Subj : Re: Synchronet vs Mystic vs ??
To   : Nightfox
From : hollowone
Date : Tue Apr 11 2023 13:29:11

 Ni> When you say "few look and feel the same", I understand that as meaning
 Ni> they tend to look different?  And it sounds like you say that like it's
 Ni> a bad thing..?

It is a bit of a bad thing to me. Perhaps too strong expression. Not convincing sounds better with me.

Also, not that I'd like to offend anybody.

My BBS story for the first year was with Synchronet. I had no idea there is something different. I found AmigaCity.xyz (+o MarissaG)
- Great first impression, 
- friendly and responsive sysop who answered all my newbie questions related to navigation
- a year of conversations on DOVENET. 
- some amiga stuff locally available but nothing you can't google these days.

My hook was in discussion groups and FTNs available there. It gave me that long forgotten Usenet feeling from the 90s. But I also only found DOVENET as the active set of groups and very specific on top topics that are most popular over there. I also found it provocative to wake up bad person in me sometimes and I needed a break.

That's how I tried other boards, mostly Synchronet to find that the only difference in most is URL and sysop, same look and feel, same FTNs, primarily focused on DOVENET.

I almost got bored to death to forget about this BBS thin until I found Anachronist on Discord and he showed me his board.

A complete reboot, lost of work to have the board look unique, offer unique content and to create and maintain, small but vivid and friendly community.

I found then just a few with similar attitude on the delivery side.

20forBeers quite recently convinced me very much as basically the only alternative to Absinthe, for similar reasons. Lot of heart and hard work put into securing uniqueness and local community. Xibalba, d1st, those become intriguing too. 

Again, I have not written it to offend anybody, nor blame the engine. And I have perhaps tested only about 20-30 boards all along my last 3-4 years of BBSing as a consumer, but what I find less attractive comparing boards if I see them being vanilla engine/generic.

It has to have something unique, a hook to let me think about coming back.
Either advertised clearly if this is about gaming or file resources by type or whatever, local community is strong trigger to me, or art and the feeling that I need to learn to discover more in a visually attractive way that can test my patience and TTY skill and on the way of discovering I can appreciate sysop playing that game with me.

.... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a copy.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)

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