In 1988, The MicroManiac (Andrew Banks) wrote the original BBs, in C-Shell script. It used an elm based message reader, and you were not allowed to directly post messages. This board was in fact, like all good things then, not officially approved (tsk tsk) :)
The PTB soon got to hear of it once it started to get popular. But they liked it, and the BBs got official recognition.
The board was given its own account, on the graduation of Andrew Banks, the post of moderator was taken by Tony Piper (Boris the Frog) and Adrian Hall (Catharz) appointed himself programmer. With the ideas of Boris the Frog (Tony Piper), LuBBs was re-written during 1989-1990 in ANSI C, to provide a fairly interactive board.
Recognising the severe limitations of the original LuBBs, and the benefits of providing a more powerful and comprehensive system, Graham Dean (Frustrated) and Andrew Stoker (Ezra Jones) obtained the sources for Unaxcess, a widely used and well respected bulletin board system, and extensively modified these to suit the needs of the Lancaster users. Mike Pacey (Tenebreux) took over as the moderator. After inital problems with the PTB and slowing the system down, the user base grew phenominally (from about 50-60 users to over 200). Eventually checking the messages got to take up too much time for Ez and Teneb, so Moderators for particular conferences were brought in with a controlling sysop.
Bruce Keeler (Loodvrij) took over as sysop and programmer for LuBBs in June 1991 in continuing the development of LuBBs for Lancaster Users. In February 1992 Chris Martin (Phoenix) was appointed Sysop, a position which he held til February 1994. Kevin Sherratt (Drax) took over as the Sysop and Chris took on the job of programming the wee beastie.
February 1996 saw Kevin's brother, Andrew Sherratt (The Face) take over as Sysop, holding the position for 12 months before Robert Fay (Mordred) was appointed. He also held the post for a year before in February 1998 Martje Graham-Ross (Starling) became the first woman and first non-student to be the LuBBs Sysop, being a member of University staff.
LuBBs currently has around 500 users from Lancaster University and is a
flourishing bulletin board for students containing lively debates on a wide
range of issues.
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