A little over four years ago, on April 1, 2002, I started the E2 Chatterbox Archive. Since then, over 1.9 million messages have been stored in its database. To belatedly mark its birthday, I thought I'd write a few things about it and the catbox in general.
I had joined the site a little over a year before this, and a little after that wonko had the idea to archive the chat. His archive only stored the previous week's chat, in order to avoid the strain on the database. A few months before I started mine, wonko had decided that he could no longer continue hosting the archive, and had offered his code to anyone who wished to maintain it. I, for some reason, agreed, and messed a little with the code to see if I could get it working. His original code included a popup chat window that allowed users to chat directly from his site. I removed this, as well as the one week limit on storage.
Although very little of wonko's original code remains, the look and feel and layout of it remains very similar. Credit is still due to him for the idea and the code he gave me, without which I'd certainly never have created the archive.
The chatterbox itself has always divided opinion on the site. While it is very popular, many have complained that noders spend too much time chatting and too little time writing. Its use should be restricted to discussing nodes and helping new users. While it still fulfils those roles, it has taken on a life of its own and arguably the central pillar of E2 as a community. It's hard to say whether there would have been so many nodermeets, friendships, relationships and even marriages if it weren't there. It also helps bring many users regularly to the site.
The vast majority of users of the archive use it for two things: checking the context of the current discussion, and checking if anyone has mentioned their name while they've been away. It is, however, interesting to use it for more than that. It functions as an excellent historical record for the site. It can be fascinating to see how we reacted at the time to events and changes on the site, whether that be the honour roll or the various large E2 gatherings. Even weddings have been followed in the chatterbox.
It's not just on-site events that can be followed in the archive. Sometimes events in the real world spill over onto the site. Perhaps the best example of this was the 7th July London Bombings, which were played out in real-time in the catbox, with several noders personally involved in the events. Take a look at http://ascorbic.net/catbox/archive/0/1535875/ for a fascinating record of the day.
Some trivia about the archive
Machines hosting the archive:
- April 1, 2002 - June 17, 2002
Some ancient box in my office, running Red Hat
- June 17, 2002 - August 21, 2002
An old blue iBook, running Mac OS X, sitting in my hallway, connected to my cable modem over 802.11. This was a very unstable time for the archive.
- August 21, 2002 - June 12, 2003
A slightly less ancient box sitting in my hallway, running Debian connected to my cable modem with an actual Cat-5 cable.
- June 12, 2003 - May 4, 2005
A shared server somewhere in Texas, running Red Hat. This stopped being able to cope with the load.
- May 4, 2005 - present
A virtual private server somewhere in New Jersey, running Debian. This is loads better.
The archive in numbers
- Total messages in the archive: 1914123
- Total number of users who have spoken: 8387
- Of whom 1846 have only said one thing.
- Users who have said 10 things or less: 5087
- ...which leaves 3157 who have said more than 10.
- ..of whom 1128 have said more than 100 things.
- ..and of whom 320 have said more than 1000
- There have been 2912 topics since I started tracking them in June 2002. You can search for these, and see them in the list below using the special user '@topic'.
I call the list of most talkative users the Hall of Shame, mainly because I'm a little ashamed of how high up it I am. I used to provide a top 10 of all time on the front page, but this became too heavy on the database. It now shows a rolling seven day top 10. However, to mark the birthday, I have compiled the
All time top 200 hall of shame
Read it and weep.
- 36696 IWhoSawTheFace
- 32601 Simulacron3
- 30026 amnesiac
- 28718 yclept
- 27042 Halspal
- 25273 TenMinJoe
- 25198 Maylith
- 25185 Swap
- 23506 allseeingeye
- 23032 ascorbic
- 20071 drownzsurf
- 19957 spiregrain
- 19180 LeoDV
- 19152 rootbeer277
- 19000 CrAzE
- 18561 doyle
- 18058 TheDeadGuy
- 16319 TanisNikana
- 15155 FeltTips
- 15142 TheBooBooKitty
- 15112 loquacious
- 14926 la petite mort
- 14905 StrawberryFrog
- 14139 haze
- 14109 JohnnyGoodyear
- 13847 eien_meru
- 12510 borgo
- 12329 vuo
- 12079 wertperch
- 11684 golFUR
- 11485 dannye
- 10804 kthejoker
- 10126 ac_hyper
- 10038 Gorgonzola
- 9894 Chiisuta
- 9346 izubachi
- 9298 grundoon
- 9267 DejaMorgana
- 9157 Roninspoon
- 9154 tkeiser
- 9063 Master Villain
- 9016 256
- 8952 Andromache01
- 8779 avalyn
- 8755 auduster
- 8629 mkb
- 8578 sam512
- 8576 Excalibre
- 8305 Laura Elizabeth
- 8255 BlackPawn
- 8179 Eco
- 7824 ianah0
- 7767 skow
- 7733 Cletus the Foetus
- 7683 heppigirl
- 7548 Oolong
- 7529 m_turner
- 7478 call
- 7256 Gritchka
- 7211 AnnaPanna
- 7205 Mitzi
- 7176 briglass
- 7074 RACECAR
- 7071 face
- 7058 MightyMooquack
- 6947 Heisenberg
- 6843 Jet-Poop
- 6803 ocelotbob
- 6732 Myrkabah
- 6639 AnBolb
- 6596 ryano
- 6576 jasstrong
- 6282 ReiToei
- 6276 NotFabio
- 6228 jasonm
- 6013 momomom
- 6011 thefez
- 6006 El Puerco Loco
- 5991 ^Davion^
- 5979 artman2003
- 5955 will
- 5903 QXZ
- 5883 C-Dawg
- 5804 Jurph
- 5655 witchiepoo
- 5614 boi_toi
- 5530 wordnerd
- 5468 The Custodian
- 5341 eliserh
- 5326 Palpz
- 5296 liveforever
- 5280 Albert Herring
- 5087 RalphyK
- 5084 LaylaLeigh
- 5051 Chase
- 4914 arcanamundi
- 4897 icicle
- 4803 wick
- 4674 karmaflux
- 4655 HenryBok
- 4617 knifegirl
- 4607 unperson
- 4532 IronGoth
- 4507 MALTP
- 4462 Raspy
- 4442 gwenllian
- 4349 Uri E Bakay
- 4268 Kit
- 4248 jclast
- 4240 QuantumBeep
- 4187 DyRE
- 4183 The Alchemist
- 4171 mat catastrophe
- 4156 Wiccanpiper
- 4151 Ouroboros
- 4111 ueni
- 4046 Walter
- 4025 SEF
- 3965 Imprecation
- 3959 Chihuahua Grub
- 3933 AudieMcCall
- 3871 Scriblerus
- 3858 themanwho
- 3855 CoolBluesMan
- 3845 Bitriot
- 3837 Teiresias
- 3809 EXTomar
- 3771 metal rozsa
- 3730 panamaus
- 3709 SharQ
- 3664 gnarl
- 3660 siouxsie
- 3601 OldMiner
- 3509 LaggedyAnne
- 3504 Inflatable_Monk
- 3419 etouffee
- 3373 waterhouse
- 3366 fondue
- 3365 iceowl
- 3357 Uberbanana
- 3339 amib
- 3312 mirv
- 3292 Kensey
- 3253 wilco
- 3167 Tlachtga
- 3149 inlet
- 3137 Diabolic
- 3137 BrooksMarlin
- 3105 MacArthur Parker
- 3080 Byzantine
- 3074 Blue_Bellied_Lizard
- 3039 bewilderbeast
- 3029 paraclete
- 2997 Derfel
- 2931 Ereneta
- 2912 @topic
- 2890 montecarlo
- 2889 tetrisboy
- 2884 arieh
- 2883 Noung
- 2880 JudyT
- 2864 Catchpole
- 2859 althorrat
- 2856 jaubertmoniker
- 2836 smartalix
- 2824 Apatrix
- 2801 Starke
- 2773 Frankie
- 2747 Spackle
- 2736 Lometa
- 2696 mofaha
- 2666 undead
- 2655 Lord Brawl
- 2645 toalight
- 2628 tdent
- 2596 bookw56
- 2566 QuietLight
- 2558 decimetre
- 2523 andersa
- 2502 Footprints
- 2494 BROCKEN
- 2466 Pandora
- 2459 oakling
- 2361 Damodred
- 2348 Trina
- 2269 Fruan
- 2253 Habakkuk
- 2246 Mark Forest
- 2219 Hyphenated
- 2218 shyHyena
- 2203 JerboaKolinowski
- 2190 interrobang
- 2157 Domin
- 2120 Nora
- 2119 Johnny Boy
- 2103 Zerotime
- 2098 Templeton
- 2089 409
- 2050 Quizro
- 2049 Transitional Man