Hi Electic. What a neat class you're taking. (And how old I feel that my younger years are now being taught in a class. ;)) Though I was a founding member of these forums and of the Fanfic Archive, I'm mostly a lurker these days, so thanks to Tracey for messaging me to see what I could add to her response. She gave you a bunch of great links to get you started. Obviously, with 25 years of history, relating the entire history would take as long as your entire paper, LOL, but I'll try to answer the questions you asked above.
The fanfic archive history link that Tracey linked above is a great place to start when it comes to the history of L&C fanfic. Ironically, as I was reading it again, I thought, "This is quite accurate; I wonder who wrote it?" Only to get to the bottom and see my own name.
(In my defense, it was dated 15 years ago, LOL.)
I got online in early October 1995, right before the 3rd season episode "Contact" (3x03) aired on ABC. We'd had a computer at home for years, but never felt the need to get the internet at home (it was pretty new at that point!) until I was partway through my maternity leave with my oldest child and my office asked me to come back early by working from home. My husband was teaching me how a browser worked and suggested, "Now just search for something ... how about that TV show you like, "Lois and Clark." He had no idea that he was opening Pandora's Box, LOL.
At that point, the fandom had been going on for about a year or so. Very much our salad days, but also the salad days of online fandom in general. There had been 'zines (printed fanfic that was mailed to subscribers) but the internet added that "instant gratification" factor that was lacking before.
There were several ways of communicating back then: A "listserv" where fans could discuss the episodes via email; an IRC channel, which was most active on the nights the episodes aired (Sundays) but usually had at least a few people in it most of the time (many, MANY good friendships developed that way! As Tracey mentions above, I'm still in contact with a number of people I met through FoLCdom, all these years later); an AOL chat room (I didn't have AOL, so I didn't hang out there), and various Usenet groups (IIRC, they were more comics related, but branched into L&C a bit.)
Another very early information resource was "The Kryptonian Cybernet", which was an online magazine about Superman in general, which included a section on L&C when the show began airing. The earliest issues I have on my hard drive (.txt files!) date to mid-1994. (The last one I have is Nov 1997; not sure if they ended it then, or I just stopped following it after the show went off the air. I was most deeply invested in the fanfic by that point, and had started running the Fanfic Archive website, so that could have been a factor, too.)
This particular message board -- dedicated to fanfic about the show -- was created in the Spring of 2003. Before that were Zoomway's boards, which Tracey linked to above. I can't remember exactly when the ZMB got started, but it was likely the late 90's, as web-interface was evolving past the idea of Listservs into real-time discussion forums. These fanfic message boards were created as a result of a conflict within the fandom, sad to say ... there were some personality conflicts and differences of opinion on what kind of fanfic people wanted to be exposed to (the flashpoint, as I recall, was "real person fanfic", which had stories about Dean & Teri personally, vs the characters of Lois & Clark) and unfortunately things turned pretty ugly, with good friendships being ruined. But the bottom line was that Zoom rightfully got to make the rules on her own boards, so a group of fanfic writers decided to leave and start their own forum (this one) with different rules. At the time, it was all-consuming and extremely painful, though looking back after all these years, in the grand scheme of fandom wank, it was relatively tame.
OK, that's what I have time for this evening. I hope that it's helpful. If you get to the point where you have more specific questions, please ask, and I'll see what I can do. (Or others can do, since I'm not the only old-timer who lurks here, I'm sure. :))
Kathy
