Appletalker.net

History
The appletalker website and associated discussion forum was founded at the beginning of February 2006 by a breakaway group of core long-time MacNN discussion forum users. (The site was founded originally as appletalker.com; the appletalker.net domain was added in March 2008 and is now the preferred URL).
NOTE: the preferred spelling of 'appletalker' is in all lower-case
the appletalker.net site was founded by (AKA madra) by personally inviting a group of twenty macNN regulars to help found the new venture. These 'founders' were specially chosen for their wealth of Mac-related knowledge and history of useful contributions to the online Mac community.
Style and Content
Perhaps uniquely for an internet discussion forum, appletalker.net is founded on the principles of democracy and co-operative ownership. All major decisions as to the direction the site takes and the running of the site itself are discussed openly within the appletalker.net discussion forum and policies are decided according to the majority opinion. The site is not policed by moderators; a role that appletalker.net's founders feel leads to abuse of authority. Instead appletalker.net is designed to be self-moderating -regular contributors are all automatically given moderating rights- and is founded on the belief that mutual respect and self-policing will create a more harmonious environment for the site's users.
appletalker was also the first Apple Mac discussion forum to explicitly state its recognition of the fact that productive regular visitors to a discussion forum effectively write the majority of the content of that website on a voluntary basis and should be appreciated for so doing, rather than treated almost as tolerated guests, as is the case with many other sites with user-generated content.
Since its inception, the appletalker.net website has expanded from a simple discussion forum, to include online shopping, a photographic society on Flickr.com, a twitter news stream and the appletalker scrapbook -a blog containing miscellaneous articles and tutorials, authored by appletalker members.
The appletalker.net site is listed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Woz) on his personal website as a 'Cool Mac Site' and the appletalker widget has previously featured on the Apple website's Dashboard downloads page as a 'Recommended Download'.
Technology
The appletalker.net website is powered by Apache server running on a Ubuntu Linux box, The forum software is a heavily customised version of Unclassified Newsboard by Yves Goergen. In the past, appletalker has also released its own software to complement the site; the appletalker widget (Currently discontinued).

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