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NexusForum: A Short History 
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Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2009 9:18 am
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Post NexusForum: A Short History
Online forums where fans and admirers of Robert Heinlein could connect and chat have existed as long as there have been computer networks. In the beginning, there were the pay services such as GEnie, Prodigy and AOL. Each had a Heinlein-focused forum of one kind or another, and some had more than one.

Alongside those were the individual bulletin board systems, often connected together by the marvel known as Fidonet.

Then came the web, and Usenet, and such things as alt.fan.heinlein. For a time, there were so many individual web-based Heinlein forums that most languished because of the division of traffic. As long as Usenet was vibrant and accessible, AFH was the location that held the community together. Most web-based forums faded away and vanished.

With the decline of Usenet usage and the decreasing number of accessible servers, a vacuum was left in the online Heinlein world. The original NitroForum was one of the first successful web forums, but it was eventually done in by an unending onslaught of spam and abuse users that the era's software was unable to block. It was taken down in 2007.

In early 2008, better software brought NitroForum back. With strong resistance to spambots and abuse users, it flourished and became the last active online forum dedicated to Robert Heinlein.

With the unveiling of Heinlein Nexus, it was a choice of creating a new forum (and then having to ramp up the user base and traffic), or repurposing the existing and successful, but otherwise isolated NitroForum.

A little reconfiguration and redesign, a simple background move, and NitroForum has become the nucleus of NexusForum. Building on the vibrant user base and existing topics - 2500 posts' worth - should provide a substantial kickstart to this "new" home for discussion of Robert A. Heinlein.

Please, add your voice and your thoughts. Welcome!


Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:32 pm
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