MIT BBS

MIT BBS (Chinese 未名空间, literally "Unknown Space") is a Chinese bulletin board system site.

Overview

Currently there are about 300 topic groups. The website claims that it has hundreds of thousands of registered users, most of whom are Overseas Chinese, and 85% of their internet traffic is generated from within the US. The forum allows [] and [] access for public postings, private messaging, exclusive groups (clubs) and, most recently, blogging.

History

The forum was started in 1998 as bbs.mit.edu at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hence the "MIT" in its name. However, its history can be traced to two earlier forums: the Unknown BBS at Peking University, China from 1996-1997, followed by the Space BBS at Center for Space Science at Chinese Academy of Sciences. Unlike the two precursors which were located in China, the MIT forum is much less affected by Internet censorship in mainland China, and grew in popularity among Chinese students studying abroad.

In 2002, the Chinese government blocked access to the entire mit.edu domain. It has been speculated that the main reason is to prevent domestic users from accessing the uncensored political discussions on this forum. Eventually, due to the popularity of the forum and bandwidth limitations, the forum is moved out of mit.edu domain, and acquired its own permanent domain name mitbbs.com.

In 2004, to circumvent the censorship, a self-censored server was opened to facilitate access by users in China.

Criticisms

Administration

The forum was started by a handful of volunteers. After moving out of mit.edu, it was run as non-profit supported by donations and limited advertising. Under the current administrator walklooktalk, the last two years saw accelerated commercialization, with more prominent space reserved for advertisers, as well as the creation of a spin-off website devoted to Personal advertisement. Meanwhile, the system underwent frequent upgrades, and large fraction of them caused downtime ranging from hours to days.

The administrators claim both increased advertising and upgrades are necessary to keep up with increased traffic and adding popular new features. However, some users dispute their necessity. The technical handling of the upgrades is also questioned. In a few recent events, the current adminstrator 'Walklooktalk' is also said to play politics to exclude other volunteers, for example 'Ras', from their administrative duties.

Quality of Posts

The forum is dominated by young and bilingual (Chinese and English) users with at least a college degree. Close to half of them possess Postgraduate education. Certain popular boards (such as Family, USNews, ChinaNews) are subject to frequent flame wars.

Notes

External links

• MIT BBS
• "Web Site Helps Chinese in U.S. Navigate Life" - originally published in Wall Street Journal (2004-10-26).