matt said:

Hey cool, thanks for the "org history" lesson there. Interesting to read how this website came to be.

sosgemini said:

hey! he IS a cute hottie!!!!

XxAxX said:

sosgemini said:

awww. bob is quite the hottie too, ain't he and i still think we should have a forum devoted entirely to him here at the ORG.

psychodelicide said:

No problem. In fact, I think it's possible to go as far back as 1990... yes, 16 years.

In 1990, Ron Buckmire founded the PML (Prince Mailing List). Later that year, Jon Brode took over and continued to run the PML until its final digest on November 9, 1995.

I didn't join the PML until August 1995, so I don't know/remember much about it, but here are some things I've been told about the PML. If I got something wrong, please let me know.

Originally the PML was an unmoderated LISTSERV-style, old-school mailing list where you sent out an email, and everybody on the list received the email. However, due to a spamming incident and/or ongoing spam problem, the list became moderated. This may or may not have been when the PML switched to a digest format, where all the emails received in a day were compiled into one email and sent out.

When it was first launched, the PPML was very similar to the PML, at least in terms of format. The major difference was how it operated behind the scenes. The PML was a one-man operation. But the PPML had two moderators, in two different states, with two different main tasks. Kevin (in Indiana) focused on the technical side of things, as he had access to the computing resources of a university. OTOH, Mark (in California) mainly handled the job of compiling and formatting all of the emails into a digest.

The PPML was not an official successor to the PML, nor did the PML sanction the PPML. (Most likely for this reason, the digest numbers were reset, and the PPML started with digest #1.) Accordingly, I consider the .org to have been founded in 1995, when the PPML started. But without the PML, there would have been no PPML and hence no .org.

wow, I had no idea

Tom said:

And at first, you couldn't even do that -- for the most part, anyway. When the original prince.org was launched, the plan was to keep the PPML running as the place for discussion. Indeed, during .org's first month, 20 PPML digests were published, with over 950 subscribers. See The First Thirty Days, prince.org editorial, published February 1, 1999.

People with prince.org accounts were able to comment on things such as the editorials -- see the link above for an example of this. But at first, there wasn't much on the site that had this feature.

Then, in March 1999, Prince sued two fanzines (UPTOWN and Interactive) and various fan websites. (prince.org was not one of them, BTW.) In protest, the Family Newsletter -- which also was not sued -- stopped operating and shut down their website, including their popular news service.

Ironically, UPTOWN previously had a news service on their website, but Pierre Igot -- the person who ran it -- split with UPTOWN, ran the site as "Le Grind" on his own for a while, and then merged it into Prince's official website at the time, love4oneanother.com. Even before the merger, it seemed that Le Grind was losing its objectivity, but obviously, whatever independence it had left disappeared when it became an official news outlet for Prince.

This was a problem. The two major independent, comprehensive sources for Prince news were gone, leaving the Internet without such a resource. So we launched our own.

The prince.org news service was a success from the beginning. Shortly after we started it, Ben and/or Kevin added the ability for people to post comments in response to news items, as was the case with the editorials and some other parts of the site. Once this feature was added, much of the discussion that used to take place on the PPML moved to the news service. The PPML continued for at least two more years -- see the screenshot at the top of this thread, which shows a link to PPML #799, published on September 18, 2001 -- but the digests became less and less frequent, seemingly due to a lack of posts. (I think #799 was the final PPML.)

Meanwhile, the news service became a de facto discussion forum. Sometimes people would even "hijack" a minor news item of relatively little interest to discuss something entirely different. So it's not surprising that when the .org adopted its current format (February 2002), it became centered around true web forums.

My sense is that most users prefer having their posts appear immediately, as opposed to waiting for the next email digest. Also, posting replies is much easier, since on the PPML, users were asked to combine all replies into one email. (Why? 1) Less work for the mods. 2) Redundant headers and signatures. 3) At least in the really early days of the PPML, some people's Internet connections were so slow that the size of the digest could be an issue.) And finally, with the current format, we're able to have "off-topic" forums such as General Discussion, whereas posts to the PPML had to be related to Prince in some way.

IMHO the one advantage of the PPML was that it had a more civil atmosphere, as the moderators reviewed each post before the digest went out.

I guess the irony here is that if Prince had never filed those lawsuits, prince.org might have stayed with its original format, and perhaps the PPML would still be in operation today. It's an interesting "what if?" to ponder.

And that concludes today's .org history lesson.

Matt detailed most of the history correctly...except that Prince.org would have been born with or without the PPML. Ben volunteered to host the PPML in web format. He and I worked on some programming that automatically took the basic email, and created the HTML version to put on the web. Eventually, that process got completely reversed, and we edited the PPML on the web, and produced the text version from the web.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the Prince.org community owes a HUGE debt of gratitude to a very committed fan in Ben. People don't realize how much effort it takes to produce this kind of site. Not much on this site is "store bought"... (at least it didn't used to be, and I doubt that it is now). Ben and I were able to combine two of our "passions" (web programming, and Prince music) into the PPML Archive and then Prince.org.... but it does take it's toll on you. That's where the extra moderators came in. Matt was the first, and then there have been many MANY others since I have left.

I have been fortunate enough to meet Ben, Val and Matt. Each are exceptional people, and everyone should feel fortunate that they continue to put time, effort, and $$ into this site, with no financial reward at all.

Ben and I used to talk about whether we should ask for membership dues, or some form of compensation for his time/money... and the ONLY thing that has been done to my knowledge, is the Prince.org Shop... Even THAT was born out of us trying to get people together. We started it so that people could recognize other Orgers when they were at concerts!

It was a fun ride while I was on it, and maybe someday I'll ask to become "part of the fold" again... but until I can dedicate the time needed, I think I'll just continue to "check in" from time to time.

Hello to everyone that remembers me. Hearing names like Hammer, MDean, and others brings back really good memories. The "Gold Experience" tape tree... the "Chaos and Disorder" giveaways... the Letters from Llondel! It was a lot of fun.

{KLS}
(PS, Val... with the little one around keeping you up late -not so much anymore I'm sure-... maybe you can hear those "donkeys" in the cornfields??)
{KLS}

kevin said:

Remember the PPML T-shirt? It had a cool logo and on the back in big letters:
cckevin@stem.indstate.edu

How outdated that is!

Good old days... Remember the NPN (New Power Network) hosted by Richie B. in the Netherlands? Wasn't that the first Prince related website run by a bunch of fans? At least I remember viewing it via Mosaic browser on a Unix workstation.

Do we get old or what?

Peter said:

Yup. And after they were printed, the PPML email address changed to cckevin [at] pearl [dot] indstate [dot] edu... very appropriate.



It was hosted on the morra.et.tudelft.nl server (although I think there was also a U.S. mirror at times). I don't know if it was the first Prince-related website, but it was definitely the Prince fansite in the early years of the Web. I'm pretty sure I visited it the very first time I surfed the Web at my dad's office.

Richie had all sorts of neat stuff on his site, including .au files of The Gold Experience (back when the release date was "Never!"). I also remember there being .mp2 (no, that's not a typo) audio files of various unreleased songs. The .mp2 files offered excellent sound quality, especially when compared to those .au files! But there was a problem at first: no personal computer could decompress and play them at the same time. You had to download the files, decompress them, and convert them to another format. Finally someone released a program that could simply play the files, but I remember my Pentium 120 MHz PC -- which was a high-end machine back then -- struggling to keep up.

BTW, about the Gold Experience download page... remember how somebody created a picture for each song (sorta like a single cover)? Does anyone still have those images? If so, please orgNote me. Thanks!

awwwww the memories