Totse

Totse (TOT' see / TOTE' see, from the acronym for "Temple of the Screaming Electron"), is a San Francisco Bay Area BBS started by Jeff Hunter in 1989 (a founding member of NIRVANAnet) as a dial-up BBS named "& the Temple of the Screaming Electron".

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Totse became available on the World Wide Web in 1997, and the dial-up BBS system was discontinued in spring 1998 . Totse is now home to a message forum, and is reputed by some to host the world's largest collection of text files.

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Totse has a strong commitment to free speech, as can be seen in the diversity and occasionally unsavory nature of its articles, the fact that BBS members can post essentially anything as long as they do not become "trolls", and most especially that the first paragraph seen upon opening the Totse main page is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. There are some exceptions to the free speech rule: Goatse, Lemonparty, Outwar (a game where points are earned for number of times a link has been clicked), and for a short time, the word "nigger," were banned due to spamming.

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During a recent overhaul several forums were merged and there are now 32 individual forums on the Totse.com community bulletin board. Many moderators lost their privileges when their forums ceased to exist. At this time it is unclear how this will affect the community. There are 5 Administrators and 44 Moderators at Totse. According to the site, there are 34,993 registered users (as of 10:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)). Registration for the BBS was temporarily closed for several weeks, however as of August 15th, 2005 it was reopened.

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The website is occasionally featured on mainstream news networks or publications, ordinarily for members committing crimes or for particularly controversial text files. A great deal of Totse is dedicated to theoretical methods of growing/creating illicit chemical substances, as well as methods for building explosives, and instructions on committing both computer and physical crimes but also contains many areas for the discussion of literature, politics and religion.

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San Francisco Bay Area: The San Francisco Bay Area, referred to locally as The Bay Area, is the conurbation that surrounds San Francisco Bay in northern California. Home to more than 7 million people, the metropolitan area is composed of cities, towns, villages, military bases, airports, and regional, state, and national p...

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