Lysator

Lysator was the very first Blake's 7 mailing list. This mailing list was also commonly known as "the Lyst." . 
"Lysator" was named after one of the first Internet-connected sites in Sweden (LYSATOR, club founded in 1973 and on the Internet since 1989), and its website is the oldest in the country. "Lysator" was "originally LYSATOR, an acronym for "Linköpings Y-Sektions dATOR-förening" (which roughly translates as "The computer club for students of technical physics at Linköping"), but since 1980 or so it's officially just a name. The full name is Lysator Academic Computer Society. It was founded in 1973, in order to receive a donation of a Datasaab D21 mainframe computer. It was one of the first Internet-connected sites in Sweden, and its website is the oldest in the country." , at Judith Proctor's Hermit Site 
The mailing list went online in November 1992, and went automated in August 1995.
The list was intended from the start to be a public discussion list, on par with Usenet. In 1994, a fan wrote: 
For more about this site's public visibility, see Archived and Publicly Available.
The last post in the lysator archives was made on Feb 20 2002."The DSV's crew could be Altas and slaves" (accessed October 3, 2024)] Approximately 78 posts are all dated March 8, 2022 and attributed to "None" but it is most likely incorrectly configured and time-stamped posts from earlier years as they are signed by different people who were last active in 2001. The cyberPoMo index of subject headings shows that conversations continued through at least December 2004 (75 posts made in December 2004). While additional posts may have taken place through August 28, 2005, cyberPoMo did not archive the subject headings, only listed the number of messages: "August, 2005 47 [messages]"cyberPoMo index page for 2005 (accessed October 3, 2024). Members of the mailing list report that list conversations continued through Dec 22, 2022 after the moderator Calle Dybedahl announced in July 2022 that the list would reach its 30th anniversary in early November 2022: "Thirty years is enough". Morgan Dawn's personal notes, accessed October 3, 2024.
==Pronunciation==
"Lysator" is pronounced "Lee-sah-tor," not "Lie-say-tor."
==Some Stats==
Membership reached 110 by late November 1992 and by January 1994, it was over 300. 
The first five members were, in order: Calle Dybedahl, Frances Teagle, Tommy Persson, Sandra Kisner, and Sue Clerc.
In May 1993, the list hosted its first Lysator Room Party at MediaWest*Con.
In November 2017, a number of long-time list members met up in London to celebrate the list's 25th birthday.
 
==FAQ==
From the FAQ: 
For more information, see Kathryn Andersen's Guide to Lyst Culture. 
== The Q-House in Sweden==
Lysator's original physical place: The Q-House originally held "the offices for one of the parishes around Linköping. In 1992 Lysator bought it for the equivalent of ten cents, on the condition that we removed it from where it was standing. Somehow we managed to get the university to cough up $40000 for the move, and to give us permission to put it on the campus. For some reason, all buildings on the Linköping University Campus have exciting names like "House A", "House B" and "House C". Sort of following this tradition, we chose to call our house "House Q", since Q is the seventeenth letter in the alphabet, and seventeen is an important number in computer science." 
==Archived and Publicly Available==
The mailing list is somewhat unusual in that it has publicly archived all list emails and made these archives accessible to the public over the past 20 years. They have even, at times, provided a search engine to sift through the messages: 
Archives from 1993 to 2000 are archived here. A small quantity of messages (approximately 200) from 1993 have been archived here. Additional years are archived here.
 
To read these publicly available messages: message titles and senders. To read actual messages, you go FTP from ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/blake7 and register as "Guest."
From a fan discussion in 1994: 
In 2000, a fan reminded others of the fact that the list was publicly viewable: 
==Slash==
In the early years, the Lyst hosted a debate about the pros and cons of slash so regularly that Susan Beth collated The Generic Slash Defense Letter, a collection of quotes from fans. The Slash Summary represents the opposing side of the debate, collated by Kathryn Andersen. Both authors intended their texts to avoid the repetition of arguments on the list or as Kathryn puts it: "a list of dead horses, so to speak, done in a non-inflammatory manner".
In 1995, Space City, a slash mailing list was spun off to allow discussion of slash and adult topics without controversy.
In 1998, a fan proposed a story challenge: "Hey, this story has everything for a tragic love story. Who wants to write it? Please post it to the list in time for a "broken hearts" Valentines Day gazette here," and another fan answered: "What, you mean here, or on the Naughty List?" Lysator, Pat P and Penny Dreadful, 1998 The original fan responded: "Yeah here, why not? The best love stories do not get mired in sex. The best love stories focus on tragic love or unrequited love. And since there are no happy endings in Blakes 7, tragic love stories should flourish on this list. (The racy ones can go on Space City)" Lysator, Pat P, 1998 
==1995/1996 Changes==
In late 1995 and 1996, there were changes in both tone and content on Lysator; slash was no longer much of a topic, nor was fanfiction and zines. 
This was due to two reasons. 
The first is that much of the discussion about slash migrated to Space City. A fan in January 1996 wrote in response to the question "where did all the slash fans go?": 
On Lysator in 1998, a fan explained slash and the Space City list to another fan: 
 
It's true that having everyone at Lysator made for a lot of conflict due to genre interest and "morals," but it meant for lively conversation. Now all that conversation was at Space City. The conversations at Space City were perhaps somewhat less lively because there weren't as many differing opinions regarding Blake's 7. In some ways, this Balkanization was a precursor to LiveJournal and other online journals. 
There was also a very noticeable drop in discussion about zines and fanfiction. This was due to the fact that zine reviews were now mostly posted to hermit.org, Judith Proctor's newly-formed website. This switch in venue from Lysator to a private website meant that the back-and-forth comments about fanfiction no longer had an anchor on Lysator. Hermit.org was a more easily accessible anchor, but it was one that did not foster spontaneous chat. Despite the additional option and service of hermit.org, the culture of fiction discussion drifted away.
==1999: The Horizon Fan Club "Leak"==
On October 7, 1999, a long email by the president of Horizon Fan Club was apparently leaked and posted to Lysator, setting off a vigorous debate regarding explicit fanworks and slash. 
See Horizon Fan Club's 1999 Discussion Regarding Adult Fanworks.
==A Group Lyst Project==
One of the list's initial projects was The Great B7 Transcript Project where list members transcribed the episodes.
==Some Content at Adrenaline and Soma Powered Blake's 7 Pages==
* Myers-Briggsing Blake's 7 Characters
* Fun 'n' games
* "Dysfunctional family" is a redundant phrase (also in Rallying Call #19 (October 1996)
* "It's a gaffe, gaffe, gaffe": Bloopers, blunders, and continuity errors
* Avon's Teddy Bear
==Fan Comments==
From a fan in 1997: 
==References==
Category:2020 Featured Articles
Category:2002 Mailing Lists
Category:2000s Mailing Lists
Category:Blake's 7