Hello Iain, Tuesday, June 29, 2004, 7:46:08 AM, you wrote: Iain> Okay, it's been puzzling me for ages and I've now I've got to ask Iain> ... Why call such moderator messages a 'trout'?
IIRC it started on FIDONet as "The moderator / SYSOP slaps *SOME NAME* with a trout!" as a means of lighthearted "punishment". I haven't been able to definitively locate a resource that explains where the trout originated, but I used it on my BBS when I ran a BBS in the Albuquerque, NM area. Lesse, that was in 1985 to 1990. I know I didn't coin the trout (meaning I didn't come up with it), but I do definitely remember using it on my BBS after I had seen it somewhere else. I carried that over nearly ten years later to the TB lists where the trout has become the... Oh lesse, I guess you could say it's the official list mascot! <grin> The earliest reference to someone being trouted was from Sep 1994, and I'm speculating (just a guess really), that the trout slap probably originated on a BBS dealing with fishing. However, I have found no proof of that. Iain> Please give chapter and verse -- you never know, I might quote Iain> you in my PhD thesis, and then Martin and you will *really* be Iain> situated firmly in the historical archives AND the body of Iain> knowledge. :-) Heheh.. 15 minutes of fame.. <grin> -- :Leif_Gregory: (TB list moderator and fellow end user). Tagline of the day: Cat (kat') n. 1. A dog with an attitude problem. Using The Bat! 2.12 Beta/1 under Windows 2000 5.0 Build 2195 Service Pack 4 on a Pentium 4 2GHz with 512MB ________________________________________________ Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
