hotliner, Administrators
68
edits
Changes
Updating with trivial information about changes to the site over the years
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'''[http://www.theninhotline.net/news/index.php The NIN Hotline]''' is a [[Nine Inch Nails]] news web site started in 1999. It is linked to by [http://www.nin.com/resourceslinks/index.html nin.com] and is considered the finest NIN news source on the Net.
The site was created in June of 1999 while Leviathant was in between jobs, as a result of general community disapproval of the way NIN news sites at the time (such as Seems Like Salvation Nothing News & Above the Trees' news page, not to mention the long-idle news.nin.net) were handling things. In order to provide an alternative to the major news sites, which were each run by individuals, three members of the EFnet IRC chatroom #nin99 created a site on Xoom.com and shared the login information. Leviathant, Pablo, and }static{ were the original three collaborators, but soon more staff were added to help post news as it happened. Initially edited by copying and pasting HTML source code, at some point a hacked-to-bits version of the Guestbook Script from the infamous Matt's Script Archive was implemented, allowing accurate timestamping and a consistent layout. During 2000, French and German versions of the site arose, and plans were in the works for a Russian edition of the site as well, but that never quite materialized./
By the end of 2000, flaws in the "everyone is equal" method of running the site led to abuse of power by one of the staff, leading to a reorganization of the site in February 2001, paring staff back down to five people, including the original three founders. A new administrative backend was implemented on this revision, allowing much greater ability to add, change and delete news stories, archives were automated, and the layout was based off a (admittedly crude) template system. Unfortunately, the source code in this backend was especially horrible, and it was not successfully ported over to the German & French editions of the site, which eventually were removed entirely.
[[Category:Ninternet]]