Wittenberg
Wittenberg (also known as Witt or less correctly The Witt) is the name used in Talossa for the Kingdom’s privately administered on-line discussion forum. It is currently hosted on Proboards.
The forum contains several individual "Boards", which serve to make it easier to keep different sorts of conversations (and business) separate and organized. Confusingly enough, “Wittenberg” is also the name of the most important of the Boards, the one at the top of the list that’s advertised as a “General all-purpose forum for discussing all things Talossan”. Each Board contains many Threads (conversations); each Thread contains any number of Posts (individual contributions to a conversation). Wittenberg posts show up on Google searches.
Every Talossan citizen is urged to have an account on Wittenberg, and most do. Besides citizens, accounts are given to prospective citizens and (by the Prime Minister’s special invitation) to non-citizen guests.
The administrators of Wittenberg are Lord Hooligan and King John. The administrators have power to edit, move, or delete posts; to move or delete entire threads; to reset passwords, change account settings, suspend accounts, even banish users permanently. Because of its importance to the national dialogue (since so many citizens are cybercits), there are some laws and regulations[1] that govern the administration of Wittenberg, but it nonetheless remains a private enterprise. This accounts for the nature of "Wittiquette," the rules of propriety that are enforced on Wittenberg. It also accounts for the administrators' ability to take occasional direct action, as when plagiarism[2] or obscenities are edited out.
History
Wittenberg was created by Ryan Hughes is 1997. It got its name as an appropriate place for people to post things (like Martin Luther posted his theses to the doors of Wittenberg Cathedral). Each time the host has changed, the number has been incremented.
There have been many Wittenbergs across the history of Talossa. The first was Wittenberg I. Some early incarnations of Wittenberg lasted only a very short time before being replaced by later versions. Wittenberg X entered service in February 2003. It was the version of Wittenberg in service at the time of formation of the Republic of Talossa and was seized as the forum of the Republic from 1 June 2004/XXV. The Kingdom then created the current Proboards forum, Wittenberg XI, as a replacement. The Republicans later moved to different forums referred to as Wittenberg XII and XII(b), but joined the Kingdom's citizens at Wittenberg XI upon Reunision.