TheWolfWeb

TheWolfWeb, also known as TWW or T-dub, is an unofficial message board for North Carolina State University (NCSU), created by Jacob Morgan and Josef Akinc. TWW was the prototype for the "party in college" message boards, which provide an online community for a number of universities across the country. It was also a source of the codebase for TheCollegeWeb but is not part of that network despite the similarity of all of those sites to TWW. TheWolfWeb is located at www.thewolfweb.com and has a DNS alias at www.brentroad.com, which is the source for another of its names, "Brentroad.com."

It serves as a source of local (Raleigh, NC) news, as frequently posting members of the message board will provide both eyewitness accounts and frequent updates on events in the area, ranging from vehicle accidents to on-campus crime and suicide events. It has also been significant in transmitting many Internet memes through the NCSU student body.(notably the terms pwnt, bwn, and FDT).

TheWolfWeb has gained local notoriety for two major incidents. On the night of February 26, 2004, members of the message board discovered and propagated via the board that a local TV news station (News 14 Carolina) would list any school, business, or church closing submitted on a web form. Many members of TheWolfWeb proceeded to use this form to submit bogus, often humorous school closings, which were then displayed on the TV station for several hours before the station's staff addressed the matter. (See News 14 Carolina for more details.)

A few months later, a member of TheWolfWeb discovered that the NCSU Campus Police crime report web page had the login and password to modify the site stored in the site's source code. Several other members of the message board used this security flaw to create bogus crime listings, often vulgar or insulting to police officers. As a result of the prompt discovery of this by Campus Police, four members of the message board who are alleged to have participated in the postings were arrested. Some TheWolfWeb members attribute the publicity directed towards this case to vengeance-motivated action by the News 14 Carolina station.

TheWolfWeb was again brought to the public eye following a 2007 NCSU basketball game against their rival UNC. Following a dunk that was view widely as in an unsportsmanlike fashion racially charged comments were posted through out the message board. The result was an offending of numerous third parties.

Raleigh, N.C. — Although the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament wrapped up Sunday, emotions continued to roil Monday over racial slurs and other postings to a North Carolina State University fan Web site.

The Wolf Web, which isn't affiliated with the university, contained numerous posts that contained epithets and threatened to lynch University of North Carolina player Ty Lawson, who scored a breakaway slam dunk with 1 second left in UNC's 89-80 victory over N.C. State in the championship game.

TheWolfWeb is free to students, faculty, and staff of NCSU, requiring a valid NCSU e-mail address to register. In addition to message board posting privileges, membership provides a small-sized photo gallery. It offers paying options for access to the site without having an NCSU e-mail account, and also includes a premium account status, with larger filespace for photos.

On October 31, 2007, the site was sold by the original owner to another user identified as "nael." Months after the site changed ownership numerous problems began to occur. The site experienced significant downtime, many functions on the site ceased to work, and at one point the entire photo gallery system was inaccessible. The new site owner had pledged to fix these problems, in response to the many users expressing concern in the feedback section of the website. In response to these issues, a short-lived splinter forum, [http://euphalo.com/forum Euphalo.com] was created; it was subsequently closed by its owners due to its failure to attract more than a few regular visitors. Soon thereafter, many of the issues were corrected and the site ran smoothly again.

ee also

* News 14 Carolina

External links

* [http://www.thewolfweb.com TheWolfWeb]
* [http://www.ncsu.edu North Carolina State University]
* [http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001012.php CyberJournalist article on the News 14 Carolina prank]
* [http://brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=180137 WolfWeb thread that originated the News 14 Carolina prank]
* [http://www.wral.com/golo/page/1896337/?id=1232267 Racially charged comments on web postings upset NC State Students]