Bringing bbses back, imo this is what is wrong with them and also why they should come back. reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DavidJohnYVR · 2017-06-11 21:34 Half the time spent on a bbs is just logging in, imagine if that was how facebook was whenever you logged in or wanted to send a tweet Example, this would be annoying right? "Do you want to see your friends requests" "do you want to check your notifications?" "Do you want to check your inbox?" "Do you want to read the top trending list" "do you want to see your likes" Bla bla blaaaaaa. it's quite annoying considering once you get to the main page of Facebook you can choose to do all those things just like on a BBS, BBSES need to stop it with the login garbage and fake scanning system pauses. Do you want to check bullitens, Here are the last callers, oh and here are the bbs statistics Here are the top Lord players, here is some random fidonet ansi here is some other ansi that you have seen for the last few months, AGAIN... Check out this bbs ansi, do you want to check your inbox do you want to scan the messages, FINALLY IVE LOGGED ON NOW AND ugh just SHUT UPPPPPPP. so all the questions were completely pointless since once you get to the main page of most bbses you are displayed with options to do ALL OF THAT. The UX on most BBSES is horrible for the most part. With privacy concerns and anonymity diminishing BBSes have a chance to lure in the "escape the internet and system" type of people. Most people are completely unaware that you can send files fast and basically anonymously through bbses. So with users signing up even that process is annoying with so many useless questions that any sysop can just simply ask in an email message if they actually cared. Just let me put in an anonymous handle and password, all that other crap no one cares about and is waisting time and private anyways. Maybe I don't want to share my full name and location and phone number and sex and age, just like on social media, people don't want to share all that crap. I see a revival happening especially with more and more people getting into coding and people making some amazing python mods recently for bbses. There is such potential. Anyways, just my two valuable cents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- luvjOi · 2017-06-11 21:49 Omg yes on the questions lol, I think the questions for a new user on a bbs should be kept short and sweet if they really want to do it that way(some questions make sense like name, email password and stuff imo). None of the affiliation/last bbs you called etc etc kinda stuff, if I had a hypothetical bbs I wouldn't want my users to end up feeling like the questions are never gonna end lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- catlord · 2017-06-12 02:47 I've been working on getting one up and going (won't be live for quite some time). This is actually one of the first things I configured out of it. My only requirements for a new user are handle/password and an open field "where are you calling from?" (just to sate my own curiosity, could be left blank, and user is notified of this). This is a basic, simple BBS. You're not applying for a loan. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dos2lin · 2017-06-12 06:02 One of the solutions, back in the day, that helped an awful lot was the QWK/REP[1] formats. I hardly ever hear this mentioned. Truly a time-saving solution. Think of it as a combination of email and RSS. With a good dialing program: you would automate login, download latest threads & conversations, upload your replies. A modern analogy: being able to pull many different and diverse online forums into a single *umbrella* account. I think there are mobile apps that do something similar for online forums, so users don't have to log-in to individual sites (have not looked into this but have seen the *ads* in comment sigs). I just don't do any *foruming*.. Something like a modern QWK helps deal with the login issues, tracking conversations, being updated on new topics/threads and even... bypassing a few arcane UI choices. BBSes used to also be a great resource for apps. Competing with the cloud on this is impossible, I think. BBSes had a hard time fending off the ftp/simtels of the day, as it was. Better, more up to date app options elsewhere was one of the reasons I stopped BBSing. Still... would love to see a modern comeback. Forums and reddit only partially fulfill the magic of the old BBS communities. Facebook (ugh[2]) probably comes closest. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWK_(file_format) [2] far too invasive ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DavidJohnYVR · 2017-06-12 14:19 I'd love to test it out when you have something to test! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- catlord · 2017-06-12 16:27 You got it! It'll be dialup for certain. I might do telnet. I can say for certain that it'll be mainly TRS-80 Color Computer and pinball/arcade-centric. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DavidJohnYVR · 2017-06-12 16:28 Yeah add a telnet line or two :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crankyoldtekhead · 2017-06-12 20:13 Haha! Great post and it's so very true. There's lots of wizards out there that could be running great systems, but it's like they're purposefully trying to repulse users from actually using their system. I've recently been investigating bbs systems and software, and some of the concepts still hanging around are hilarious, such as logging on to a telnettable system and getting validated up to having 120 minutes per day! I'm almost surprised some of these guys aren't trying to charge for access so I can see all the pretty ANSIs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ShooterJennings · 2017-06-13 02:09 We are around. We make new games. We give away prizes. Bitsunrise.com bcrgames.com + tons of other great active systems online accessible from us! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ShooterJennings · 2017-06-13 02:10 And we chopped our sign up process . Plus theres bbs.guide telnetbbsguide.com and others! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2017-06-15 17:53 A lot of times sysops put those intro pages up during login to show off the stats of their BBS, or to showcase some of the capabilities they may have added. I have a ton of those as well, but also default to 'quick' login that skips most of that. Realize that a lot of the BBSs running are run by folks that ran boards 20 years ago when that was the norm. Call boards that are in line with what you think and who skip those sorts of pages - they're out there. But, to answer your question.. people have all those screens because we used to have those screens and it feels 'BBS like' to have them. Silly, I know. :) I have a shortened new user form where I ask alias, name, email, location (or affiliations) and I ask that you submit an email - just put something in it so I know you're a real person. Put fake info in, I dont care - except for the email, that's required to be automatically validated. I only care because you're using my personal PC, I want some way to get in touch if something happens. If you put a fake email I'll still validate you manually, but it may be a couple of days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hung_kwan · 2017-06-19 23:29 Yes I agree. There's a *rant* on textfiles from an Amiga user (I think) complaining about the same thing - only back in the day. I've actually been thinking about how BBSs could be made relevant to the modern age, and rather than some monolithic program, perhaps a better model would be a *framework* where one could construct a custom BBS - in much the same way that `flask`, `bottle`, `django`, et al., allow one to construct "*apps*" (I hate that term) for the web. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do it myself at the moment, but I'll definitely get around to it eventually. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kniffy · 2017-06-20 19:52 you should check out x84 - there is a default board setup but at its core its really just a server you can put fancy scripting on top of. https://github.com/jquast/x84 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hung_kwan · 2017-06-20 20:06 `x84` is good, I've seen it before. I'm a purist though, and believe that dependencies should be kept to a minimum when possible. As such, `x84` doesn't fit with my idea of a perfect framework/server. Another good one if you haven't seen it already is [photon](https://github.com/andrewwyatt/photonbbs). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DavidJohnYVR · 2017-06-21 14:06 im not just talking about the singup actually getting to the main menu for alot of boards takes way to long. bitsunrise for example yo need to press enter about 17 times before you get to the actual main menu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ShooterJennings · 2017-06-21 14:15 Well, yes, but many boards have a fast logon option. I've built one but never implemented it because previously we only had about 3 screens. That's not really an issue... if you'd like me to put my fast login process in I wouldnt mind trying it. But all of the screens for the most part mean something. And with telnet 17 enter hits takes less than 10 seconds ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- istarian · 2017-08-16 02:48 Seems like looking at them from an overly modern viewpoint. Facebook was designed in a different world. Last callers, BBS stats, etc don't seem that different from showing which of your friends are online and if they aren't when they were last on a website. Showing ANSI art isn't that different from having to see say animated cat pics in your news feed is it, ultimately? With regard to privacy etc I'm not sure it was that big a deal, at the time, for a few hundred people to know who you *actually* were and you probably weren't connecting from a place any further than a few towns over (in state, so to speak). Also, there are 3 billion more people on the planet now than there were then and we all have superfast connections to a global network (internet) which really changes the scenario and how fast information can be propagated and how easily privacy is violated (so to speak) even by accident in the sense of people sharing information about each other even inadvertently. > Most people are completely unaware that you can send files fast and basically anonymously through bbses. Um, just as fast as you can any other way with the internet. If you're using an ethernet/network connection it's not particularly anonymous afaik. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2017-08-19 02:53 thanks for your feedback. some people refuse to change and like the login garbage. a lot of the k-rad sysops with the 10 20 page ansis are still alive and well today. i was torn on this issue and had a user vote. some wanted all the login shit. a quick login wasnt good enough. so i allowed them to toggle every part of my login in the user prefs http://i.imgur.com/s9jgDv9.png ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2017-08-29 20:56 I like that - do you use access flags for the values? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2017-08-29 21:13 Yes, it was the quickest , easiest way to do it without writing to a config file.