As far as I know, there are very few histories of the BBS era. (Which means that there usually won’t be any Wikipedia articles, due to lack of references.)
(My copy is in a box somewhere in the living room, sigh.)
As well, online communities in the 70s are probably lost history, if they weren’t part of the mainline ARPANET/Internet history. They were usually covert use of someone else’s large computer, so when that computer disappeared, poof!
All the English-speaking high schools in Montreal had teletypes connected to a HP2000 minicomputer, and an underground community gradually developed of message boards, chat programs and multiplayer games. We were mostly the whitest nerdboys you ever saw, and our social activities were organizing trips to all go see Wrath of Khan, or The Empire Strikes Back in a group, but it was fun.
When the school board pulled the plug, gone. I imagine that happened elsewhere too.
