Textfiles.com

{{Short description|Archive of digital media}}

{{Lowercase title}}

File:Textfiles first page.png

textfiles.com is a website dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the bulletin board system (BBS) world and various subcultures,{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/05/net-nostalgia-the-online-museums-preserving-dolphin-gifs-and-spinning-comic-sans|title=Net nostalgia: the online museums preserving dolphin gifs and spinning Comic Sans|first=Gavin|last=Haynes|newspaper=The Guardian|date=5 February 2017|access-date=6 March 2018}} and thus providing "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them".{{cite web|url=http://textfiles.com/|title=T E X T F I L E S D O T C O M|first=Jason|last=Scott|author-link=Jason Scott|work=textfiles.com|access-date=6 March 2018}} The site categorizes and stores thousands of text files, primarily from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and some that were created well into the 1990s. A broad range of topics is presented, including anarchy, art, carding, computers, drugs, ezines, freemasonry, computer games, hacking, phreaking, politics, computer piracy, sex, and UFOs.{{cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/1999/03/return-of-the-living-bbs/|title=Return of the Living BBS|last=Nickell|first=Joe Ashbrook|date=1 March 1999|magazine=Wired|access-date=6 March 2018}} The site was created and is run by Jason Scott.

The site went online in 1998,{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJqZGRIwtxk#t=396s |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/tJqZGRIwtxk |archive-date=2021-12-21 |url-status=live|type=YouTube video|time=6m36s|title=Open Source Bridge 2012 Keynote - Jason Scott|author=Scott, Jason|author-link=Jason Scott|date=18 June 2013|publisher=Open Source Bridge|access-date=6 March 2018}}{{cbignore}} and {{as of|2005|lc=y}} had collected 58,227 files.{{cite web|url=http://www.textfiles.com/filestats.html|title=TEXTFILES.COM File Statistics|first=Jason|last=Scott|author-link=Jason Scott|work=textfiles.com|access-date=16 August 2010}} {{as of|2017}} the site was averaging 350,000–450,000 unique visitors per month.{{cite tweet|user=textfiles|date=19 Nov 2017|number=932036330439217152|title=I hadn't run webalizer against http://textfiles.com for, it looks like, 3-4 years. Finally did it - the site averages 350,000-400,000 unique users a month. Most want sex files and a PDF on the IBM Selectric Typewriter.|first=Jason|last=Scott|author-link=Jason Scott}} Most of the textfiles.com projects are "completionist" in outlook, attempting to gather as much information as possible within the decided scope.

The site also houses a number of sub-projects with their own hostnames. artscene.textfiles.com has a repository of computer art including crack intros, ANSI and ASCII art and other related documents; audio.textfiles.com has an archive of audio files, including prank calls, recorded telephone conferences with BBS owners and hacker radio shows; cd.textfiles.com contains an archive of 1990s shareware discs; web.textfiles.com contains files created after the World Wide Web went into mainstream use, approximately 1995; bbslist.textfiles.com aims to be a comprehensive list of all historical BBSes; timeline.textfiles.com is meant to list all important events in the history of BBSes.