Open Bulletin Board
- Warning: Autistically technical explanation.
A Registration-free Bulletin Board, shortened to Open Bulletin Board, is a type of online discussion platform whose primary characteristic is the ability to interact with the page immediately, in a manner similar to a real Notice Board. Websites using Open BBs have historically prescinded registration systems and developed posting cultures around user-facing anonymity. However, it should be noted that neither is necessary to build an open bulletin board.
The format's chief advantage allowed low-cost forums to run seamlessly, being the core element of all the platforms that pioneered anonymous internet culture. Later developments, the Imageboard, saw the implementation of content ephemerality to get over technical limitations.
History[edit]
Technically the first online forums to exist were open message boards, being the earliest forms of forum-like communication before account systems where implemented and the closed forum became dominant in the mid-to-late 80s.
Open BBs as we understand them developed from the popularity of post-it note style notice boards in Japan's mid 90s web sights. By the mid 90s, free notice board services were offered by several companies, and the online tech community took to sharing "BBS" scripts inspired on these services. Come the end of the 90s, an 'underground' BBS scene had developed. The usage of the term "Bulletin Board System" is incorrect, that refers to the entire server structure a BBS provides, while a message board is a single feature delivered from a CGI. The term was established by shareware scripts were advertised as importing BBS UIs to the WWW.
Open message boards lingered in irrelevancy for almost a decade everywhere except in Japan due to cultural and utilitarian reasons (imagine manually switching to english fonts for a forum login every time you wanna write a one line shitpost). Technological developments in the early 2000s enabled the format unprecedented ease of post-attachment, which combined with content creation tools made them a prime promoter of remix culture. This saw them undergo a massive increase in popularity, becoming the dominant force behind Internet Culture through the late 00s and early 10s, supplanting the closed bulletin board.
By the mid 2010s, technological developments cut the open BB's growth short, as their niche was absorbed by websites sporting modern account management systems and news aggregator platforms while the displacement of the personal computer in favor of the smartphone shifted content creation from remixing to recording.
Types[edit]
As with all digital technical standards, the vast majority of Open BB scripts represent mere backend or UI changes forked from a few innovative root scripts.
- Single Thread BB
- The earliest form of the technology, developed either 1994 or 1995. A glorified comments page with an admin panel slapped on. A single thread that all posts are loaded to. The first scripts distinguished themselves by linking to their reply, forming comment chains.
- [Perl] miniBBS
- [Perl] Kuzuhascript
- [Perl] KuzuhascriptPlus
- Threaded BB
- An improvement on the Single Thread BBS first made in 1998, now every post has a subsection for replies. After nearly a decade, Japan can compete with USENET. A transitory format that saw a few adopters, as the leading website, Amezo developed the Floating thread BBS a couple months after adopting the system. Structurally the same as a typical single thread BBS script
- [Perl] resBBS
- Floating Thread BB
- First known as "Amezo-style" boards and Textboards in the west, introduced in 1999. A thread 'floats' by being bumped to the first index through replies. Archaic compared to contemporary forums, but it should be noted that western floating thread forums like vBulletin and FUD arrived a year later.
- [Perl] Amezo's resBBS fork
- [Perl] 2channel Script
- Floating Thread BBS With File Attachments
- Also known as the Imageboard, the earliest traceable script being first implemented in 1999, with two others (imgboard and LIB's script) not known to have floating threads before then. Limitations to the mostly-indie Japanese forum scene saw the first scripts distinguish themselves by enacting thread auto-pruning. This is the point where BBS posting culture absolutely explodes in popularity, crossing the Ocean to the English speaking web and becoming a keystone of Internet Culture.
- [Perl?] Licentious Image Board script
- [Perl] imgboard
- [PHP] GazouBBS
- [PHP] Tinyboard
- [PHP] Vichan
