Subj : BBSes To : The Millionaire From : Tegularius Date : Wed Oct 12 2005 08:57 pm Re: BBSes By: The Millionaire to All on Wed Oct 12 2005 00:21:00 > The future of BBSes and where we stand. Are we a race that has become so > scarce that we will drive ourselves to extinction? I hope not. But I see it > all around me these days. Less traffic and more BBSes are going up and down > due to poor turn-outs and that's kind of sad to see and hear. I think BBSes > my opinion are the most funnest way to relax and have fun. Man, I remember t > days when I used to spend a whole day on the phone line dialing for hours > sometimes because the bbs was busy. Some nights I remember staying up late > too. It was a thrill to be a Sysop as well as a User. Long live the BBS! > I, too, was an enthusiastic BBS caller and, eventually, sysop from around 1987 until I sadly pulled the plug on my own dormant board ca. 2001. It was several years before I even realized that the faithful remnants had just moved to Telnet. When I discovered that, it was thrilling all over again. But I must say that at least the first boards I encountered could have done a lot better in terms of outreach via their Web pages. Visually they were stunning, but in terms of content, merely mystifying. The message, such as it was, seemed to be that it was an in-group, cult kind of operation and if you didn't already know the ropes, screw you. I'm still not nearly as knowledgeable about the scene as an aspiring sysop should be. A few words of instruction as to where a novice can find a good Telnet client set it up, call an address, and log in might work wonders. It's not that difficult, yet if a random web surfer isn't encouraged and empowered to take those initial first steps, we've probably lost 'em. Maybe it's a holdover from the Fidonet philosophy (AKA conversion to Judaism): don't let them know that you want them. Let the dabblers weed themselves out, sink or swim. Fidonet gurus felt (probably justifiably) that people who wanted in should REALLY want it enough to figure things out on their own, and if they got their hands held along the way they often didn't stay. I like curious, resourceful, self-reliant people very well and have some respect for that approach-- but when it's just callers we are looking for, maybe there is a better way. --- þ Synchronet þ Bauding House .