What was it?
Goth Code was a signature code, much like Geek Code and all the other ones that littered the Internet in the 1990s. Contrary to popular belief, Geek Code didn't inspire Goth Code. I was much more impressed by Twink Code and the more subcultural ones.
What were signature codes?
Typically, signature codes were simply highly abbreviated way of representing a person's responses to questions, typically on a range of topics within a subject/subculture.
They were a short-lived phenomenon which was popular when people mostly used terminal applications to read BBS and Usenet. Back then, people didn't have web pages and photos took forever to download. Oh, and scanners were primative and very expensive.
Who wrote it?
Despite its length, comprehensiveness and repeated rewriting and recoding for little apparent reason, Goth Code was not created by a team but by a single person with too much time on his hands: Peter Caffin.
When was it written?
Version 1.0 was written in November 1995. Version 4.0 (aka Goth Code 98) was written at the end of December 1997 and released on January 1st 1998. (It was given the name 'Goth Code 98' because, like MS Windows, it had moved stuff into a needlessly binary format and had previously had a Version 3.1. We all love that obtuse geek humour, right?)
What were its highlights?
As far as I'm concerned:
When was it removed?
January 2001 -- the real start of the 21st Century.
Why was it removed?
While working on a Goth Code decoder in C (which would have translated all of them, from 1.x-4.0), it struck me that:
Was it the right thing to do?
It was the right thing to do, for me. I didn't want to be indirectly responsible for something unfortunate. It's also proven to be the right move given how infrequently people ask about it now it's gone.
As a concept, it's one whose time had come and gone: people had much more interesting ways to communicate this sort of info about themselves: from uploading their photos and expressing themselves in personal websites, to the rise of blogs and journals. The time when Goth Code was actually useful was back in the days of text terminals and those days are well behind us.
Any chance of a Goth Code 5.0?
I have thought of it from time to time. A shorter, less intrusive code would be feasible. Really, though, it's a meme whose time has passed.
So, about this Mini-FAQ then...
Written on Jul 21 2005 after spotting someone through Google asking about why Goth Code got removed and seeing someone reply with something out of a game of Chinese Whispers. Minor updates on April 4 2007.