy and were some of the pioneers who did so.
>I still feel its legacy today. It gave me a very important head start when internet bulletin boards came along - a direct result of which I not only formed a 10 year transatlantic relationship, but also initiated friendships in Florida that I sill have to this day -35 years on.
My only regret is that I was too haughty an engineer to do what SHOULD have been done - collaborate with the Psychology professor from Leicester(?) Uni who was a high-contibution member (Psycho) to produce a new-subject landmark psychology paper about net communication. He was a short fat good humoured middle aged guy, but no way I can remember his real name.
If any other Bradford UNaXcess alumni read this, please drop me a note.
Dr David Shepherd (Avatar)
Bradford UNaXcess Fairwitness
10.3.24