Are BBS-Like Communities Dead? 335
I remember back in the 80's when I spent most of my waking hours after school in front of the monitor hooping from one BBS to another. I figure most of the BBSes have evolved in some way, shape or form and made the jump to the Internet. A few of them have evolved into Web Boards, which just don't have that same feel.
When I speak of "that BBS feel", I mean having the ability to go through different sections of the system, actually browsing the messages left by others in a free-forum (as opposed to moderated forums like Slashdot), actively seeing who was on the system at the time (the afore mentioned "who" command), the ubiquitous file transfer areas (which, for the most part have been surplanted by your mega-FTP sites like WcArchive and Freshmeat and others of their ilk). And door games....anyone remember door-games? (I'm still waiting for an online version of TradeWars for the Internet...)
Of course, my free time online has dropped dramatically due to my day-job and Slashdot, so I don't have the time to search for such online communities anymore. If anyone cares to make recommendations to any IBBS systems that may still exist, please feel free.
Firs^H^H^H^Her, yeah I have (Score:3)
(you'll want a client program though, using straight telnet sucks)
BBS' are dead as Bill Clinton's honour (Score:3)
Communities Exist (Score:2)
But contrary to the BBS world, people don't seem to "advertise" their communities like they used to do earlier. Instead, they kind of keep to themselves and it turns into a very closely connected society.
Also, communities are formed inside of larger groups of people. IRC, AIM, Zephyr, etc are probably good examples of this. When you think of it; this is really the way the world works IRL too. You seldom see advertisements for groups of people (unless they have a specific interest). Instead, you tend to meet new people through friends and family. In IRC, you probably meet friends of your friends and start talking and perhaps that person you speak to will then be your friend too, just like in real life.
Re:Firs^H^H^H^Her, yeah I have (Score:1)
Try this: (Score:2)
BBS's dead? (Score:1)
-PovRayMan
Ufie (Score:4)
have a look at http://bbs.ufies.org/ and telnet://bbs.ufies.org
I use one all the time (Score:2)
Suffice to say, it's been running at my university for years. It was, until recently, running on a small Sun box, but after the original code (it was running a somewhat evolved form of UNaXcess) proved to be far too buggy and difficult to maintain, a rewrite was started. Which failed. Then another rewrite. And so on.
Late summer of this year, the final, all-improved version was rolled out. Which has proved to be very slow, buggy, and somewhat unstable, but still shows a lot of promise. It's improving all the time - and now it runs on Linux instead of SunOS.
The 'community' on is pretty small, but many people know each other in real life, since membership consists mostly (entirely?) of current and former students. There are deep, philosophical debates (Pie-vs-Baguette), musings on the meaning of life ('PUB NOW!' system announcements), and general intellectual advancement (Pointless, Moan, LAM, Holy-Wars, and the ever-popular Abuse).
I know of several other similar internet-based BBS-type things; they usually keep a fairly low profile in order to avoid invasion by clueless AOLers or similar.
the 386sx. and the 16 color monitor..and the MODEM (Score:3)
BBS was the only way your computer could connect with others to get files, games and get to share ideas with other computer ppl.
Even when ISP's came about, BBS was the best way to "stay in touch". And of course the fact that an ISP cost an arm and a leg was also a problem.
I think one of the reasons that people dont want that exp. is that there are soo many choices that you just do whatyou want. There are still places where ppl. share ideas (Slashdot, irc etc)
and play games on web pages and all that. Just that they are all different! It would be cool to have a completely INTERCONNECTED set of webpages that allow you to chat, run a "who" command or just post stuff (who cares what) on some b-board!!!
well if there is such a place... point me to the right direction!!!
Fan clubs (Score:3)
telnet bbss (Score:1)
complete with door games.
User Friendly BBS! (Score:2)
Harkening back to the halcyon days of dial-up Bulletin Boards, the UFie BBS can be reached at http://bbs.ufies.org [ufies.org] and telnet://bbs.ufies.org [ufies.org]. Tradewars and Lord and other famous BBS door games are available, as are message boards, Fidonet feeds, and more! Thanks go to Moe [mailto], the generous chap who set the whole thing up and paid for the license!
With you all the way! (Score:2)
... a very similar system could grow, run by a backend (but small) database (like Slashdot, etc.) but with the BBS feel to it
Just my $0.02 worth
PS. I ran a BBS in Ontario, Canada for several years on a 2400 baud modem up to the first 19.2k modems then 28.8k. We were part of international Fido-type nets
Don't forget IRC ... urgh, and AOL (Score:1)
And I'd guess that AOL also provides that sort of community too.
The Well still exists last time I checked.
But I suspect that the local city BBS has probably been replaced by more global communities on the net.
Newsgroups and mailing lists (Score:1)
Many mailing lists definitely have a sense of community. In this regard OneList is to be commended.
One trick I use with newsgroups is to maintain a picklist, and look for posts from those posters - PMINews helpfully allows me to give the message title a different colour.
Pity there isn't a Win32 version.
qts@nildram.co.uk
how about Hotline? (Score:1)
The server tracker feature is neat, but makes it clear that most Hotline servers are dedicated to trading VCD/MP3/warez. Some communities do have Hotline servers for the intended (IMHO) purpose: to have a place for people to gather together and have the appropriate amount of fun.
Some Hotline servers act as "metaservers" for collecting people together to play games online, if the game lacks a "lobby" or other convenient method to find fellow players.
Alive and Well in Ciberspace ( I hate that word ) (Score:2)
Guess what Slashdot is ? Massive online debates, games ( 1st post *IS* an online game ). Flames, threats and a lot of fun. This is Rob's BBS and the day it becomes something else 90% of the regulars will depart.
BTW : The traditional BBSs are still around. For those in Jamaica ( or willing to pay perverse international call rates ) you can check out Chrysalis at 876-977-7334 and Synapse at 876-977-6681 .
What about boards elsware?
Usenet and IRC (Score:2)
At least now there's Deja.com so the Usenet stuff can be searched.
BBS's are out there... (Score:3)
I won't post the address to any here, since I don't have any particular wish to crash the two that I frequent. However, I will reccommend the program Zap-O-Com (ZOC) which is available at http://www.emtec.com/zoc/index.html [emtec.com]. They have a downloadable shareware version. (Because after all - BBS's are what made shareware work not so many years ago.)
ZOC is a very configurable, ANSI enabled telnet/dialup client. The only hitch is that it is only available for Windows and OS/2.
As for doors on the existing BBS's, Trade Wars 2002, Barren Realms Elite, and Falcon's Eye are still ubiquitous. Trade Wars seems to have the most devoted crowd, and there are many lists of active games available. This [eisonline.com] is one I found after a quick search. Others exist that are updated nearly daily with information such as the nuber of players, planets, corporations, etc. http://www.tradewars.org [tradewars.org] is a Trade Wars news site. Not sure how good it is.
Anyway, I encourage any people out there who haven't had experience with BBS's to try them out. The community still exists, the only real downside is that it is a lot more trouble to meet someone face to face (should you want to) than it was when everyone was in the same city/town. (Damn you, Mosaic, damn you)
------
BBS communities are still out there- on port 23 (Score:2)
Dead (Score:3)
I was involved pretty heavily in the BBS scene in the 80's and early 90's. It was one of the reasons I came so late to the internet. The scene is completely dead as far as I'm concerned.
So far I haven't come across anything having the same feel. I suspect there are two reasons. The main one is that BBSes had a strong local base, with the same cast of people. Everyone knew your name, you probably met many of the people behind the aliases (remember GTs (get togethers)?). The turnover was way lower than the equivalents we have today.
The fact that the Internet has allowed information to be specialized is another reason. Communities are highly focused on particular niches. Slashdot serves the open-source digerati types. There are communities based around the X-Files, etc. These communities tend to be too large compared to BBSes, and have people that may be too similar to each other.
Finally, I haven't found a decent interface for communities. Mailing lists are way to primitive, and web bulletin boards too klunky. The BBS Interface is still superior to anything I've seen thusfar.
Peace.
Pendulum? (Score:2)
I remember my BBS-days eight or ten years ago, and BBSes were invaluable back then to get in touch with likeminded people, and meet other avid computer users in the local area. At times we had pizza-nights when everyone got together in Real Life and got a shock when we saw how the people you'd been talking to for months actually looked like. It was nice, and it was important as community-building.
The Internet is a much bigger place and isn't as intimate as the old BBSes were. A lot of the people from the old BBS days and newer people seems to miss a more intimate environment. The Net is a pretty big place and people tend to feel all alone. My guess is that such environments will show up again, and they do at times in IRC-channels, MUDs, mailing-lists and news-groups.
My guess is that the Net will eventually be more divided into separate communities where people "belong" and we already see the start of it with the Linux/Free Software-community which have a number of services that cater for them and them alone. We have our freshmeat, our LinuxToday, /., shops, credit cards with penguins, etc. In a way one replaces the old country-borders with communities based on interest. My guess is that we will see this even more frequently with other "interests" and groups where new communities that easily can get more intimate show up. We're just starting out on our way to change society...
EWWW POKEMON!!! (and other ramblings) (Score:1)
Anyway, back to BBS. I know in my neighborhood anyway, there were a few active BBSes until about 3 years ago. Who wants to log onto a sheltered place with 20 people when you can log onto the internet just as eaisly and reach millions. I believe it is the growth of the internet that has been the death of the BBS. There's my take on it all.
Ones I used to frequent... (Score:1)
Some still active ones...
Prism BBS [fdu.edu]
ISCA BBS [uiowa.edu]
BBSs, etc. (Score:1)
But yes, I definitely miss the sense of community. I still talk with some people I knew from my BBS days on ICQ and very rarely on IRC...it's sort of hard to believe that I've known one of my friends for three and a half years now, and we've never once met in real life, despite the fact that we live in the same city, and on the same side of the city.
Still BBSing after all these years (Score:2)
Damn I miss trade wars... (Score:1)
Gimmie The Pit, Risk, or any number of those old cool games. God they were more addictive than crack and better than booze. Online games suck in comparison sure HTML makes things prettier than ANSI graphics but a deapth just isn't there.
Gunna hack me out some decent "Door-like" online games sometime...
Slashdot TradeWars [was Re:BBS's are out there...] (Score:1)
Mail me...
Re:I use one all the time (Score:1)
It's been going since 1986 (a bit before my time) and I am not revealing the name of it either.
However, the other is Monochrome which is the largest BBS in the UK, probably. Thousands of users, plenty to do and if clueless people want to turn up they're welcome. There is no snobbishness on there.
It's a real community and the facility ot message other users of the BBS and see how is on makes you feel that you're inside the system.
Closest thing I've seen to a real Internet community, and a shining example of how BBSes can still work today.
Nostalgia is universal -- a connection (Score:2)
"ubiquitous file transfer areas (which, for the most part have been surplanted by your mega-FTP sites like WcArchive and Freshmeat and others of their ilk)."
and mentally replaced it with,
"small gas stations where they would fill your gas, check your oil, and wash your windshield have been replaced by mega-gas stations like [pick your station name]."
I'm not trying to mock anyone; after all, *I* was a sysop, once upon a time. I just think that the connection is interesting, that's all.
Re:Firs^H^H^H^Her, yeah I have (Score:1)
check out etunnels too... (Score:1)
Once you're in a group you can instant message, email and trade files. The cool thing is that you can share a folder out from your PC directly to your group mates and it appears as part of their filesystem. It works pretty well, I play MP3's directly from my buddies computer without a problem. It's a little unpolished at the moment but worth checking out if you're in to this sorta thing. They say they're doing a Linux version soon.
It does seem to have some of that old BBS sense of community, but then again my BBS days way back in the late eighties when were spent on invite only boards trading files back and forward. Er, the files were shareware only of course!
somthing similar... (Score:1)
y
Lurkers unite... or something (Score:3)
The 'net as we now know it is geared less for interactive communication than the BBSen were, and the proportion of "quiet folk" has increased. That's a natural consequence of lowering the entry hurdles: once you'd managed to find a good BBS back then, you were more likely to say something just to prove to yourself that you'd done it.
I recall a SysOp buddy of mine pulling the plug on his active and growing board because the "real user ratio" had fallen too low for him. He said he wanted people to communicate, and never realized that the readers, the audience, the lurkers, were at least as important to comunication as those who wrote.
Wired Community (Score:1)
CIX conferencing in the UK (Score:1)
CIX added an internet service too later on after some CIX users formed Demon Internet, but many people still connect direct with an offline reader rather than over IP. And others will use a different ISP for internet but still have a CIX account just for the conferencing.
Even though the company are trying to aim more at the business internet market there's still a good community feel on the conferencing system and there is even a barbecue once a year where members can meet face-to-face.
However, it is a pay-for service, so you can't really get a feel for the community without stumping up the cash. And there's no web front-end yet.
Check out the web pages at www.cix.co.uk [cix.co.uk] - however I don't think there's much about conferencing on there.
Sean
sean@cix.co.uk
BBSes dying... dying... dead. (Score:1)
By mid '97 the message traffic on CIS:CONSULT was in serious decline; I heard that recently, CONSULT was merged into several other techie fora and is a ghost of its former self.
Yes, BBSs are a dying breed, even thought there are orders of magnitude more people online today than there were 7 or 8 years ago. You'd think the exact opposite would have happened.
Today, as an adjuct to, or in place of proprietary online service forums such as GEnie or CIS, you have freeware web based BBSes that anyone with a Perl CGI based web host (that is, just about anyone on an ISP) can set up... but, maybe because the cost of entry as a BBS is so low, the BBS action is splintered and fragmented across perhaps thousands of individually operated niche BBSs.
Also, limiting size of web BBS forums: just FINDING the right BBS on the web can be a chore. With Compuserve it was easy... you wanted to discuss flowers and gardening, here's the one or two or three fora you should use... etc.
Maybe what's needed is a comprehensive cross reference of all web BBSs. There ARE thousands... including the ones that are buried underneath local newspaper sites, or under corporate domains.
My favorite web BBS is the Computer Contractor's BBS (plug: http://www.realrates.com/bbs). Maybe it can be a representative of the best that a BBS can be on the internet. The thing that the Realrates BBS lacks, probably due to its focus, is the participation of a truly broad cross section of professionals, such as business owners, managers, and profesional writers and speakers - CONSULT had this.
InnerSpace - The Internet Community (Score:1)
I've started an old style BBS type system for the web in the last month or so that has many of the features that were thought to be lost. It has a game called Assassin where users can work to take out the founder of a multi-billion dollar company that's monopolistic practices have threatened to rule the world. The game works much like the old fashion doors we all miss, but is made 100% for the web, not requiring any kind of java telnet interface like most other systems still existing out there.
On InnerSpace there is private email, a message forum for the users to post on, real-time chat, a who's online list (okay, so it doesn't work too well, but the who's online list still works pseudo-well), and online games, just like the old BBSes used to have.
Take a look at www.innerspace.org [innerspace.org] if you're interested.
Lord Kinbote
Comment removed (Score:3)
Others are here from that net of Fidonet.. (Score:1)
1:163/xxx.xx Was a lot of fun way back when...I rmember when we started it, and applied for our own net number. Until then, we were a bunch of nodes off of 148, Toronto's net number.
Data/SFnet was one of the first 500 BBSs in Fidonet, which at it's peak had tens of thousands of BBSs world wide connected. What can I say, I am an early adoptor of tech....
ttyl
Farrell
Re:Lurkers unite... or something (Score:1)
Commodore 64 with 300 baud VicModem, surfing the BBS scene in Nanaimo, BC, Canada.
I eventually got my hands on a Commodore 128 with 1200 baud modem and an 80 column monocrome monitor. Gotta love the C128, it had 2 monitor ports out the back, one for the 40 column monitor, one for the 80 column monitor... Ah yes, BBS was glorious in those days.
Now, 80% of the people in a local community are on the net socializing with the world instead of a local BBS. If it was the only option available to most, we'd all be back there... Reading News on FIDOnet...
Why do I feel like such an old fogie at 25?
The Biggest Difference (Score:1)
The biggest difference between BBSes and the Internet is that when you dialed up a BBS, it was in your local calling range. Everyone else online was in your local calling range. Yes, you could hold conversations with people on the other side of the continent, but those were slow and generally infrequent. For the mostpart, everyone was within a reasonable distance of eachother.
On BBSes, there were meet and greets, you could buy a beer for the guy who's planet you crushed in Tradewars, or chat (physically) with those women you were flirting with. Just try that on the Internet.
M-Net and Grex (Score:2)
For a little information you will not find on the website, M-Net is a little bit harder and rougher on newusers. Basically, they hate them. But if you hang on for a little bit they eventually begin to tolerate you. However, when an argument springs up it is rougher and more abusive than anywhere else on the Internet. As for Grex, they are much kinder to newusers and in general more tolerant. If anyone tries either I am "jp2" on both. Have fun.
BBSs Glory... (Score:1)
Five years ago, our city had about 30 BBSs (and countless other "kiddie" ones that were run by 13 and 14 year olds at night when their mommies let them have the phone). About three and a half years ago, when the internet just started to kick in (when Netscape released v2.02), we were down to about 8 BBSs. Two years ago, our last three BBSs (two of the three at that point had been up for 8+ years) merged into one.
That last BBS, WestPole [westpole.net], is now down to four active local users and four active telnet users. The only way it's survived was by opening the BBS to Telnetters. Our sysop (alas, another term that's nearly died with the times), living about 1500 miles away from where the BBS box is, manages it remotely through Linux (another way it's survived...he only resets it once a year for maintinence).
BBSs as we know them from the past (1200/2400 baud modem & a dial up connection) are dead. I've been telnetting around, and have not found a single BBS that only has dial-up connections. But there are still a good number of telnet BBSs that have survived. You can find a hefty listing of them here. [thedirectory.org]
Although I'm saddened by the fact that the "locality" of BBSs has died, they still have been able to maintain their sense of community, although you now need an internet connection to use them...kinda ironic that the internet, which destroyed BBSing, is the thing which still allows BBSing to survive.
Re:User Friendly BBS! (Score:1)
Monochrome.org - Keep the BBS culture going (Score:1)
Don't complain about it - get on these things and keep them alive.
Alive and well in Milwaukee! (Score:1)
The file library is empty now since it has changed ownership about 6 or 7 months ago but the place is great. There are weekly "round tables" and "foodies" and the people are cool. Just like any system there are dead days and days where you can hardly keep up with conversations due to the screen scrolling by so fast. There are extensive "actions" in teleconference. There are tons of games such as crosswordz, tele arena gold, major mud, kyrandia, trade wars 2002. LORD, etc...
People on the system vary from complete geeks, to wanna-be geeks, to people that are just on because their girlfriend/boyfriend is online. Very real.
So to answer the question. It is alive and well in my eyes. Not as big as it used to be but the people online become tight-knit and it is very easy to become a part of it. You are accepted because you log on. You don't have to fit some physical description, or like a certain band. you just have to be a person and you can be considered a friend.
ANSI graphics are so much fun anyways.
Nostalgia (Score:1)
However, I think that part of the allure and what made the communities closer is that BBSes were very much underground and VERY much a geek only thing (at least in my city). In the past 5 years the number of computers per household and the number of people with modems (or other connections) has jumped exponantially.
BBSes were 31337:) And so are us old schoolers:)
try Carracho (why i don't like hotline) (Score:2)
Hotline's _idea_ is great. If implemented correctly it could be a wonderful graphical approximation of the BBS community feel-- or at least a nice reimplemntation of what "finger", "talk", "mail", "write", ftp and all those other UNIX utilities provide if you can actually still find a box that multiple people are going to be connected to at once.
But hotline _isn't_ implemented correctly. It's marred by so many interface quirks the interface gets in the way of whatever you're trying to do. Carracho, on the other hand, is hotline done right; everything Hotline falls short in, Carracho does beautifully.
And the thing is that for some reason, it really feels to me like carracho has much more of a community feel to it. maybe because it's so much smaller, maybe it's because of the interface. But it just doesn't feel as much like you're wandering by random faceless faces-in-the-crowd..
Of course i'm not saying Hotline is useless. I've found some really nice places (community-wise) there; i just think carracho deserves more attention as an alternative.
Note that carracho is still kinda beta-ish and crashes from time to time. Also, and maybe more importantly, it's currently macintosh-only as far as i know. But then again, for a long time the only windows hotline software was third-party, and the only current linux clients/servers are implemented by third parties..
http://www.carracho.com/
http://www.hotlinesw.com/
http://www.freshmeat.net/search.php3?query=hotl
OS/2 BBS Community... (Score:2)
I too run a BBS, The Power-Users BBS. It also was a Maximus BBS but unfortunately I did away with the dial-up section. It is strictly http/ftp now.
Unlike Norlofs my site has always supported Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris too as well as OS/2. My site is the main XFree86 ports repository for the XFree86/OS2 community. We are now enjoying Gnome, Gimp, Qt and a host of other Linux ports thanks mostly to Holger Veit and his port of XFree86 and a very dedicated but small group of supporters. Mailists have also replaced the BBS in part becoming a place where small parties congregrate.
The XFree86 and EMX mailists are an example. I think what comes around goes around so I would not be surprised if BBS's have a resurgance. I have had a lot of requests recently for good Linux BBS ports. There are some excellent BBS software packages for Linux that gives you all those nice DOS BBS features via the Internet. Who knows...
Who's online+messaging = ICQ? (Score:1)
I know this isn't exactly community, but IRC takes up more of this role today.
Are there any other BBS functionality that haven't been ported to the net? I'd love to see more Tradewars like games out there...
Whoa, my bbs has activity! (Score:1)
Ths coolest thing is the fact it can handle 10 callers at once with 10 megs of ram and 100 megs of hard drive space (OS AND BBS software)
CNet Amiga kicks ass
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell [ralph.cx]
An old bbs'er speaks (Score:1)
Kind of ironic that the only way to make a bbs survive is to keep out new users as much as possible. The boards that try looking for new users never seem to get any.
I'm also co-sysop on a local board known as "window of illusion bbs" (see www.windowofillusion.com). It's an Amiga running CNet 5.x. Yes, that's blatant advertising, I know. Forgive me. But we are rather short on users and activity.
But getting back to the topic, I have to admit, there is no place I've found on the 'net that has quite the same feel of "community" that you had on bbs's. Even the telnet bbs's out there don't cut it (I've yet to see a single telnet bbs that runs decent software - that may be part of the problem. Citadel is a wonderful program, but the telnet interface needs help, seriously). And it's almost impossible to have meetings and "gatherings" on 'net-based bbs's, since everyone is likely to be quite a distance away from each other.
I had been working on a few projects to program a new unix-based bbs system that had the same basic look and feel as CNet/Amiga (my personal favorite bbs software), but I finally gave up: no support. Why bother creating it if no one is interested or even knows what a bbs is anymore?
Ah well.. you can thank AOL for this...
DC Area telnettable bbs (Score:2)
Falken isn't the best bbs software out there, but it's multiline, teleconferenced, and runs on Linux.
There are a handful of us on there, it's not a huge population. However, if you ever bbs'ed in the DC/NoVA area, you might recognise us
Infinite Connections --> Too Big Communities (Score:5)
The Internet immediately "scales" to handling ludicrously large numbers of interconnected users. If you've got the name of:
- A person's email address
- A Usenet newsgroup
- A web site
You have random access to that location, and little reason to have any concern about whether this be in the same city, state, country, or even continent.Last night, I got an email message from someone in New Zealand complaining that some of my web pages were mislinked/missing. This was because I was, at that very moment, in the process of installing updates, after having just nuked the existing copies. Apparently there's not a time to do maintenance that's not "prime time" somewhere.
In the old days, Star Trek fans would have to get together in person, which limited connections to occasional "conventions" and local community meetings. With Usenet, this provides the ability for everyone to post on the same newsgroup, and with tens of thousands of fans, this results in daunting quantities of traffic.
That heads us now towards the problem... BBSes limited community sizes to the size and diversity of the people in the local community. Usenet and the Web expand this to allow literally hundreds of thousands of participants in each of a multitude of fora. Unfortunately, you can't usefully have hundreds of thousands of participants in any kind of forum. A Slashdot thread with a mere 200 messages is effectively unreadable.
The result is that only those that are, in some manner, "Extreme," wind up being prime participants. A Star Trek newsgroup will have a small set of experts (such as one might be "expert" on such) that participate usefully, and those that are less expert will either:
That doesn't have to be Star Trek; it can apply equally well to any other topic with many "somewhat interested parties."
This is almost exactly the same idea as how single people have a hard time connecting personally/socially in large cities even though there may be vast quantities of other singles. The vast quantity of other people is off-putting.
And the same is true of apartment hunting. Some years ago, I moved to Toronto, and started apartment hunting by acquiring copies of the local newspaper. The thousands of apartment listings were less useful than having mere dozens, as the sizable lists had too much "chaff" to plough through. I wound up using word-of-mouth, via a friend-of-a-friend, to locate a place.
Having a virtually infinite number of links is thus as bad as having no links, if you have no good way of choosing from the infinite quantities.
BBS's are not dead they just evolved (Score:2)
The thing that killed bbs's wasn't the internet, it was the sysop's that gave up. There were and still are software to convert your bbs to the internet they just didn't do it. I don't blame most of the sysop's because they were our age (20's) 10 to 15 years ago and now they have families with other responsibilites. Here is a link to a site that maintains a bbs list that has been active since '84 (i think). BBS's will never die...there will always be interest in it IMHO. Check out my friends bbs at www.dsbbs.net . Here is the link to list.
www.usbbs.org
Re:the center of BBS' ;) (Score:2)
I expect we will start seeing a rise in BBSes again because it's becoming possible to set them up again. Most people today have access to fast enough connections that allowing a few users to log on to a BBS over the internet is no longer impractical. The BBSes can probably never be quite what they were (what use is ZModem today? Message bases are probably going to be stored in NNTP format, etc) but there are too many people who miss them for them not to start reappearing.
Forms of telecommunication (Score:2)
Okay, I know this is childish. But if there were any protocals or something that forms an internet *underground* or something similar. It sounds like BBS may be what I am talking about but I think there might be something else out there.
I think the internet is overpopulated. Now that it is all the buzz and hype on the news and such... I want to escape.
Oh well, I'll cower my foolishness now.
The difficulty with large communities (Score:4)
All you have to do is read
The problem with really large communities tho, isn't so much the signal to noise ratio as it is the way a large community can distance a person from the whole.
BBSs gave us, as users, the same sense of belonging that a small town gives someone. It's not that you feel a member because you're like everyone around you, it's that you feel you can relate to those around you.
This doesn't mean that it's impossible for a large city to have functioning communities, it means that it's harder, in the relatively metaphor-poor arena of the internet, to develop a functioning sub-community that's small enough to create the same sense of belonging.
Lots of people post comments on slashdot. Even more read them. Nearly everybody recognizes Bruce Perens, even if you don't know who he is outside of slashdot. I'm sure one or two of you recognize me, but it's not the same. It's the division between the luminaries and the public that makes the distinction uncomfortable, but it's unavoidable in a large forum, and it's nobodies fault.
It's not that it makes anyone feel jealous, it's the sense of disconnection.
If this was a BBS, I'd be throwing these words before a bunch of people I kinda feel that i sorta know, that i sorta relate to. That would allow me to adjust the way i phrase things so that my ideas are accessable to a particular group of people that i'm trying to communicate with.
Here, well, I don't have any sense of the identity of my reader. It's a lonely feeling, when you look at it that way.
But in another way, it's somehow empowering to know that possibly thousands of anonymous geeks will paruse my feeble ramblings, and maybe even approve of what i had to say.
Progress marches on (Score:2)
The new buzzword is "internet presence" - this is the facility provided by ICQ's 'contact list' for example, and soon to be provided by open messaging systems like jabber [jabber.org]. You know the idea - whenever you come online your "internet presence" client contacts a server and forwards the information about your change of state to all your contacts that are also online. This is the right way to do things - once the technology is generally available in a non-proprietary form (and a non-amateurish form - jeez ICQ is weak) it will spread like wildfire. You'll see online communities popping up like they never have before.
Of course, once you know someone is online you can do all kinds of things - send messages, chat, send files, news, forums, other things that haven't been thought of yet. Widespread use of internet presence will essentially cause the internet to be reinvented yet one more time.
I guess what I'm saying is: don't feel too bad about the demise of the good 'ol BBS - progress marches on, and what's coming next will beat the heck out of BBS in every way.
Maybe you're not looking in the right places (Score:2)
Most of the BBSes in the 1980s were twirly-cursor ruggie havens not worth the time it took to dial the number. It shouldn't be surprising that most of the Web-based "communities" suck. It's the rare gems that stand out in your memory.
Take a look at some of these:
Talk to Tom [insideneworleans.com] with restaurant critic Tom Fitzmorris in New Orleans. Food is a big deal in New Orleans. InsideNewOrleans.com has assembled a very active, very local, very focused community around eating.
Backfence with James Lileks [startribune.com], a newspaper columnist with the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. His column is spun out of contributions from his message boards. He's built his own tight community within the newspaper's "Talk" service, which has something on the order of 30,000 registered users.
Cyberspace Cafe & Pub [startribune.com], a meandering discussion that began in 1994 or so on the proprietary Interchange network and migrated to the Web in 1995. Don't be fooled by the message count (around 5800); this has "rolled over" half a dozen times.
Cafe Utne, [utne.com] operated by the Utne Reader, sort of a Reader's Digest of "alternative" publications. If you're wondering where all the '60s liberals went, this is it.
Table Talk, [salon.com], the message boards of the Web-based Salon magazine.
Online Communities - Axis Mutatis? (Score:2)
However, the web has most definately not replaced the best 'features' of the traditional 16 color ANSI based board, even though it pretty much killed them outright. The problems of the web are numerous:
1. It's not stateless, meaning that once a page loads, it's not terribly dynamic until you resubmit a form or click on a link.
2. The audience is multinational, which is great in its own right, but BBSes were fun because you'd often get to meet other BBSers (they lived in town). We even had 'pizzas' and 'coffees' where we'd all get together.
3. For some reason, the signal to noise ratio was usually better. Even on sites where the sysop wasn't a censor-nazi.
4. BBSes were usually more immersive, meaning that you felt you were actually 'somewhere', versus just another web site. You also focused on the site for longer periods of time, whereas web users are far more fickle.
5. BBSing and advertising didn't go so well together, so you didn't have banners. People ran sites usually because they wanted to, not for profits alone.
6. Open standards - 16 color ANSI was pretty universal, and no matter what terminal you used, you would usually see the same thing. You can blame Netscape and Microsoft for the lack of universal standards on today's web.
I'd love to see someone come up with a web based system that captures the feel of the local boards. It's not easy, though - I've tried it myself with Axis Mutatis:
http://www.axismutatis.net [axismutatis.net]
...which has gained a loyal following, but still doesn't replace the good old BBSing community I used to be part of. It's not easy, and I haven't seen it done perfectly yet.
[note: If you go there and have problems, bookmark the site and come back later. I've had some DNS problems so you may or may not be able to get on - you may even end up at a different site]
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Telnet just isnt the same (Score:2)
But anyway, these telnet BBS may have some of the same door games but the things that made the BBS so fun are missing. The major appeal was that everyone who would be calling would usually be from your area unless they are calling long distance. You might never know the people in person but they lived in your area so it had a community feel. A friend might turn you onto his BBS, and there was just something neet about knowing your sysop personally. File bases were uncluttered and message bases might be local or in a net from around the country. All of this without commercialism, and usually it was free. You just can't bring back the same feeling of the old BBS.
_joshua_
Changing expectations in the Internet era (Score:2)
For downloading files, the Internet offers more variety than any BBSes ever did, and with web hosting that can cost less per month than a single phone line, it costs less to reach a wider audience by providing files for download over the Internet.
Modern gaming, if you like the latest in multiuser entertainment, bears too little resemblance to the "door" games in the heyday of BBSes to really compare the two.
For discussion forums, the rise of the Internet has driven people to expect more specialized communities. A few years ago, when CompuServe was essentially a huge national BBS, it offered the same advantage: there wouldn't be enough compression algorithm enthusiasts in a city to support a local BBS, but aggregated between all CompuServe users, they had a decent discussion forum for this. On the Internet, with a huge user base, Usenet and the proliferation of web-based chat boards have resulted in discussion groups defined much more by interests than geography. People did dial BBSes long-distance, but the bulk of the regular callers were generally local, except for narrowly specialized boards, or the handful of shareware and image/porn BBSes that got especially huge (100+ lines).
If you have a nostaligic longing for an active ASCII-based online community, dial Ann Arbor's Grex [cyberspace.org], +1 (734) 761-3000, N81, 14.4kbps...they have about ten phone lines. Although if you're reading this, you'll probably have an easier time telnetting to cyberspace.org...create a free shell account (they run SunOS), and you'll get the same feel through telnet as through a comm program. They've survived the transition to the Internet by promoting community interaction rather than file downloads and gaming. The Internet has introduced users from around the world, although there's still a core of Ann Arbor locals who keep things going.
Online Communities (Score:2)
Groups like Alt.Fan.Pratchett and Alt.Fan.Eddings tend to have regular "Meets" and their own IRC channels, but the meets and channels are there to support the Usenetters, not the other way around...
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Re:Maybe you're not looking in the right places (Score:2)
Continuing my rant: Software counts. Software implements the organizational metaphor. The medium is the message, and all that. Most of the Web-based discussion software is horrid.
Take Slashdot, for example. It's a moderated annotation system, not a discussion system. Does anybody really come back and read after they've posted? Maybe a couple of diehards, but fundamentally this is a rant-and-run environment. It works very well for its intended purpose, but it's not a discussion system.
The trouble is that most of the packages that pretend to be discussion systems have no more thought applied to sustaining discussion than Slashdot. Sustained discussion requires a primarily linear flow. Most Web boards are built with too much threading, too many decorations, and not enough productive features (such as keeping track of which messages I've already read).
Tradewars (Score:2)
NOT dead. (Score:3)
So I got to talking with some of my friends about this, and they too miss that "community" feeling that BBSing had. I think it's alot like why people don't vote - they don't think it'll make a difference. Statistically, it doesn't. But when you have 10 of your friends at a private party, isn't it alot more fun than a hundred people who you "kinda" know at a party? I'll tell you what's more fun - the 10 person party. The reason is that what you say makes a difference, and everybody can listen to everybody else.
I don't believe the web is going to give many people that community feeling they're looking for.. atleast not the conventional way of using it. But I am doing research and such on developing a kind of "online" bbs - not the cheezy kind, but a real bbs that is modern, uses the technology, and stretches the limits. It's a daunting task. Slashdot is one way of doing it, but even that is still largely "I post, you view". I don't have any answers, but I do know there's a need - I want to fill that need, if only for myself.
--
The downfall of the BBS. (Score:5)
I admit that it's not the same as the traditional BBS. There are a few out there, and many that support some of my old favorites (door games (BRE, SRE, etc.). I sometimes yearn for the "old days" of my 14.4 and ANSI telecomm program, but then I realize, too, the benefits that the net has today.
As it is, Cleveland, Ohio, lost a landmark in online communities this fall when the Cleveland Freenet (owned and operated by my alma mater, Case Western Reserve University) was shutdown. The shutdown invoked scathing critcism and many flames directed toward both the President of the University (who was only in office for a few months) and the VP of IS (who was summarily fired a couple of months later). Still, even though the Freenet model was a trailblazing way of connecting people and allowing the "common folk" to explore this wonderous new thing called the Internet back in the early 90s, by even 1996 the system became so deprecated that it was becoming nothing more than an embarrassment and a money pit for the University. The "communities" that once thrived (including a very active local IRC, one that I still miss to this day and one which I can proudly say I found my current girlfriend of 3 years and potential wife on) were no longer active, except for a few strong holdouts by a stalwart few. In the place of the active lurkers and posters alike came the kiddy-porn mongers, the leechers and flamers. Granted, they were always there, but the ratio increased to a degree where it was no longer any "fun" to use it.
I feel like and old fogey when I reflect how things were in the late 80s and early 90s. People that didn't use BBSes will never truly understand the quaint charm they held and the sense of community they brought about. However, I can say for certain we'll be saying these same things about the Internet in 10 years. We'll be telling our children about how we used to have to type in "slashdot.org" this and "http://" that. I presume that the guts of the net will become so transparent we'll experience another great abstraction of the methodolgy in which we obtain and contribute information.
I've rambled enough. I need to mud...
David's Amazing BBS ... (Score:2)
The best thing about it is that we had user meetings, everyone could get together, and I met enough women through it to make my life interesting. Now, the most interesting women I encounter are not just in other cities, try other countries!
On the other hand, I was always trying to figure out a good balance between free speech and censorship. I believe in free speech; many of my users hated the consequences, because one or two disruptive people can really do bad things to the system. I have to say that Slashdot has a better compromise between the two ideals than anything I've seen, and if I were running a large-scale message board system, I'd take many of the ideas to heart.
I always liked fooling around with the technology of online matchmaking - it's always been something I've been passionate about, considering that people are increasingly paranoid and disassociated from their communities. I think that's a lot of what caused BBSes to decline in such dramatic terms when the Internet came to town.
But still, come visit my latest matchmaking experiment if you feel in the mood - it's at http://207.151.18.18/ and it uses a lot of the same ideas I first hatched when I had my BBS years ago. Incidentally, if you tried this when I last announced it, I've had a bit of a technical goof and you'll have to go through a quick procedure to re-find your account.
Hope you'll visit!
D
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Re:Infinite Connections --> Too Big Communities (Score:2)
300 baud was the perfect speed, because you could read an entire 'room' without having to page through it. You could pause if you needed, but generally didn't need to. When most of the BBSs I called on a regular basis upgraded to 1200 baud, I would generally still call at 300. The pace fostered thoughtful replies, and clever, often deep banter. I still have close ties to people with whom I developed online relationships. I wish that I could recover some of the content which was generated.
At one point, a bunch of folks who met through BBSing, rented a house together. The house had 4 telephone lines, and you had to call one of the BBSs and scream "Voice call" or "Bomb Threat" through the carrier negotiation tones to talk to anyone voice. Great callerID! There were some people who would call each of the BBSs in the house in turn, probably not realizing they were all in the same room.
While to tools in use were slow, the times and relationships were dynamic. Regular parties sprouted around the online musings. Seattle formed a Telecommunications Users Group (TUG) which met regularly. There were feuds between various BBSs, etc.
Far too much of the email I get today consists of just a single URL. The odd thing is that I've experiemented with various forms of web-based BBS and online forum, and none seems to click. Slashdot has some interesting ideas for managing huge communities, but spending lots of time moderating can take away one's will to participate more meaningfully.
Weblogging bas become a sort of community, with popular webloggers banding together and sharing content, and doing things offline together. And I have seen some topic-specific forums work very well (scripting.com and WikiWikiWeb (http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors) as two examples.), but weblogs are often topic focused (I run one such weblog, Bubble Chamber, http://jimfl.yi.org:88) or web focused, and don't have room for discussion. The BBSs had lots of various, evolving topics, which you could participate in, lurk, or ignore, and there was a great diversity of interest.
So, like ecosystems, you have to have the right mix of species, not too big, (with a path down the middle. Yes, a PATH, a PATH, Nik!), and where people can read what has come before and decide to join in the middle (email can't do this), sometimes months after the conversation has gone dormant.
There are pretty decent versions of BRE and SRE (Score:2)
Check out Echelon Games [eesite.com] for both of them. Be careful, just like BRE and SRE they are very addictive.
Limited Sized Communities (Score:2)
The size was going to be limited, not only because creating a really big dome would be prohibitive, but also because it could only work as the creation of a fairly small community.
It almost happened, but the degree of design compromise that was getting forced in by political "hacks" made it all fall through.
Computer technology is somewhat frightening in terms of just how many levels of scaling it involves.
Re:M-Net and Grex (Score:2)
Moderators, buzz off, it is a private joke.
The Internet obsoletes BBSes (Score:2)
Not counting strange experiences of the PDP-11 and RSTS/E kind in the late 70s, by the time I hit the net in the early 80s, my peer group had already passed the BBS scene by light years. You see, we had the Internet. We had Usenet and Internet mailing lists, so we already had plenty of non-real-time discussion forums. For file exchange, we'd just compress, uuencode, shar, them and mail them to each other. For file archive repositories, we just used ftp. And for real-time, well, it started with talk, then moved on to ytalk, and some folks eventually got stuck in IRC, muds, and the like. I'd talk to friends around the country in real time, leave messages for them over night, all the things we do today. There was no cause for a BBS.
What I'm saying is that the reason you don't have garage-style BBSes much anymore is that the Internet renders them redundant. And I point out that for the community that was already on the Internet back in the 80s, we saw no reason to bother with the small and localized world. Now, not everyone was a major arpanet hub with its own imp, so the Internet came later to users than to us Unix programmers who were lucky enough to be on the real Internet back before it got invaded. But even after the invasion, one could always find one's own clique somewhere.
Look at what happened to "mass-market" BBS style access providers, like Prodigy and Compuserve. Once the real internet hit the masses, nobody wanted a closed world. You see, given a large and open world, you can create closed pockets. But you can't go the other way around. If you start out cut-off and closed, there you say.
Re:The Biggest Difference (Score:2)
It *really* helps when you've known the folks offline *first*, and when the number of "regulars" is quite low. This promotes discussion since y'all have a good idea of the context; the in-jokes; and so forth. In addition, there's a strong degree of mutual trust.
Telnet into a bbs, and nowadays you may have absolutely no idea who you're dealing with; one can misrepresent himself at will. You don't know whether they'll be around the next day, either. That's *very* different.
The Viewdata community (Score:2)
Now, as James Lawson puts it on the CCl4 web site [ccl4.org], the ANSI board is all but dead. Most boards have been surpassed by the Internet and indeed FTP sites and websites as you rightly state; Fido feeds have been surpassed by Usenet; message areas by maillists. It's back to information provision and suchlike.
There has been, for some years now, a Viewdata Revival [affection.net] going on, which puts forward many of the arguments. Unfortunately the website is a bit stale but it does give you a sort-of hail back to the days of CARBBS, XFS+ and EBBS board hosts running on 32k BBC Micros with (if you were lucky) 20Mb Winchester hard disks - none of this 24Gb filespace and 18 CDs online rubbish.
There are several Viewdata bulletin boards now online on the Internet, run from Acorn Archimedes machines using Gareth Babb's excellent VHost software. Mine is called Haven [jml.net] and you can get to it without even a Viewdata emulator, by using the online Java-based client [jml.net]. Alternatively there are bits of software [jml.net] you can use to access them.
Of course, there are still ANSI boards available via telnet - the UserFriendly [userfriendly.org] one immediately springs to mind. But you still won't get back the sort of thing which you had with Viewdata.
Hope this enlightens at least some ;)
Joel [joel.co.uk].
Re:Lurkers unite... or something (Score:3)
My first BBS experiences were with a TRS-80 and a 300 baud acoustic modem (the one you would fit your telephone headset in). Back in those days (1980) you could comfortably fit every known BBS in the world on both sides of an 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper in Courier 12 type. I once dialed into a board in England from Colorado just to prove I could do it (stayed all of about a minute ).
Now of course I can connect to demon.co.uk and not pay any more than I do to pull in
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Re:Infinite Connections --> Too Big Communities (Score:2)
And community size is an issue. Slashdot for example is a great discussion forum, but I have never stopped to remember anyones' name. Occasionally I click on someone's user info page or their web page if they have one, but actually forming relashionships is just too impractical in a cummunity of hundreds of thousands of people.
I would like to see a slashdot with a limited but open user group, a wider range of discussion topics, no moderation system, and keep all threads open, no matter how old they are.
Wasn't all the hype about the internet "breaking down barriers" supposed to be a good thing? I prefer just saying that the internet screwed up a lot of things that were going fine and abolished old traditions that kept many communities alive. The internet isn't all that it is cracked up to be.
some went private (Score:2)
Several years ago, our football newsgroup was overrun with yahoos from another team, and we formed an open mailing list. This too quickly became obnoxious, and a handful of us sececeded and formed a private list--invitation only. It runs off topic as often as on-topic, which is how we like it. It has the flavor of the old small BBS's.
THen again, the multi-line BBS's were on the rise about the same time I moved and stopped using them (1990), so my take may be a little different.
At times, I toy with a hybrid of these ideas on the internet--a general site, with open access to the lower levels, with users being invited up as they show signs of intelligence/conscious thought.
someday, in my spare time . . .
new technology (Score:2)
BBS's have a kind of "community" feel for several reasons. They are relatively small, the users are generally local, and especially, they are devoid of commercial content.
Has there been a good model for that "community" feel on the web (or BBS feeling as he calls it)? There has to be a few, but not any that I know of. Most "local" type webpages (for that community feel) are either highly commercialized (sidewalk.com type stuff) or run by local government types (*.us domains) which maybe have community news, but no forums, and are generally bland. The commercial aspect really prevents anything interesting, everything revolves around materialism.
I think slashdot is good, but you can't get that local community feeling here because this is the web of course, it reaches around the world. I'd rather have it this way however, for obvious reasons. There is no need to isolate yourself, and no need to romanticize the past. The web is a Good Thing, even when it's often used otherwise.
Re:Infinite Connections --> Too Big Communities (Score:2)
As far as flames wars go, this is user error. If everyone would learn not to reply to a post that insults the the flamers would fade away. IMHO
mark
Re:There are pretty decent versions of BRE and SRE (Score:2)
In Echelon's Utopia web game, A "Kingdom" is made up of 25 players. Each kingdom has an elected Regent. The kingdom regent has the power to moderate the kingdom's private discussion forum. The regent gets a small bonus in food production and income. He can also declare war, peace, etc.
In the BBS game of BRE, each BBS could have 25 players. The Sysop had the power to moderate the discussion forums. His bonus was that he didn't get busy signals when he wanted to manage his lands.
I think these games help build character, much in the same way as hockey or baseball.
In both the web and the bbs game by these authors, diplomacy becomes an important skill. I have seen swaggering, "Destroy all before us" types turned into wise leaders with good diplomatic skills.
The public discussion area outside the Utopia game has a similar flavour to the BBS discussion boards in days of old.
Some of the things that BBS's provided us are still alive.
Gee, that's nice.. But it's NOT the same. (Score:2)
I'm glad to hear that some of you still have online communities to hang out on. I'm sure at least one of the larger BBSes have moved to telnet in many areas. But, it's not the same. Why? At least in Portland, OR, all the big BBSes that did move to the net survived that long for one reason: Major MUD or other forms of online gaming. Intelligent conversation died in most places many years ago. If you're lucky enough to still have an intelligent community to turn to, I envy you.
Why should I go play TradeWars on the UFie BBS? It won't be the same, because the fun part of TW was dominating boards where nobody was smart enough to get a commision on the first day after big bang, and then blowing them out of the water once they did. =)
And sure, I get my fix for intelligent forums on Slashdot, but what all those fun religious debates between friends that never turned into flamewars? Or the bi-yearly pizza/frisbee/bowling meets? No, I'm sorry, but you can't do that with internet communities.
And remember all those online women you met? Err, oh yeah, that never happened... But at least if it did, you wouldn't have to fly halfway across the country to have an awkward first meeting, you could just go to the local mall.
I'm even nostalgic for the obnoxious newbies who would come in flaming their mouths off and you could tell them "Press ALT-H for Sysop access."
And most annoying and depressing of all, when I'm on AOL Instant Messanger and I go "AFK" or "BRB" or "ROFL", people don't know WTF I'm talking about.
Ah well, it's not like I have the time anymore to spend 12 hours online everyday photoning people who try to get to the Stardock.
Re:The Internet obsoletes BBSes (Score:2)
The "mass-market" BBS style providers died not b/c they were a closed world, but b/c they were a large closed world. They had their system, a large system but with the intimacy of a BBS, with the mass invasions of the internet they died b/c large systems were better and easier to find elsewhere, not b/c large, open systems are necessarily better.
BBS's (Score:2)
The internet killed the BBS star? (Score:2)
I think as much of BBS culture came from it being isolated as internet culture comes from it being distributed. Culture and community is bred when the same people interact with each other daily - something that in the vast open spaces of the internet just doesn't happen. Too many newsgroups, WAY too many web-boards.
Some of the most bbs-like communities you'll see are on special interest mailing lists (I've belonged to car mailing lists that really reminded me of those days, and the pregnancy list I'm on reminds me of it as well, but hey, you can guess which group of people is more technically savvy. =]).
I think most people who were once part of BBS culture miss it a lot, and I know a lot of people who have tried to re-create it, but it requires an investment of time on not only the part of the sysop but of the users - and who has time to do that when you have to read slashdot, freshmeat, userfriendly, suck, salon, cnnnews, and bugtraq? Most people I knew had a handful of bbs'es they were active on, and spent a LOT of time on them.
It seemed like most BBSes died when the old core of people who gave them character moved on to the internet, abandoning their BBS roots. Some BBSes became ISPs for a short time, some became web pages, some just stuck around until the sysop got bored.
People go somewhere else for everything they got on BBSes - interaction, files, games... but it was everything in one place that made it unique, and I kind of doubt there will ever be a true resurgance of that.
Would you want to go back? (Score:3)
I'm 15, and spend most of my time discussing physics/philosophy on irc. I consider that my community, and i love it. But now and then I come accross one of those telnet bbs like systems, or I read about them in *.txt. They seem so much more complex than what we now have, like the ruins of a long dead civilization. And i ask myself: "self, did you miss all the fun?".
What i'd like to know is if those of you who've lived thru the development of all this prefer or dislike the 'modern' community relative to the BBS community?
Re:free, multiplayer, bbs-style strategy game... (Score:3)
The SST design is derived from Czarwars, one of several tradewars-genre BBS door programs from the '80s. SST has been online in various forms for three years and is still in beta testing. It's pretty solid but remains in testing due to endless feature creep.
We are currently running 10 games in an on-going ladder-style tournament. The games all reset on Thanksgiving (Thursday) and each has room for a few hundred more players. There are usually about 500 active players (well, active ships -- it's hard to tell how many actual people log in). The web mode serves about a half million pages a week and accounts for 75% of the traffic -- with the remainder of the activity being through telnet.
BBSes, reinvented... (Score:3)
I'm one of those people who you might say spans two worlds; I got into college in Fall, 1991, here in Springfield, Missouri. One of the first things I did was figure out how to make the university's modem pool dial out and voila...a new universe of BBSes presented itself to my wondering gaze. Likewise, there was a student-run campus BBS on the ISN (Information Systems Network, a primitive networking system something like a cross between a phone system and Ethernet) with 8 connections (later expanded to 16) which featured chat and message boards, but no doors. It was called COEPIS, for the College of Education & Psychology which was where it was located, and nobody could quite figure out how to pronounce the name. I still have a T-shirt from it.
I made a lot of friends on COEPIS, a couple of whom I still know now--they're employed by the university, I'm still studying at it, the eternal student. But COEPIS wasn't long for the world; it only lasted a couple of years, more on that in a bit...
I got accounts on a dozen different BBSes, soon whittled down to one or two as my interest dwindled. I dabbled a bit in FidoNet, too. I made friends via COEPIS, and a few acquaintances through the local BBSes; I even schlepped down to the weekly BBS get-together at a local pizza joint a couple of times. This was sort of a community within a community...all the geeks could get together and talk about computers and things. We weren't completely likeminded, but we were closer than a lot of the other people in the town.
BBS doors were kind of fun for a while, but didn't really hold my interest too much, because I discovered...the Internet. I came into the computer lab one day, noticed some of my COEPIS friends doing something that looked interesting, and said, "Hey, how do I get into that?" "I'll set you up." Thus came my first encounter with the Internet: MUCKing via RexxTalk on a VM/CMS box. In those days, Internet was not a gratis-for-all-students deal; it was a "get a faculty sponsor so you can get an account" sort of thing.
Gradually, as time marched on, the Internet became much more accessible, students got an honest-to-god Unix box to play on and Ethernet replaced ISN...and COEPIS died. The Internet killed it.
The Internet made it possible to find people who were >90% interest matches, rather than the 60-70% that were the closest local BBSes came, just because there was suddenly a much greater pool of people to search through. There were whole newsgroups (mailing lists, chat forums, eventually webpages, etc.) devoted to niche interests, be they anime, Star Trek, belly-button lint collections, or almost anything you could think of. Once it became available to The Great Unwashed Masses, how could something with a strictly local focus possibly compete?
We have the same functions available to us via the Internet as we did on local BBSes. E-mail, USENET and mailing lists for discussion groups, IRC/MU*/ICQ/webchat for chat forums, and so forth. The only difference is that there are many more participants now, and we're not guaranteed to find the same people in one area that we know in another. Our community is that much greater in scope.
Of course, we do sacrifice the community closeness inherent in the BBSes...but do we really miss it enough to want to use it? I don't know...I haven't checked in with the local BBSes in a couple of years; I'm not sure how many people still do use them. I suppose that for the old-timers, and the people who still have a lot of fast friends in the area, there's still some appeal...but for this new, younger generation, I expect that the rapid explosion of the 'net more or less speaks for itself.
Some of those door games, revisted... (Score:2)
http://www.shareplay.com/spacemerchant/
It's still pretty devel last time I played, but very stable.
I might also tell you about Utopia, which can be found here:
http://games.eesite.com/utopia/
Kind of a LORD/Usurper/TW2000 feel game..Fantasy, of course. You might like them, you might not. Personally, I don't because I liked TW(2000) being only a 100 people or so max. But...Enjoy. On a side note, Space Merchant is *really* nice on a fast-fast connection...Enjoy
Re:some went private (Score:2)
Intelligent thought seems to be limited to a fairly small subset of the total number of people who post on a particular topic.
For instance, in any one SlashDot thread, out of 200-odd posts, there might be 20 that are REALLY worth reading (if you're lucky), and anothe 20-30 that are worth reading.
A layered system, where people could post in certain "circles" by invitation only, but anybody could read any of the circles (or perhaps even restrict reading of the highest levels by the lowest levels...) might help to keep the 40-50 intelligent posters talking with each other, and restrict the 10-20 odd flame-idiots to the lowest of lows.
However, some potential problems:
* (This one is particularly near-and-dear to me, coming from Australia) - often I see an intelligent post that hasn't been moderated up because it was posted too late in the day. Over here, we only get to post stuff well after discussions have ended over there in Yankeeland. I think the reason for this is that slashdot is organised on a day-by-day basis. After discussions are more than a day or two old, they die.
* Different people have different concepts of "intelligent discourse". For instance; some people quite like sardonicor sarcastic humour; others think of this as flaming. Some think that (say) a post discussing the horrors of certain OSs highlights some interesting points, while others treat the post as a personal attack.
* Somebody needs to do the rating; they need to do it _VERY_ well, or (as we have seen on SlashDot DESPITE the magnificent service that it offers to the online community) they will get flamed. You can't have automatic ratings based on volumes of postings. You can't have a small subset of people rating often. It needs to be community-based. Perhaps a vote - "Does the 'seventh heaven' want member X to join?"), with more than 50% of the members of the 'seventh heaven' having to say yes. This way the prejudices of each circle are maintained - the majority of the people within that circle would then be happy.
Well, that's all I can think of right now.
-Shane Stephens
Thoughts from the suburbs (Score:2)
Then I moved down south to the suburbs. (I come from Minnesota, and south == city here.) The sheer amount of people here is desensitizing. And those nice 256k DSL freeways! I haven't used my old '91 Ford modem in a long time. Out in the country people generally can get along with their own kind; you had some things in common. But out here, you really can't identify with anyone. The sheer amount of people desensitizes you. You may have a brief flash of personality every now and then, but in an hour you've forgotten them and they likewise have forgotten you existed.
Commercialism! wheew! Out in the country, you could get together and maybe play a game of LORD. Maybe page through the file sections or look at some familiar stats which fluctuated rythmically as the seasons. Down here, it's INFORMATION and SELLING! Electronic brochures! You want a research paper on the valuation of Brazilian currency together with peer review, legal implications and spiffy graphics? You got it! But try to find a small, local place to hang out. There are a lot of nice big skyscrapers here, but no small resturants like Judy's back home where the electricians would sit for coffee every morning at 8:00.
One final thing: no scenery. I suppose you could call the city skyline scenery, but nothing like the natural scenery of prime ANSI wilderness. I don't know about the other forty thousand people in this stadiun, but the white prompt on a simple black background is very familiar and comforting, even when you have a thousand people on the MUD all jabbering at once.
I'd almost forgotten all this stuff. But, progress, you know. Someday, when all forty thousand of us have gone our seperate ways, we'll see something that reminds us of good ol' SlashDot...
JD
Oh yeah? (Score:3)
Commodore 64 with 300 baud VicModem, surfing the BBS scene in Nanaimo, BC, Canada.
Oh yeah? Well, in my day, all we had were tin cans and string! You had to attach the can directly to the CPU with tinfoil! We were lucky to get two characters per second, and were happy if we just got one!
You youngsters these days, why, you have no idea how good you got it. We used to have a 4K disk the size of this *room*, and you didn't hear us complaining! Oh no, we knew to be grateful for what we had! Why, we didn't even have keyboards at first! We had to *chip* the characters into the screen! With our teeth!
And ya know what else.... why.... um.... what was I saying?
Remembrance of Things Past (Score:2)
What a funny question (Score:2)
on Slashdot, of all places.
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp
There's a couple of ways to meet these (Score:2)
>posters talking with each other,
exactly
>and restrict the 10-20 odd flame-idiots to the
>lowest of lows.
As in, "no access." I don't see any reason for a private operation with this intent to provide access to the troublemakers. In the one-line BBS period, this was done by simply revoking accounts.
>Over here, we only get to post stuff well after
>discussions have ended over there in Yankeeland.
>I think the reason for this is that slashdot is
>organised on a day-by-day basis. After
>discussions are more than a day or two old, they
>die.
I think it's more the story-by-story orientation than the day-by-day. With usenet, topics can last for days, months, or years (are the heinlein flamewars still running in whatever net.scifi was renamed? And talk.origins seems to be still running the same arguments (with the same people?) as used to be in net.religion.
>* Different people have different concepts of
>"intelligent discourse".
no problem. They'll choose different forums. Part of the problem that led to the second mailing list was that those who came afterwards wanted somethign entirely different than we did (ok, that was the major part. They also complained about anything non-football, and got vicious about the 8-10 line signatures of one of the core members). I thought that better than 90% of the boards in San Diego at the time were infantile (or less!), so I stuckwith 2 or 3 that I liked.
>* Somebody needs to do the rating; they need to
>do it _VERY_ well,
I think this is the easy part, actually. At bbs size, it can even be a single person. On our private list, nominations require affirmative votes by two-thirds of the members, with any member able to veto. This is practical for the twenty or so of us, it wouldn't be practical at 50 or 100 (but we don't want to get that big. The list is already larger than originally conceived, and new members are usually close relatives or close friends, though occasionally we invite someone with intelligence & wit from the first group [yeah, a couple of us are still active there]).
CommunityWare (Score:2)
For the past couple of years (at least), I've been working on a Web-based online community system that is very BBS-like in some respects. It's called CommunityWare (or, in its latest incarnation, CommunityWare/XML) and it features conferencing, online presence, instant messaging, chat, Web hosting, email, and so forth. It allows people to create their own "communities" online, so I guess it'd be more of a "meta-BBS" system than a BBS proper. You can get into it here [webb.net].
One of the best-known communities hosted on CommunityWare is the Electric Minds community, which is full of interesting and fun people. You can get to it through its own URL, which is referenced in my .sig.
Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."
Re:[cue flashback] remember the kid of the 80s ema (Score:2)
Re:Others are here from that net of Fidonet.. (Score:2)