Subj : Online Communities
To   : August Abolins
From : Charles Pierson
Date : Sun Nov 08 2020 02:21 pm

Hello, August Abolins.
On 11/8/20 1:22 AM you wrote:

AA> Hi Charles! 07 Nov 20 05:28, you wrote to me:
CP>> I remember the initial participation fall off of some of the
CP>> echos I most actively participated in. At the time, connecting to
CP>> the internet was primarily dialup, so I don't really accept that.
AA> There were a lot of different BBSes (mostly single POTS) to choose
AA> from in the early days. As the AOL, Prodigy, and public uucp
AA> services emerged, busy signals were probably a rarity for those
AA> well supported systems with multiple lines.  Hence, users gravited
AA> towards systems where they could get on right away.  That's how I
AA> felt with Compuserve; I don't recall ever getting a busy signal
AA> with that. Meanwhile, supporting multiple lines for a hobby-based
AA> BBS was expensive. The other services mentioned above were all $'s
AA> supported.

I remember with AOL, it would cycle through local numbers until it connected. The others I don't recall.

But as far as single line BBSes, I had several different systems in my terminal program. At least 20-30 local one's during the height of popularity.  With autodial, the terminal program would simply go down the list until a system connected.  I primarily logged on transferred QWK or BW packets and logged off.  A few systems, I would play a few door games. Primarily league games.

Once Telnet became more common, it was much the same, but more globally as far as BBS systems were concerned.



CP>> I did see it as being something shiny and new, so obviously
CP>> people were going to look around.  But I also expected them to
CP>> eventually come back around the echos. Perhaps not as often as
CP>> before, but consistently.
AA> To come back? Why would they do that, when they get pretty
AA> graphics and colours (html) and buttons to click on the screen?
AA> It's so much more fun.

True, you could see things that you couldn't on a BBS, but why is it either/or?

For the most part, with a few exceptions, you still have far better quality discussions on Fido than elsewhere online.


CP>> Obviously I was wrong.
AA> :)
CP>> I tried newsgroups now and then.  I didn't care for them.  It
CP>> seemed a cheap imitation of echomail. Email group lists were
CP>> better, but many of the lists I was on then were primarily by
CP>> people coming from a Fidonet background, and the lists reflected
CP>> that.
AA> I thought ngs where quite amazing - before my regular hangouts
AA> started getting trolls and spam.

Maybe I was late to it, but i generally saw more spam than anything on usenet.

AA>>> Myself, my community for fast answers and interesting
AA>>> conversions included Compuserve for at least 3 or 4 years.
CP>> I never did find anything like that on Compuserve or AOL.
AA> I hung around the areas for music and film primarily. The odd
AA> technical place for Windows and OS/2 was pretty good for questions
AA> and answers.

Fidonet had a Message area for nearly any topic you could imagine.

The only difference was that until internet packet transfers became more common, a conversation took days or even a couple of weeks, depending on routes. Now instead of everything in North America have to go system to system usually during an overnight mail hour, until reaching a system who volunteered a good hit to their phone bill to call overseas to a similar system in Europe or Asia or Australia or Africa or South America, then hop system to system again until the end. Then replies come back the same way.

Now systems either can send packets as soon as there is new mail or hourly, as they choose, so you can have back and forth in a  conversation several times a day.


AA>>> FTN echomail... web forum style too (eg Synchronet's eWeb
AA>>> thing?)
CP>> It has. But it's also had a tendency to be very insular. There is
CP>> very little, if any promotion of what it has to offer.
AA> Sysops do there best with listings on TelnetBBS Guide, getting
AA> noticed on places like ipingtherforeiam, creating Welcome webpages
AA> that offer fTelnet connections, and even some Facebook presence to
AA> make announcements and try to inform new visitors. But, for the
AA> most part Fidonet (or any othernet for that matter) remains
AA> obscure to the average user out there.

Exactly.  How many of those things would someone not part of the BBS community even know exist?

Even with Facebook, I belong to a Group called FidoNet TREK Echo.
It was supposedly set up to mimic it's namesake. There are about 175 members in the Group. Besides myself, I know 3 members that were for certain part of Fidonet in the past.

Even if more were in FidoNet before, as far as I can tell, I'm the only one still actively participating in FidoNet.
As far as the content of that group, people share articles related to various Star Trek related shows, movies, events, actors.  Occasionally, someone will post an opinion on an episode.  But there is no discussion to speak of.

It hardly reflects what the Echo it's named after was.

My point is that if you have something like that, wouldn't you want to promote where it came from?


AA>>> BBSing is probably still strongly associated with dialup.
CP>> I actually think more in terms of Telnet these days, the local
CP>> BBS's I called on dialup vanished long ago.  I'm sure there are
CP>> some still, but I no longer even have a landline phone.
AA> Precisely. So, the average person thinks that BBSes are quite dead
AA> since many people don't use dialup for their internet/computer
AA> activity anymore.

The average person has no idea what a BBS is, or if they do, it's a vague idea of what computer geeks did in thier spare time when not running away from dinosaurs going to and from school.

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
CP>> was, but I don't get it.
AA> They are a way to categorize a message. Clicking on the tag in the
AA> message shows you other messages that contain the same tag.
AA> Apparently Telegram has something similar but I haven't studied
AA> that.

I know what hashtags are and their purpose. I don't get the need for them.

AA>>> ...Perhaps if there was a consistent approach to reacquaint the
AA>>> ex-BBS user and the new generation of conversationalist to the
AA>>> Fidonet and BBS communities then maybe we'd notice some
AA>>> increased presence by their participation.
CP>> There is the issue in a nutshell. But it's more than that. The
CP>> BBS community is where I've met some of the most innovative
CP>> people in computers. Terminal programs, BBS programs, offline
CP>> readers, door programs, FTN and other style networks.... while
CP>> there is commercial software, for the most part it was done by
CP>> individuals, or groups of people, creating these wonderful
CP>> programs because they could.
AA> The ZDnet article mentioned The Well.  The internet presence for
AA> The Well looks amazing and well organized.  It's basically the
AA> same thing as Fidonet, but webbased forums. Not sure if there is
AA> an offline option for messages. Its philosophy of real names,
AA> etc... reads very much like the Fidonet BBSses of old.

The Well is a commercial BBS, more or less.

CP>> You don't see very much of that now. Now, the BBS community seems
CP>> more about preserving the history. Why can't it be both?
AA> I dunno. I think the preservation part is due in part to the
AA> necessity of sticking to minimum FTN standards?  But Fidonet (and
AA> its counterpart othernets) have done a pretty good job being
AA> accessible via nntp, qwk, and other means.

I wasn't clear enough, I guess.

History is important. FidoNet showed what a bunch of regular people are capable of. Linking thousands or more people together worldwide talking about things. Not governments, not corporations, not Universities.  People. On their own time, out of their own pockets.

Different computer systems, it didn't matter.

Different OSes, no problem. We have this program in DOS, let's make it available for people that use OS2 or Linux. Or vice versa.

You have a C=64? No problem, join in the fun.

If I'm not mistaken, every model of home computer there was could participate.




CP>> Smart phones and tablets have been around for over a decade. But
CP>> look what happens when the conversation comes up about software
CP>> for these mobile devices to connect with FTN networks. There is
CP>> very little interest, if not outright hostility to the idea.
AA> I don't sense hostility as much as I sense apathy.  Time and money
AA> could be limiting factor. Producing an app for the MacOS requires
AA> some kind of upfront fee, I think. WRT time, there is probably the
AA> notion that something like Fidonet is dying anyway, so why bother?

Maybe hostility wasn't the right word.

Apathy fits a lot of it. But there is more than that.

How many BBS related programs are there that have versions for multiple operating systems?  What if those programmers thought, "I only use X OS. I don't need to port it to Y." ? Or release the code so someone else can.

That's exactly what this is here. Android is simply a different OS.

But there are negative reactions to the idea.

CP>> Recall the reactions to my idea of running a BBS on a smartphone
CP>> or Tablet?
AA> You would encounter critics wherever you go.

True. Criticism if fine, expected even.

It's the negativity.

"The screen is too small"
"The Keyboard is too small"
"It's too hard to read on it"

Ok, in your particular situation, any or all of these comments might be true. But that doesn't make it universally true. Millions of people use tablets and smartphones on a daily basis.

A few months ago, I saw a guy testing a connection with a software he's working on.  I thought it was along the line of what I'm looking for, but it's more a remote connection to his home system.  It's not something that I necessarily would use myself, but I'm fully supportive of his efforts.

My more current discussion in Asian Link. His idea works. It's more programmer heavy than I'm looking for.  But it's there, and if it works for people, I'm in full support.

The general public aren't big programmers. But they can install an app.  They can type an address. They can fill out a form.
So the typical BBS related software, a decent Telnet that supports  ANSI graphics and BBS transfers for Mail Packets, seem a very good thing to me.

A point system that has the features that one on a PC does seems even better. Once you're set up, it's only a matter of sending and receiving mail.

As far as the BBS on Android idea?  It's definitely not for everyone. But it's something that I see potential for.



CP>> At best, my ideas have been met with a response that is
CP>> basically, "Yes it is possible, but I have no interest in using
CP>> that myself. Good luck with that."
AA> At the moment you haven't met the right individual that shares
AA> your vision.

I've seen some alternative ideas.

I may not ever find that person. That's fine.

CP>> Like it or not, you're going to have little, if any growth in the
CP>> BBS network community without adapting to new technology. This
CP>> doesn't mean discarding the past. But existing BBS software can
CP>> be adapted to mobile device technology without making the
CP>> existing tech obsolete. The proof of concept exists in the
CP>> program I am using now. It's just not being supported.


AA> Yes, Hotdoged seems to be a fine adaptation for Android devices.
AA> But is that the one where the code is not available?

The Fido provider portion of HotdogEd is based on jNode. I'm not sure about the other portions.

Aftershock I don't know about,

--
Best regards!
Posted using Hotdoged on Android
--- Hotdoged/2.13.5/Android
* Origin: Houston, Tx (2:221/6.21)

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