Subj : Online Communities To : Charles Pierson From : August Abolins Date : Sun Nov 08 2020 01:22:02 Hi Charles! 07 Nov 20 05:28, you wrote to me: CP> I remember the initial participation fall off of some of the echos I CP> most actively participated in. At the time, connecting to the internet CP> was primarily dialup, so I don't really accept that. There were a lot of different BBSes (mostly single POTS) to choose from in the early days. As the AOL, Prodigy, and public uucp services emerged, busy signals were probably a rarity for those well supported systems with multiple lines. Hence, users gravited towards systems where they could get on right away. That's how I felt with Compuserve; I don't recall ever getting a busy signal with that. Meanwhile, supporting multiple lines for a hobby-based BBS was expensive. The other services mentioned above were all $'s supported. CP> I did see it as CP> being something shiny and new, so obviously people were going to look CP> around. But I also expected them to eventually come back around the CP> echos. Perhaps not as often as before, but consistently. To come back? Why would they do that, when they get pretty graphics and colours (html) and buttons to click on the screen? It's so much more fun. CP> Obviously I was wrong. :) CP> I tried newsgroups now and then. I didn't care for them. It seemed a CP> cheap imitation of echomail. Email group lists were better, but many CP> of the lists I was on then were primarily by people coming from a CP> Fidonet background, and the lists reflected that. I thought ngs where quite amazing - before my regular hangouts started getting trolls and spam. AA>> Myself, my community for fast answers and interesting conversions AA>> included Compuserve for at least 3 or 4 years. CP> I never did find anything like that on Compuserve or AOL. I hung around the areas for music and film primarily. The odd technical place for Windows and OS/2 was pretty good for questions and answers. AA>> FTN echomail... web forum style too (eg Synchronet's eWeb thing?) CP> It has. But it's also had a tendency to be very insular. There is very CP> little, if any promotion of what it has to offer. Sysops do there best with listings on TelnetBBS Guide, getting noticed on places like ipingtherforeiam, creating Welcome webpages that offer fTelnet connections, and even some Facebook presence to make announcements and try to inform new visitors. But, for the most part Fidonet (or any othernet for that matter) remains obscure to the average user out there. AA>> BBSing is probably still strongly associated with dialup. CP> I actually think more in terms of Telnet these days, the local BBS's I CP> called on dialup vanished long ago. I'm sure there are some still, CP> but I no longer even have a landline phone. Precisely. So, the average person thinks that BBSes are quite dead since many people don't use dialup for their internet/computer activity anymore. AA>> Twitter, I won't comment on, except to say that I don't like the AA>> hashtag mess that the tweets become. CP> I don't get the hashtags. I mean, I understand what the intent was, CP> but I don't get it. They are a way to categorize a message. Clicking on the tag in the message shows you other messages that contain the same tag. Apparently Telegram has something similar but I haven't studied that. AA>> ...Perhaps if there was a consistent AA>> approach to reacquaint the ex-BBS user and the new generation of AA>> conversationalist to the Fidonet and BBS communities then maybe AA>> we'd notice some increased presence by their participation. CP> There is the issue in a nutshell. But it's more than that. CP> The BBS community is where I've met some of the most innovative people CP> in computers. Terminal programs, BBS programs, offline readers, door CP> programs, FTN and other style networks.... while there is commercial CP> software, for the most part it was done by individuals, or groups of CP> people, creating these wonderful programs because they could. The ZDnet article mentioned The Well. The internet presence for The Well looks amazing and well organized. It's basically the same thing as Fidonet, but webbased forums. Not sure if there is an offline option for messages. Its philosophy of real names, etc... reads very much like the Fidonet BBSses of old. CP> You don't see very much of that now. Now, the BBS community seems more CP> about preserving the history. CP> Why can't it be both? I dunno. I think the preservation part is due in part to the necessity of sticking to minimum FTN standards? But Fidonet (and its counterpart othernets) have done a pretty good job being accessible via nntp, qwk, and other means. CP> Smart phones and tablets have been around for over a decade. CP> But look what happens when the conversation comes up about software CP> for these mobile devices to connect with FTN networks. There is very CP> little interest, if not outright hostility to the idea. I don't sense hostility as much as I sense apathy. Time and money could be limiting factor. Producing an app for the MacOS requires some kind of upfront fee, I think. WRT time, there is probably the notion that something like Fidonet is dying anyway, so why bother? CP> Recall the reactions to my idea of running a BBS on a smartphone or CP> Tablet? You would encounter critics wherever you go. CP> At best, my ideas have been met with a response that is basically, CP> "Yes it is possible, but I have no interest in using that myself. Good CP> luck with that." At the moment you haven't met the right individual that shares your vision. CP> Like it or not, you're going to have little, if any growth in the BBS CP> network community without adapting to new technology. This doesn't CP> mean discarding the past. But existing BBS software can be adapted to CP> mobile device technology without making the existing tech obsolete. CP> The proof of concept exists in the program I am using now. It's just CP> not being supported. CP> -- CP> Best regards! CP> Posted using Hotdoged on Android CP> --- Hotdoged/2.13.5/Android Yes, Hotdoged seems to be a fine adaptation for Android devices. But is that the one where the code is not available? --- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20180707 * Origin: ----> Point Of VeleNo BBs (http://www.velenobbs.net) (2:333/808.7) .