Digital Archaeology: Floppy Disk #10 – RESTRIC.DOC
A summary for those that haven't been keeping up with this series:
I found a number of 5.25" disks at a thrift store a number of years ago (we are talking late 1990s probably). I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25" disk drive and extracting the contents a several years back. Since then, I have been occasionally posting the content here.
Based on the contents, most or all of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the “Close Encounters” Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s.
The following description of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: "This SIG, known as 'Close Encounters', is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships."
This service was text based and was accessed via a modem and whatever terminal program you had available for your computer to dial in to Delphi’s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I am not aware of any archives in existence today that contain what was on Delphi in the 1980s.
This post includes the contents of RESTRIC.DOC which is dated September 26th, 1985. It contains “membership restrictions”. This is primarily a description of the policies of this SIG regarding behavior in both conferences (live chats) and forums. Basically, it is sort of a three strikes and your out type of policy. It sounds like it was mostly intended to prevent personal attacks and verbal abuse.
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RESTRIC.DOC
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Check out this post for the complete text in a format that resembles the original.
Check out some of my other recent posts:
Advanced Computer Entertainment (January 1992)
https://ecency.com/retrogaming/@darth-azrael/advanced-computer-entertainment-january-1992
Vintage Photos - Goodwill Lot 1 (225-228)
https://ecency.com/photography/@darth-azrael/vintage-photos-goodwill-lot-1-aa37b82a67c74
Home Computing Weekly (June 21-27, 1983)
https://ecency.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/home-computing-weekly-june-21
Brevard Renaissance Fair 2020: Pub Sing (5) - The Craic - Shee an Gannon
https://ecency.com/hive-181335/@darth-azrael/aazwqvcb
Vintage Photos - Goodwill Lot 1 (221-224)
https://ecency.com/photography/@darth-azrael/vintage-photos-goodwill-lot-1-122e0d91f14b3
Digital Archaeology: Dell Vostro 230
https://ecency.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/digital-archaeology-dell-vostro-230
Check out my other Social Media haunts (though most content is links to stuff I posted on Hive or reposts of stuff originally posted on Hive):
Wordpress: https://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/darth-azrael
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Darth_Azrael
Blogger: https://megalextoria.blogspot.com/
Odyssee: https://odysee.com/@Megalextoria:b
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-2385054
Daily Motion: https://www.dailymotion.com/Megalextoria
Books I am reading or have recently read:
Red Sails Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
And what about the actual content of the messages/discussions? Any examples?
The contents can be seen in the images above. I've tried pasting the text here in the past but it always comes out looking terrible. Seems the various Hive interfaces don't support the <pre tag very well.
You can look through older posts to see examples of chat logs and forum messages. I've been posting these for years at this point and it is a pain to find stuff on Hive. I'm working on an index but it is in progress.