As to Pre-Liberation BBs... in timeline order:
~ Pumpkin's Retail Release BBs from '99-03 are still on Strategy Planet's servers. They were decommissioned when SP took-over MPlayer's business assets.
~ LA, the NEWST bbs.
~ Cowboy has the Pumpkin-2 bbs on his BitArmory business server.
~ Last I heard, Sab, Coyote & Kevin preserved the RTS.net bbs.
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"History" is but a convenient shorthand word for the flesh and blood people who make it.
History documents the prime mover individuals by name because of those who bore witness and survived to recall and recount. Only when all of that is lost in the sands of time (or some Orwellian "Big Brother" contrivance) are there no individual names recorded.
The nicks mean something to those flesh and blood individuals and to those who where there to witness deeds done and knew those who did the deeds, first hand and who benefited from those efforts.
The Pre-liberation prime movers were not an anonymous collective, or hive, like an ant or termite colony.
It was a type of group effort that celebrated individuality, while able to work in concert; never ever seeking to slight or erase that individuality or the contributions of antecedent individuals, the broad, sturdy, shoulders upon which we stood, as Sir Isaac Newton put it of his antecedents.
Like I said, what's done with the list is out of my hands.
One thing I can, perhaps, do is add to the nicks some of their tangible contributions.
Others who would bear witness can do that too, as well as pointing out inadvertant omissions on my part.
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In light of the saying - "Shooting yourself in the foot." - & its implied meaning and real world consequences, I'm gonna re-boot two previous comments here.
...... As well, there is an adjunct to this point - these same folks could have still been assets.
They have the mature, 1st class talent, skill sets, determination and love of the game, to have been motivated to continue to make central contributions to this project.
This project has always had a chronic manpower shortage. These circumstances are related.
...... Yes, we had our antecedents as well - folks that made our journey possible and deserved acknowledgment, openly, freely and graciously.
Athena sprang full grown and ready to rock on her own from the forehead of Zeus..... rarely works out that way in RL amongst mortal beings who live interdependently without god-like powers.
Which reminds me of Lord Acton's quip vis-a-vis the antics amongst the anchient Greek pantheon of gods:
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Thus the importance of mechanisms of accountability, humility and gracious acknowledgment.
