Subj : Online Communities To : Charles Pierson From : August Abolins Date : Sat Nov 07 2020 01:46:12 Hi Charles! 06 Nov 20 09:19, you wrote to All: CP> I was reading an article the other day titled "What Makes a Great CP> Online Community"... [snip] CP> While I'm reading that, I find myself thinking that this is exactly CP> what I found more than 20 years prior to that in the BBS community and CP> eventually Fidonet. That is what I found the various message boards and echomail to be. CP> So why is it the online forums and things like Facebook and Twitter CP> are such huge presences in the world, but Fidonet, and the BBS CP> community in general, aren't? That has been debated before. Opinions varied from "the eenernet is sexier", less dialup wait times or faster connections of internet, lots of purty pictures and graphics. I wouldn't know if newsgroup use has waned over time since then (more spam and trolls), but even participation in a newsgroup had a faster and more broad response than an isolated BBS or a hobbiest echomail network. Myself, my community for fast answers and interesting conversions included Compuserve for at least 3 or 4 years. Web forums also evolved out of a need to build communities with special interests. I joined a few when I needed info on Thinkpads and Macs. I still have the Thinkpad one in my back pocket. Meanwhile, FTN echomail has found a way to participate in similar web forum style too (eg Synchronet's eWeb thing?) Along the way, people have probably grown accustomed to using the browser that often would come included with their computer purchase and not learn about the FTN/BBS options out there. BBSing is probably still strongly associated with dialup. As for Facebook and Twitter, they address the short term memories and fickle approach of communication (memes, pics, one-liners, forwards of other people's pics/memes/jokes) to the vast majority of computer users, I guess. I think Facebook made it easy for an individual (and now companies and groups) to establish a presence and have pretty good control of content and promotion. No fancy web-page coding required. People on Facebook are not interested in conversations as much as they are interested in telling the world about themselves. It really upped the anted on blogging, I think. Twitter, I won't comment on, except to say that I don't like the hashtag mess that the tweets become. And now over time, people are migrating to using different devices to access their Facebooks and Twitters via "apps". Where does all this leave the Fidonet and BBS community? ..probably in the dust. Perhaps if there was a consistent approach to reacquaint the ex-BBS user and the new generation of conversationalist to the Fidonet and BBS communities then maybe we'd notice some increased presence by their participation. --- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20180707 * Origin: ----> Point Of VeleNo BBs (http://www.velenobbs.net) (2:333/808.7) .