Subj : Re: Where is everybody?
To   : Alonzo
From : tenser
Date : Tue Jul 04 2023 04:27 am

On 02 Jul 2023 at 07:33p, Alonzo pondered and said...
 
 Al>  te> But for what purpose would those people use a BBS? 
 Al> 
 Al> Just out of curiosity, maybe? A lot of people are interested in old
 Al> technology and they would probably think bulletin boards were fun, even
 Al> though we don't offer the same experience as social media sites and
 Al> things like that, And a lot of people would enjoy the retro door games
 Al> you can play on a BBS.

Yeah, it was a rhetorical question, but yeah, that
aligns with the retro thing I mentioned.  An issue
with that is that curiosity might get someone to
"call", but likely isn't enough to sustain
engagement absent some other motivating factor.

Some people might be interested in doors, but I think
an issue here (and with ham radio, along similar
lines) are assumptions that people will want to do
a certain thing: for amateur radio, it's the HF thing,
where there's little evidence that people actually
care about HF, yet the powers-that-be assume people
want access to it (and are dismayed that more people
don't upgrade their licenses: again, no one seems to
have bothered to _ask_ people if they're interested
in HF).  Similarly with BBSes.  I think there's a bit
of an assumption that people will _want_ to use a BBS
if they just get a bit of exposure, but no one's
stopped to ask people if it they would use it as
anything other than a curiosity?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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