Talk:Monochrome BBS

This really needs an article - but how to make something that will get through afd? Secretlondon (talk) 15:34, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, quite. There's been a bit of discussion about this on Facebook as well, with people talking about trying to find old articles about Mono. Sadly I don't think anything has yet emerged, and I fear it might not. I did try dropping a line to the IS people at City, from whence istr it grew, but I didn't get anywhere with that either. I also changed my mono status into a plea for info for a bit but that was about as successful as you might imagine|! It may be a good example of something which can never be documented adequately and so will have an article. As a mono user, of course, I am biased, but I was a little shocked at the (what seemed to me) hostility to the article on both the recent successful AfD and the previous failed attempt. But, they would say, policy is policy and my saying "but I like the article and I am sure it *was* important" is not as good as actually producing some refs ... which is where we came in, I think. I'll continue to watch with interest and hope that the article can make it back one day. Cheers DBaK (talk) 16:52, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I was looking for its article when I found it had been deleted. I've never been a member but I know it is important. Someone must have written about it! Secretlondon (talk) 14:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeedy. There is some discussion of this in the FB group "Monochrome BBS" but sadly it doesn't really reach a conclusion. Nor, indeed, a nice set of refs. Tsk. :( In the topic "Credible academic or journalistic articles about Mono" someone says they're still working on it and that was 6 May so maybe all is not yet lost. DBaK (talk) 14:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I have an athens account so if I have time I'll see if I can find something. Secretlondon (talk) 14:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

BarCamp London 8 Myself and a couple of other users are preparing a short talk at Barcamp London 8, which is being held at City University, where Mono originated.

This article is definitely still relevant as Mono is one of the only remaining BBS's out there, certainly the most active, so people wanting to look at internet history have something live to look at. --Davoloid (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting! Will you be telling us where/when this is, please? Thanks DBaK (talk) 16:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Barcamp 8 is on the 13th/14th November, at City University, London. It's an unconference so doesn't count as "academic". And tickets are free but really tough to get! But it may generate some interest and I am hoping to showcase it as an early example of social networking, given the technical functionality and the social functions they performed.--Davoloid (talk) 16:42, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for that. If I was free I'd be tempted to try to get a TCU contact to wiggle me in (perhaps disguised as a doughnut delivery person etc) but I'm doing something else ... PLEASE tell me your session will be videoed and made available to non-attenders? Please please? It's not only very interesting to me personally but may, of course, elicit information which one day might help us get this into mainspace, where it should be! Cheers, DBaK (talk) 08:20, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

For info: Slides from talk at Lanyrd Davoloid (talk) 15:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting - many thanks for the link DBaK (talk) 21:04, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Heavy Revisions

I've gone through and added references to previous articles about Mono & users, but all the rest of the information comes from the Help files of Mono, either internal or the web page. So it's not "original research" as such.

I think it's about ready to go back live, the only thing I'm not sure about is the image rights to the screenshot.Davoloid (talk) 18:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Well done

It's great to see the article back where it should be. Best wishes DBaK (talk) 18:23, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I only just noticed that it was live again. Thanks to everyone who contributed, great job :) Quaestor23 (talk) 20:28, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Only two years late to the party - that's about 10 minutes in Mono time. DBaK (talk) 21:29, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Category

Hi all,
There appears to be quite a few mono spods who are also active on wikipedia. So, I created Category:Wikipedians who use mono; feel free to add your account to the category and foster a little more community spirit. bobrayner (talk) 21:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I can add myself to that. I'm an ex mono user really as I think the user interface is outdated and unusable on modern platforms such as the iPhone or Android, and there's not much chance of changing that due to an unavailable API or development platform. --Ritchie333 (talk) 13:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

"Unusuable"? How come I use it on my Android phone then? Anyway, this is of course not a discussion board... --Dannyno (talk) 11:58, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Hard to ref

Hi all,
Any article should be built on solid secondary sources, but I think it's OK to use primary sources to fill in some gaps and details, if there's no controversy and no need for interpretation &c. So, I think it's reasonable to use on-mono content as a source for this article, as long as we're careful about it (ie framing). Obviously our arsenal of citation templates doesn't extend to old BBSs but it should be possible to put some text between <ref></ref> tags, perhaps including a keypath, that allows somebody else to find the source and read for themselves. Dependence on sources which have clicky-links tends to increase FUTON bias. bobrayner (talk) 11:06, 23 January 2013 (UTC)