Talk:Talker/Archive 1

WWW based talker vs webchat?
What is the big difference between a WWW based talker vs a webchat? There were a lot of popular webchats around 1997 which would then qualify as talkers, huh? How does it fit together in online chat? --lynX
 * The deleted paragraph mentioned a system which was one out of a whole boom of webchats in Germany in the 1997 to 2002 period. Only one of them may have qualified as a real Talker: the STERNchat/LAVAchat featured a telnet access port because it was based on LPMud technology. Anything that doesn't provide telnet does not qualify as a talker as defined at the beginning of the article. --lynX

The intro
I'm changing the intro of the article, so I've decided to write here first explaining why. It nowadays says:

"Talkers are a means of real-time, text-based communication which pre-dated the advent of Instant Messaging. They differ from those systems in that there is no central authority or database of users. Bob on one Talker might not be the same person as Bob on another."

What the first sentence wanted to say was

"A Talker is a text-based communication system. Talkers pre-date Instant Messaging."

Even this doesn't define a talker, so this should be enhanced. Anyway, I'm removing the "They differ" sentence, since: 1) You have to compare as talker systems as im systems. In one talker Bob is allways bob, like in MSN bob@hotmail.com is allways bob@hotmail.com. You could argue that the identifier in IM systems is _usually_ (but not in all IMs) the email address instead of the nickname, but that's quite irrelevant. 2) Even if that was true, that's not what marks the difference between a talker and an IM.

Culture
You said that section is "very POV" when you wrote it. Though, giving it an objective eye, I think I can say that while you obviously don't paint a very pretty picture, it is a rather accurate one. :) -- Shinmawa 10:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Looking very good
I think the merge is going very very well. Specifically, I commend the following:
 * The controversy section I think is much much MUCH better than their previous iterations.
 * The sections are well separated and well-organized.
 * The amount dedicated to each major talker is about perfect.

Here's some feedback I hope you find helpful:
 * There's currently two sections about "multiple worlds" talkers (sections 9 and 11).  These can probably be merged into a single section (I recommend section 11 should be the keeper).
 * Yes, I thought about that, but I don't think it flows. One is talking about examples of talkers, while the other is explaining a definition.  I suppose that it could be done, but if it is, then for each other subsection of examples, they'd need their own examples as well. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)bout
 * I don't think that "multiple worlds talkers" are significant enough to warrant two sections, especially when they essentially say the same thing. How about you put the definition from the top of section 9 to the top of section 11?  The intralinks in section 9 really don't offer any value-add  -- Shinmawa 08:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There's a recommendation below about "adult" talkers. Talkers with "adult" themes have always tended to gather a larger audience than their all-ages counterparts.  One way to do this that I recommend is maybe another section for adult talkers that includes Iron Rose and CP.   I think those are a good enough representative sample.  You already have the CP entry so half-way there.   Some other talkers like Lintilla have adult ports among their all-ages ones, so perhaps a back-reference would be appropriate.
 * No, all ages talkers usually were more popular than their adult counterparts. Maybe it didn't seem that way if you only went to adult talkers, but yeah, that's it.  Iron Rose is probably equally as notable as CP, if you disregard the controversy bits (AFAIK Iron Rose had zero controversy) so could be included.  CP wasn't really "multiple worlds" so probably shouldn't be in that section.  But then we could keep going forever.  Snowplains, Ancient Realms, Crossroads, Ncohafmuta, Paradox and lots of others were equally as notable as CP.  Many people regard Ancient Realms as the forefather of talkers, and its server hosted a lot of talkers for free in the days before talker.com et al.  In a very technical sense, Ancient Realms was the first ever "multiple worlds" talker, although it didn't call them that.  But it was as much multiple worlds as CP. There are probably 100 talkers that could be listed if we include CP.  Its really very subjective which to include and which not to. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I know you have strong feelings about this. I don't consider CP "multiple worlds" (It certainly isn't in its current form).    However, others are asking for CP to be listed SOMEWHERE and I'm recommending a compromise.   Would you consider meeting me halfway on this?  -- Shinmawa 08:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Might want to consider pruning the link dump down at the bottom.  There's an AWFUL lot down there.
 * I think that for the size of the article, that link dump is appropriate. Also, all of those links were used as references, so deleting any is inappropriate. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * It is a little bold to say that telnet being unencrypted was an "unknown security hole". Anyone with even a basic knowledge about TCP/IP networking in the last 20+ years would know that telnet is unencrypted and can be "stiffed".  On the same bit, you might want to consider elaborating what you mean by "arrested".  Someone might misunderstand and think "cops with handcuffs".
 * Why is that a misunderstanding? It was cops with handcuffs.  They went to jail, in prison, locked up, in trial, in court. Although apparently they got let off though, something about police using inappropriate techniques or something.  Apparently having pornographic images of animals having sex with people on your computer isn't that big a crime anyway. By the way, if we can find it, it should be on the internet somewhere, because I can remember being directed to a newspaper article that described it.  Would be in a German newspaper though. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I obviously misunderstood. Some of the details you put in here are very helpful.  You might want to expand this a little bit as I obviously didn't understand it, so its probable that others won't as well.   The details you gave here would be an excellent start to that.  -- Shinmawa 08:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * This sentence "the only way to connect to a talker was by using telnet, which used MUD clients" is inaccurate or misleading.  MUD clients use the telnet protocol, not the other way around.   Did you mean "which are used by MUD clients"?
 * I don't understand your criticism. Feel free to make it easier to understand. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * No worries, I'll fix it. -- Shinmawa 08:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Neil's own history of talkers (including the "family tree"), indicates that he was merely inspired by UNaXcess, not that he used the code as is claimed. I believe this since a BBS system that had one process per user and a talker are fundementally different architecturally.
 * No, the family tree says that, but his discussion of it says that he actually used the code. He was inspired by ew-too, but only used UNaXcess's code.  Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 07:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll concede the point -- Shinmawa 08:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The section 'Early Internet Talkers' is more than a little disjointed. I also assume that the following section is 'NUTS Talkers' because someone took exception to this section being mainly about EW-Too (and preceding) talkers.  Otherwise NUTS having its own subsection there seems out of place.  It would probably be best to merge the two into one subsection.  I should check what mention there is of UglyMUG as well (TinyMUD based 'MUD' that started around 1989 at The University of Manchester, but despite being ostensibly a MUD really did get used mostly just for chatting).  Certainly a passing reference to such would fit in such a merged section.  Suisanahta 23:12, 21 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Removed NPOV
Zordac (aka Cat) insists on spreading completely false rumors and allegations about petty spats primarily out of spite that his own talker was revoked from him. The claim that Planes of Existence has anything to do with the "death of all talkers" is laughable. There are hundreds of talkers still in existence today with many having much stronger user bases than Planes of Existence would ever hope to have.

See: no personal attacks as for why your behaviour is unacceptable. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 20:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed individual allegations
Removed baseless, inaccurate speculation of individual allegations and instead put in that allegations were common in talkers. Including individual instances of allegations are only continuing decade-old spats that nobody cares about. They hardly add to the wikipedia community and instead serve only as a forum for festering rumor, speculation, and allegation. 68.83.85.175 01:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

See: WP:POV as for why your statements are incorrect. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 20:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Relinked Crystal Palace
Restored the links to the Crystal Palace entry. 68.83.85.175 20:19, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

This was removed so as to facilitate a merge. Once one happens, the links will be removed. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 20:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Merge/Split
I am merging all of the talkers in to this entry. As for how to deal with the 5 major controversies, as there are only 1 side of the story for each instance, and some people have challenged this, suggesting that putting an argument for each side is not neutral, I am not going to mention individual talkers. However, this then means that CP has to be deleted, and a merge is not possible. I will merge the remainder however. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 20:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The page is now 94 kilobytes long, and wikipedia is giving suggestions to split. I'm all for having all the talkers together, but I think it would be better to split this article into separate articles. It's way too long. I suggest the following structure:

Eric 21:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Talker
 * Brief history overview
 * Brief info on users/culture
 * Use of talkers
 * Programs to connect,
 * Commands and abilities
 * Talker (culture)
 * Current section 1 on history
 * Current section 6 on culture
 * Advertising
 * Talker (types)
 * Talker types (ew-too,NUTS)
 * Code bases
 * list of talkers; section 11-14

UPDATE: Since the page had such an huge cleanup, maybe the suggestion to split makes no longer sense?

Incomplete
This page is incomplete and not accurate. Many important early talkers are not listed. Speedway. Starship. Oceanhome. DU. Even places like Cactus that were started to make a point and then died. Many more. Where is IR? That is at least as important as CP, if only because of the regular rl IROPs which is a phenomenon worth noting. And the Lintilla/Sleepy/Fantasia divisions have more to be said about it. ALso the user base is very different in ew-too talkers and NUTS talkers, not much overlap. This is worth noting. But much of this is not on line in an archive. People like me who have been in the talker worlds since the beginning have this knowledge but we cannot post it in wikipedia because it is called Original Research. What to do to make this article better? -209.178.130.157 06:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Incomplete of course. Why not accurate?
 * Why are these early talkers important? If you think that you can say why, then include them.  I have heard of Oceanhome and Speedway, and they may be important.  They were not listed on the articles that I could find.  If you can find something on them, add them.
 * Cactus? Again, same as above.  Never heard of it, but if it made a point then it may be useful.
 * I would have thought that Iron Rose was more notable than CP, so am happy to see that included on that basis.
 * Add more to Lintilla et al. There are refs there, and you should be able to follow things from there.
 * I think that I already mentioned the bits about ew-too and NUTS in the "difference between ew-too and nuts" section. Feel free to add to that.  I agree that there wasn't much overlap.  Dotty people didn't recognise spodders, and vice versa.  It was only ew-too users that were called spodders.  I never once heard a nuts person being called that.
 * I am sure that you can find it with a good google search. Look through things.  Also note that some things aren't in google.  Most of the PoE stuff for whatever reason wasn't in google at all.  I found it in MSN search.
 * Why is the article not good? I thought it was a very good article.  Its better than my effort on Peter Falconio disappearance.  Its the best article I've ever written. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 08:26, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

By the way, a talker owner or creator is, per Wikipedia guidelines, regarded as a reliable source of information about the talker. So if you can find anything that Virus wrote about CP, or even if he wants to write a web page right now, Wikipedia would recognise it as accepted information about CP. And if he writes something about somewhere else, and nobody else disputes it, then it would also be considered to be 2nd degree reasonable. Hence all of the PoE stuff that you disputed is considered to be accurate because it was written by the creator of the talker. Unless the other side is printed, it can't be disputed. So maybe get Virus to write something on a web page, and then we can reference it. AFAIK we can do that. Then we can have a neutral point of view. If he can be convinced to write a "history of CP" then you could link to it and use it. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 08:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Feel free to inquire to me as to anything re: talker.com itself or some of the talkers that were on it. I have paper records of accounts and while I can't divulge names and such, I could add more info if needed. Being the owner and creator of talker.com, I'm an authoritative source. yacko
 * Has Virus been editing this page? I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression he was adding content. yacko
 * I have not figured out how to add my name to be attached to these comments. Sorry for formatting impoliteness. yacko

The problem of course, as you can probably understand, is that whilst you say that Virus said this, we can't prove that he did. He needs to write it down, and on an official site somewhere. Like put it up on Crystal Palace's web site somewhere. Even if he logged in, it wouldn't be considered to be accurate. In fact it'd be better if he wrote his web page, then you linked to it and used the info. I think that that might help things. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 08:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Why are so many pages merged here?
It's kind of strange, why not have talkers on separate pages? Kim Bruning 05:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Originally, there were many of them on separate pages. This, unfortunately, started a wide debate on what was and what was not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia.  After a much-heated debate, most people agreed that merging them into a single article was the best option.   - Shinmawa 15:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, we should standardize the Talkers page and the MUD's page, don't you think? Their info is quite simillar in kind, so having a similar style is nothing but good. I wrote this in this part of the discussion page since the MUD's article has one page per MUD and here we haven't.
 * I'm sorry to have missed that prior debate, but if the major reason behind the merge was because people couldn't agree on what should and shouldn't get its own page... well it's become a moot point as everyone and their per hamster is STILl trying to mention their own talker, just on the one page. Which has only lead to the single page getting way too messy.
 * If this is really a problem I'd suggest re-splitting the lot, and where there's any doubt as to if an individual talker should have its own page then put the information about it on a single (sub)page for 'Miscellaneous Talker Information and History'
 * Athanasius 22:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Cheeseplant's House
The correct name for the talker created by Cheeseplant was Cheeseplant's House, and not Cheesehouse. The article mistakenly implies at one point that it was created by Cat which is not the case. For more information on Cheeseplant's House, go to the source:

http://www.cheeseplant.org/~daniel/pages/cph.html

If I ever get the time and effort to work out this Wiki thing I might have at the page myself.

Esran 19:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I've gone and fixed all those references myself now. Btw, yes, this IS Athanasius as in Summink. Someone else must have had the Wikipedia ID already, so I spelled it backwards instead.

Athanasius 23:00, 21 Jun 2006 (UTC)

General cleanup of Surfers/Marble Madness history
It was myself that brought about MM/Surfers, so I definitely know what happened better than anyone else. For reference the EWtoo History is also accurate as I had the opportunity to edit that some years ago.

Of course whilst I was at it I kept on wincing at other inaccuracies so cleaned up a few of those as well.

Athanasius 23:02, 21 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Take Off and Nuke It From Orbit
The more I look at this page the more I think it just needs nuking and starting over from scratch, keeping to the Neutral Point of View and only verifiable information. There's far too much rambling by people who think their own little corner of the talker-verse is way more important than it is or was.

I guess the first stage in doing that would be to agree on:


 * Information that MUST be covered (what a talker is, how to connect to one, and only verifiable 'firsts')
 * Information that SHOULD be covered (more detailed history of some of those firsts, maybe a little general discussion of inevitabilities of talkers, rather than details of every little spat that happened on someone's favourite lost talker)
 * Information that MUST NOT be covered (well, see what I just said, forget the gripes about individual 'hacking' events and other such accusations, oh and any advertising. I'm sorry folks but if your talker wasn't VERY significant to the history of what this page talks about it doesn't even warrant a mention by name).

And by defining those I mean, in the first place, that 'we' should define merely the necessary, and sufficient, sections for the page.

Athanasius 20:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Clean-Slate Sections

 * Pre-amble. The current one is more or less perfect.  But could use a little grammar and spelling cleanup, plus maybe some clarification of the real-time aspect (as opposed to email or other 'message posting' type BBS systems).
 * What a Talker Is, and What It Is Not
 * IT IS A place for people to talk, and perhaps roleplay.
 * IT IS NOT a place to kill monsters and other players, that's a MUD.
 * How Users Use a Talker
 * Telnet as the mother of all Talker interfaces.
 * Very little, if any attempt, at a web interface.
 * Common command paradigms (the whole EW-Too vs NUTS 'dotty' thing comes in here)
 * History of Talkers
 * Born in part by cutting out the hack and slay of MUDS, and in part from non-realtime communications on BBSes.
 * What WAS that 1984 talker referenced in the current pre-amble?
 * The whole Cat Chat/CPH/EW/EW-Too/Foothills/Surfers and onwards history, which demonstrates the common meme of a type of talker being carried through multiple, often from-scratch, code bases.
 * Similarly for NUTS and its offshoots.
 * Really some (at least cross-reference) mention of MUCKs, MUSHes etc should be made. I'd personally like some mention of UglyMUG but realise that might not be 'big enough' to warrant mention.
 * Some mention of BBSes like UNAXCESS (and I wish I could remember the names of a few othersuch that were around on JANET at the time)
 * As much as I like having the whole history of Surfers et al in there I'm not REALLY sure this page needs that much detail. In fact I'd propose re-splitting the page to be honest.  A Talkers Category with its own main page, and then sub-pages within the category would be a much better format.
 * The Culture of Talkers
 * NOTE VERY VERY WELL, this section will need to be very carefully constructed and policed, else it will turn once more into nothing but a place where petty squabbles from years ago are aired, or at the very least where everyone and their cat tries to advertise their own pet talker.
 * Pre-cursor to 'IM'.
 * Very much a grass roots thing (see the whole EW-Too history), with no central entity controlling development or use once the initial release of EW-Too was out of the way.
 * Real-world meetups
 * Real-world relationships developed via talkers.
 * Rumours. Having re-read this section it's mostly NPOV enough to be included as-is.
 * Talker Lists. A more NPOV on these than currently.  Just point at the current-best known ones (list.ewtoo.org still exists, although I'm not sure how well maintained, and is certainly more neutral than the current text makes out).
 * Glossary of terms
 * Perhaps we should ensure that each entry in this has its own wikipedia page, certainly terms like Spod already do.

In fact now I think about it, this page REALLY should be re-split to multiple pages within a Telnet-Talkers category.

Athanasius 21:17, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm with you. :)  Offhand, I see room fFor roughly two or three pages:


 * 1) One page should discuss talkers as a whole. Discuss the concept at large, technically what makes a talker, how they work, how they can be fFound, and a brief -- *BRIEF* -- outline of historical evolution.
 * 2) Perhaps one page should cover the social values of talkerdom. I'm not sure what this page would be titled, and it's possible it might belong better in the primary talker page.
 * 3) One page should be open to all the "my talker is special" entries. Ostensibly, this should be a proper History page.  but what exists now should be history, and it has devolved into a cutting and pasting of "help talker." While I disagree with the existing trend, I recognize the value of describing some places various histories.  Had you asked me 7 years ago, I would have said no thank you, all that becomes is advertising.  But these places and fFacts are sliding into history and should be remembered.
 * I'm reluctant to include a glossary, due to a human tendency to make up new words randomly which have no point or purpose. So I can imagine it being a list of "WINGDINGIGGLESNARFLOL! - to giggle in a winging and dinging way while snarfling.  LOL!"  and I'd probably have to kill someone, then.  But i suppose a fFew words are worth establishing.
 * Skotte 04:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, it occurred to me, what might be useful would be a page specifically discussing each major codebase. The history of talkers is almost entirely a history of programmers trying new things out.  There was an explosion of talkers after PG+.  How did that affect the culture?  Also I fFind it difficult to address NUTS with ew-too quite so much, so i would like to see a division there somewhere.  While cultures tend to be similar, technically they are quite different.  SU levels, command interfaces, and so on are examples.  So I suppose one page could be open to discussion of the each branch, perhaps, with external links to where codebases can be downloaded.


 * Incidentally, we could really take a cue fFrom the MUD and MUSH people. Their pages look really tight.  They tend to not quite cover all the information I think could be covered, but they are readable, eh.


 * Hey, what do you think of a category which envelopes all these worlds. Something like Category:Plaintext Intellectual Arena.  Broad?  yes.  But I think to sufficiently provide an intelligent introduction to the concept, the matter of differences needs to be addressed.  Talkers are quite different fFrom MUDS, and both are very different fFrom MUSHes.  but how?  and in what ways are they similar?  I suppose simply a single page which discusses the differences and similarities might suffice, but if you're talking about starting a category, then start a good solidly grounded category.  Templates can be used to link and cross-relate topics.

Skotte 05:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Misc Notes
Try at all costs to avoid "Talker X currently at " or "currently run by ..." pieces of text, as they all too easily become out of date. At the very least anysuch mentions should be dated. For example right now the Surfers entry still mentions Demi and Sanman as being involved admins, when in fact they've had nothing to do with the place for a long time.

It is better to link to an external reference where possible and certainly if it is known to be better maintained than this page.


 * I'm removing the reference to Tints because, while it might have a big impact on the talker world in the future, it is in a very early stage of development. 82.71.82.107 20:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Athanasius 21:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Protocols
A minor note. someone removed ssh access fFrom talkers. I just wanted to be sure to point out, yes, ssh (and probably lots of other protocols) are not common, but do exist. Brigandine has ssh access, fFor example. There was somewhere or other long ago which i saw had access across port 80 -- two somewheres, in fFact: one place dumped running output to a webpage, and one place simply ran normally on port 80 (the reason being to evade port blocks at college campuses). A greater conclusion could be that talker runners tend to be inventive and have used perhaps every method of connection imaginable.

Actually this reminds me of MUD Compression Protocol. http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud/mcp.htm it was largely unused as fFar as i know, and seems to be abandoned. It was aimed at muds (explicitly by name), but the basic concept works across any platform of this type. The immediate problems are that it requires a lot of work on the part of the developer to implement, and talkers (and muds, and all the rest) use generally plain text which uses a minuscule amount of bandwidth to start with. So investment vs. return is very low. Having 2 versions probably didn't help it any, either.

More pressing however is simply that, yes, SSH is used. Skotte 03:57, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

SCRUS
? never heard of it. The website reeks of an ad. But I'm willing to believe you have some sort of hosting service or something you provide. Stand and deliver, mate, or consider your link to be toast. Skotte 16:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

This is no advertisement. SCRUS was developed by Engi and Rawhide(me) for primarly use on the talker Rome. We had plans of releasing it, but have been rather busy. This code base was also used temporarily on some other talkers. If you need proof of concept, try rome.volcanus.org 10000. Thanks -- Rawhide

Other MUD variants
Isn't the section "Other MUD variants" and "See Also" doing basicly the same work? I propose we remove the former...
 * Second that. --195.23.92.74 18:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow
Compare current to a revision a few months back, and the current page is about 1/50th the size of what it was. Either it was too big before, or else someone just likes to delete lots of work. I'm sure that there's a lot of upset people about that amount of work being destroyed.


 * As a matter of fact, if you take a look to each change and why was it made, you'll see that there were no "destroyed work", only clean-ups in order to get a better article.--195.23.92.74 17:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks like this talker article got big because of a merge of previous articles. Since this has all been deleted from the talker article, I've unmerged the merged articles, and restored them to their previous contents.  If this is up for dispute, then people can file Articles for Deletion requests.

Extranet Talkers
I added a section for early talkers that was a variant of the PDP-11 Talk program. This is the first known full chat program that I know of existed. Lifespan was only about 2 years, and the users maybe topped 100. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.40.119.77 (talk) 11:41, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

It should probably have it's own page, as a variant to talk, and beginning of chat? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.40.111.98 (talk) 19:19, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Before you make its own page, you should start by adding references to prove it. I added a tag that that section needs references. If it is proven to be true, it is good. It also might need to be shortened, and written in a more encyclopaedic tone. You are free to try to create an article on it, but it might be nominated for deletion unless it is able to assert notability. 59.101.174.32 14:56, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I hate to toot my own horn here, but I was trying to be 3rd party about the addition. I'm Mark and I wrote TALK back in 83. Since there were only 100 users or so over the total of about 4 years (83-86ish) for both versions, I really have no idea where to find these people anymore. Somewhere buried in my house, I am trying to find the printout of the program on 132 column greenbar, but I doubt it would have a date attached to it.

I'd like to leave it attached, maybe someone from back then might help cite it. -Mark —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.40.119.77 (talk) 02:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

There's no conceptual difference between an "extranet talker" and an "Internet talker", so I'm putting this info into the internet talkers section. 195.23.92.74 (talk) 15:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Mark, is the front-end you're talking about called "CB", and its successor "CBE"? -Mark Z Markez414 (talk) 15:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Relevance

 * Check out the relevance of the list of talkers. Why those and not others? What makes them relevant? For instance, I can bear with all the references that we have now, but two: what is the relevance of Fantasia's MW or Dracosia? Or, why isn't the biggest NUTS-like talker in existence (Enchantment Under The Sea) there? Maybe we should clean-up this list, and instead of having just the name of the talker (and link) we should have a short sentence for each explaining it's relevance. (eg.: UnAXess - one of the first talkers in existence)
 * Never heard of Enchantment Under the Sea. Why not add a bit on it?  If it is the biggest ever, surely there's something to say about it.  Pretty confident it's not the biggest ever, at least not in terms of popularity. Dyinghappy (talk) 14:43, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As the article is nowadays, I don't think there's any problem with the actual list of relevant talkers. Marcos Marado (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Get references for everything —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.23.92.74 (talk) 15:39, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * There's a recent addition in the article saying that a "Todd Krause" wrote the "early talker" with Mark Jenks. The citation doesn't talk about Todd Krause, so I guess that we need a source for that...
 * I tried to get him to put Todd into the about.com article, but with his focus on the "Founding Father", he did not include it even though I asked him to include him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.40.113.199 (talk) 03:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be fixed nowadays. Marcos Marado (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing
We really ought to get some external sources in here, guys. Ideas on this? I know there's the CP's history and stuff, but that might be considered primary research. I know there was a .net article in 1994 or 1995, I'm going to hunt that up and add it in over the next few days. I'll also do an academic search, I know there's been some social analysis of talkers. Further ideas? Kate (talk) 00:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Seems to the fixed nowadays. Marcos Marado (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Security
Having done quite a lot of messing with the code for Dragon Code I uncovered some serious security and stability flaws in it, one of which allowed outputting to the telnet client via the talker any file on the file system that the talker had access to. Cam2a (talk) 22:39, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem relevant to be included in the article. Marcos Marado (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Talker codebases
It seems odd to me that "See Also" points out to NUTS, but in the article itself there are no references to talker codebases - specially when there's a section about "Talker hosting" (which, IMHO, is a lot less relevant). In particular, and like MUDs (and you can see how's the MUD wikipedia entry's architecture), talkers' "public" is (and specially "was") really interested in one specific codebase or another: NUTS' users would typically go to NUTS talkers but not to ew-too ones, and vice-versa. If you read the old discussion entries, you'll see another person commenting about this, stating "what might be useful would be a page specifically discussing each major codebase. The history of talkers is almost entirely a history of programmers trying new things out. There was an explosion of talkers after PG+. How did that affect the culture? Also I find it difficult to address NUTS with ew-too quite so much, so i would like to see a division there somewhere. While cultures tend to be similar, technically they are quite different. SU levels, command interfaces, and so on are examples. So I suppose one page could be open to discussion of the each branch, perhaps, with external links to where codebases can be downloaded." Replace "page" with section, and you get my point. Marcos Marado (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

examples ?
I will be useful to list some examples. Running talkers, users can connect to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.55.255.41 (talk) 12:50, 23 January 2014 (UTC)