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Goth Code Mini-FAQ

Questions

What it was:

1. What was it?
2. What were signature codes?
3. Who wrote it?
4. When was it written?

Removal from the Net:

1. When was it removed?
2. Why was it removed?
3. Was it the right thing to do?
4. Any chance of a Goth Code 5.0?

Administrivia:

1. So, about this Mini-FAQ then...

Answers

What it was:

Q. What was it?

Goth Code was a signature code, much like Geek Code and all the other ones that littered the Internet in the 1990s. Contrary to popular belief, Geek Code didn't inspire Goth Code. I was much more impressed by Twink Code and the more subcultural ones.

Q. What were signature codes?

Typically, signature codes were simply highly abbreviated way of representing a person's responses to questions, typically on a range of topics within a subject/subculture.

They were a short-lived phenomenon which was popular when people mostly used terminal applications to read BBS and Usenet. Back then, people didn't have web pages and photos took forever to download. Oh, and scanners were primative and very expensive.

Q. Who wrote it?

Despite its length, comprehensiveness and repeated rewriting and recoding for little apparent reason, Goth Code was not created by a team but by a single person with too much time on his hands: Peter Caffin.

Q. When was it written?

Version 1.0 was written in November 1995. Version 4.0 (aka Goth Code 98) was written at the end of December 1997 and released on January 1st 1998. (It was given the name 'Goth Code 98' because, like MS Windows, it had moved stuff into a needlessly binary format and had previously had a Version 3.1. We all love that obtuse geek humour, right?)

Q. What were its highlights?

As far as I'm concerned:

• v1.1 being translated into German.
• v2.x-3.x changed the look of signature codes by getting rid of ++++/---- syntax and replacing it with digits and letters.
• v4.0 took things to its logical conclusion with 6-bit byte binary encoding.

The consensus was that people generally prefered v3.1 because it was still human readable-ish. Personally, I liked v4.0 because it was nifty on the tech side :-). While Robert Hayden's Geek Code gets the acolades for being the most popular sig code, I was always rather chuffed that various versions of Goth Code influenced the format of so many signature codes that came afterward.

Removal from the Net

Q. When was it removed?

January 2001 -- the real start of the 21st Century.

Q. Why was it removed?

While working on a Goth Code decoder in C (which would have translated all of them, from 1.x-4.0), it struck me that:

• The Internet was getting very popular by 2000.
• The Internet was no longer the cosy little anonymous place for computer geeks that it was in 1995 when I started.
• The sheer depth of data availabe to be mined from Goth Codes made them a dangerous resource for stalkers.
• By their nature, Goth Codes tended to appeal to younger people who might want to fit into a new peer group.

Added to this, was:

• By late 2000, signature codes were well out of fashion anyway.
• I seemed to be making a break from the local goth crowd anyhow.
• I was already a bit shirty with people assuming that I'd given its Copyright into the public domain.

By far, the stalker bait issue was strongest in mind. Other people believed other reasons were at the forefront.

Q. Was it the right thing to do?

It was the right thing to do, for me. I didn't want to be indirectly responsible for something unfortunate. It's also proven to be the right move given how infrequently people ask about it now it's gone.

As a concept, it's one whose time had come and gone: people had much more interesting ways to communicate this sort of info about themselves: from uploading their photos and expressing themselves in personal websites, to the rise of blogs and journals. The time when Goth Code was actually useful was back in the days of text terminals and those days are well behind us.

Q. Any chance of a Goth Code 5.0?

I have thought of it from time to time. A shorter, less intrusive code would be feasible. Really, though, it's a meme whose time has passed.

Administrivia

Q. So, about this Mini-FAQ then...

Written on Jul 21 2005 after spotting someone through Google asking about why Goth Code got removed and seeing someone reply with something out of a game of Chinese Whispers. Minor updates on April 4 2007.