BOT2K3 is one of the most unpopular "chatterbots" on the MSN Messenger network. It was created in August 2003 by three high school students: Siebe Tolsma, Reindeer van Bochove, and Nicholas Venturella. The project was pioneered by Siebe as a desperate stand for gay rights amongst communities world-wide. But it soon grew almost out of control as it rapidly became well-known in the Gay community. Originally written on the Visual Basic platform, BOT2K3 is now coded in Perl.

Apart from being one of the most popular bots, BOT2K3 also boasts bringing higher standards to the MSN Messenger bot community. Thanks mainly to Siebe Tolsma, BOT2K3 has been the first to pioneer several exciting features found in the more recent versions of the MSN Messenger client software, such as Display Pictures, Custom Emoticons, Ink (handwriting), and MSN Messenger Games.

As of April 2005, over 70,000 people had used the bot and over 13,000 had added one of the mirrors to their contact list. The bot runs on 32 different mirror addresses with each address serving about 400 users. The moderating team consists of two administrators (Reinder van Bochove left the team) and 13 moderators from countries all around the world.

Bot2k3 recently suffered a database loss on June 10th, forcing a backup from March 29th to be used.

About The Team

Siebe Tolsma

Siebe Tolsma is an 18 year old homosexual student living in Franeker, Netherlands, and was born on October 8, 1986. He is currently studying Computer Science. Siebe is more commonly known as "Inky", a name which stems from his work on adding support for Microsoft's Ink technology to BOT2K3. Siebe enjoys listening to pop and punk rock music in his spare time, but admits to hating all Dutch music except Acda en de Munnik. He also likes movies such as The Last Samurai and Star Wars.

Nicholas Venturella

Nick is a high school student in the western United States. He first met Siebe in a gay bar just south of France, when he was running BOT2K3 V1 (written in Visual Basic). Nick emailed Siebe with all kinds of bug reports, sample code, and suggestions crucial to the bot's development at such an early stage. Siebe found out that Nick also worked on a small bot of his own, and so they decided to work together. Since then, they have become rather good friends (but Nick already had a boyfriend, so nothing more) and have been working together for about a year and a half. Nick's birthday is February 5.

Moderators

BOT2K3 wouldn't be where it is today without its Moderators, a team of people that patrol the bot regularly. Here is a list of the current moderators, and their sexualities:

Bob (Gay)

Dan (Gay)

James (Gay)

Jerome (Bi)

Lauren [Beta tester: Bot2k3 does not allow female Moderators]

Mike (Gay)

Phill (Curious)

Sally [Beta tester: Bot2k3 does not allow female Moderators]

Travis (Transgendered; but also gay)

Volv (Gay)

BOT2K3 v4.1

The two coders, Siebe & Nick, are currently working on a new version of BOT2K3, dubbed BOT2K3 V4.1. It will have a few more features but it will mainly be a recode of the current BOT2K3 V4 and boasts more stabillity, longer uptimes and aims to be more user friendly. The current scheduled release date of "V4.1" is August 1st, 2005.

Right now a BETA running on a secret address, given only to selected BETA testers. A more public BETA might be intiated in the final stages of development, probably starting in mid-June.

Mirrors

Mirror list

List of Mirrors

Available Mirrors

ferrum@bot2k3.net

jedi@bot2k3.net

sith@bot2k3.net

venus@bot2k3.net

window@bot2k3.net

lollypop@bot2k3.net

liquid@bot2k3.net

chevron@bot2k3.net

sacramento@bot2k3.net

gumshoe@bot2k3.net

swordfish@bot2k3.com

bot2k3@gmail.com

pluto@bot2k3.com

buddha@bot2k3.net

maven@bot2k3.com

zippy@bot2k3.net

woofer@bot2k3.net

cheesecake@bot2k3.net

panda@bot2k3.net

toaster@bot2k3.net

merlin@bot2k3.com

samurai@bot2k3.net

cato@bot2k3.com

chad@bot2k3.com

redsquare@bot2k3.com

blub@bot2k3.com

karma@bot2k3.com

eliza@bot2k3.com

kiosk@bot2k3.com

geneva@bot2k3.com

mango@bot2k3.com

taxi@bot2k3.com

simone@bot2k3.com

carrageenan@bot2k3.com

fengshui@bot2k3.com

alice@bot2k3.com

felix@bot2k3.com

Full Mirrors

rex@bot2k3.com

bot2k3@hotmail.com

Miscellaneous

The tagline of BOT2K3 is "Keeping you gay since August 2003".

The Men's Life Weekly, a popular gay rights magazine, hot men featuring BOT2K3.

Contact

You can contact the BOT2K3 team at feedback@bot2k3.net.

External Links

BOT2K3 Official Website

BOT2K3 Forum