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I often remark that people love reimplementing BBSs badly, and a fraction of the functionality. Of course it's not an entirely fair comparison because of the sc

I often remark that people love reimplementing BBSs badly, and a fraction of the functionality. Of course it's not an entirely fair comparison because of the scope, different UI/nature of the web, audience size, and speed of communication to name a few issues. It's important to note that your average decent BBS had most if not all of the following: * Files - Often meticulously organized, with sometimes user voting or strict moderation. Unlike a lot of file sharing today, most boards also had things that would extract descriptions from archives or otherwise let you write them manually, along with providing other file metadata. * User Management/Registration - Complete with idiot filters for the more underground boards (apps, voting on users, new user passwords) * Mail - Even later, various versions of distributed mail including early email access for many people as well as things like FIDOnet * Instant Messaging/Chat - There were entire huge multi-node boards entirely devoted to this, and even a single node board at least had sysop chat usually * Games - Door games, mail/message games, offline sync'd games * Timelines/Walls - Lots of plug-ins for this type stuff to leave short messages, shouts, etc. * Time Management - Not necessarily a good thing, but on some boards you could bank time. Moreover, the fact there was time involved with your login on some boards created a sense of purpose and urgency. * Keyboard Shortcuts - Godsend compared to your average web app, but also a drawback for some. * Customizable UI - Most boards at least let you change menus, if not install plug-ins and other add-ons * Distributed Content - Various boards would call each other or a sync service or otherwise download sync files to sync data such as games, not just mail. * Groups/Subcultures * No Frills - Despite being over modems primarily and thus slow, BBSs were pretty fast. In fact, I still feel like I got to more relevant information faster. It's not just a keyboard and mouse thing, it's about flow and the fact that the goal of the BBS was to deliver you some content quickly and efficiently. Navigation in web pages just sucks sometimes in so many ways - multi-page ads, long click funnels, huge percentages of random things I don't need on the screen like sidebars, etc. I think for me the #1 thing about BBSs is at least for the better, BBSs, they tended to be more restrictive and served as great content filters. If you were an idiot, you simply could not join or got banned. There was a sense of excitement to get on a new BBS and see what it had, and with many, a status attached, especially in various undergrounds. There were always troublemakers, but they were limited and it was part of the fun usually to fight and have factions. The small scale really made you feel like you knew everyone, even on large BBSs with tons of users. Sometimes this also meant that we all met up in real life and that changed how you interacted with people. It also sometimes deflated your view of certain people. On the flip side, there were many things that were pains not limited to busy signals, slow speed, lots of bad BBS software that was popular, file transfers in the earlier days, limited to calling or receiving per number of phone lines unless you had expensive hardware/telco, and so on. I've often thought of writing some sort of newer, hybrid Internet modern BBS software. I am keenly aware of the many efforts to do things over SSH, telnet, web sockets, but they are mostly just unfinished rehashes of a lot of the less impressive parts of the old stuff. I have a list of many somewhere if anyone cares. There are just so many things I could write about what we could learn from BBSs. Sadly, I still think the filtering aspect was really what tied it all together. Regardless, I would like to see someone build something new starting at the protocol level that isn't just sitting on top of what exists or at least is not just copying the old stuff. Some things like Hotline and other file sharing were close in a way, but lacked the same feel. I really wish at least the idea of getting to information fast and without bs would come back more. Gopher in the early days sometimes felt like this, and many web pages were like this to some degree. Anyway, I am sure there are a lot of people who disagree and I believe there is a lot more good and bad things to say. I feel like BBSs are really ignored by a lot of people, and misunderstood by another large amount of people including former users. There are still some BBSs out there and the good news is most don't require a modem (just SSH or telnet), but it's just not the same.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sseagull 10y ago
There are two "features" that are hard to re-create with modern BBSes. These, in my opinion, partly lead to the good user experience. 1. Because you tied up a phone line (on both ends), your time was limited. This results in not only not wasting time while on there, but also an increase in anticipation for when you can next get on. It prevents people from getting to far ahead in games. 2. Banning could actually mean something. You were not really anonymous (at least on the local ones) since you can be identified by your phone number and maybe banned that way. How do you effectively ban a person nowadays? Can't do it by IP or email, which leaves... ? That results in large amounts of spam, trolling, sockpuppets, etc.
- type0 10y ago
  > Banning could actually mean something. You were not really anonymous (at least on the local ones) since you can be identified by your phone number and maybe banned that way Hypothetical question: if we would see a new emergence of mobile based BBS's, using some novel protocol without identifiable phone numbers but with ability to assign unique IDs to users and solve those problems, could it take off today?
  - sseagull 10y ago
    I don't know about "take off", but it could work as a niche. People seem to be used to what they already have. It doesn't have to be perfect, but at least much harder to game than the current situation.
  - optionalparens 10y ago
    I am afraid I don't have any great answers other than taking some of the ideas that made BBSs great as a whole and combining them into something entirely new. There I have a few thoughts, but then we're not really talking about BBSs. The fact things were on a phone line helped in some ways (exclusivity, time, identifiability), but doing it all through a mobile phone or other telephony does not really capture that. For one, there would only be single node BBSs unless you got creative, so I think the mobile phone part is too literal on the concept of phones. Secondly, while this is less popular, a lot of us including myself were not actually identifiable unless we wanted to be. This happened because you could call a BBS through an intermediary such as a PBX, and it was common to war dial to find and hack these (or use open hardware) to dial out long distance. Another way was carding (stealing credit cards) to pay for calls, which would also often answer caller ID requests with another number than your own depending on what you bought. The anonymity was more complicated as you can see, but yes, it did help quite a bit to have some sort of reputation attached to your name. A BBS handle could carry weight across many systems, and word did spread. Some Sysops were pretty nasty to people and went out of their way with that, but I think most people accepted it and didn't do things like try to take them to court like we have today. Somehow, whether they knew who you were or not, it just was not worth it and getting other users to accept you in one form or another was important. This happened via message bases, uploads (try to be top, avoid being banned for bad uploads), new user signup, games, and more. So souring your reputation had a cost if you were an avid BBSer, and even more so if you had met people in real life. I think anything remotely similar to BBSs in terms of success needs to do at least some of these things: - No frills access - Tie things together as a cohesive hole - "Character" per system. Logging on to X should not be the same as logging on to Y, but familiar enough to still be usable. - Distributed (run by a person/people) - No advertising. Advertising is at the root of ruining a lot - Cross-over between the real-world and the virtual-world. Ex: In person meetings. - Sense of urgency - Connections to several rabid groups of sub-culture that will drive future updates, modding, usage, etc. In the old days, this was HAM Radio operators, ANSI artists, Anarchists, Punks, Crackers, Warez kids, Phreakers, D&D players, and many other groups. - Decent give and take type systems. Ratios, time, and chat often worked this way and sometimes were all interconnected. The more you upload, the more time you get, and the more you can chat for example. Many more things, but I'll stop there.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sseagull 10y ago

There are two "features" that are hard to re-create with modern BBSes. These, in my opinion, partly lead to the good user experience. 1. Because you tied up a phone line (on both ends), your time was limited. This results in not only not wasting time while on there, but also an increase in anticipation for when you can next get on. It prevents people from getting to far ahead in games. 2. Banning could actually mean something. You were not really anonymous (at least on the local ones) since you can be identified by your phone number and maybe banned that way. How do you effectively ban a person nowadays? Can't do it by IP or email, which leaves... ? That results in large amounts of spam, trolling, sockpuppets, etc.

type0 10y ago
> Banning could actually mean something. You were not really anonymous (at least on the local ones) since you can be identified by your phone number and maybe banned that way Hypothetical question: if we would see a new emergence of mobile based BBS's, using some novel protocol without identifiable phone numbers but with ability to assign unique IDs to users and solve those problems, could it take off today?
- sseagull 10y ago
  I don't know about "take off", but it could work as a niche. People seem to be used to what they already have. It doesn't have to be perfect, but at least much harder to game than the current situation.
- optionalparens 10y ago
  I am afraid I don't have any great answers other than taking some of the ideas that made BBSs great as a whole and combining them into something entirely new. There I have a few thoughts, but then we're not really talking about BBSs. The fact things were on a phone line helped in some ways (exclusivity, time, identifiability), but doing it all through a mobile phone or other telephony does not really capture that. For one, there would only be single node BBSs unless you got creative, so I think the mobile phone part is too literal on the concept of phones. Secondly, while this is less popular, a lot of us including myself were not actually identifiable unless we wanted to be. This happened because you could call a BBS through an intermediary such as a PBX, and it was common to war dial to find and hack these (or use open hardware) to dial out long distance. Another way was carding (stealing credit cards) to pay for calls, which would also often answer caller ID requests with another number than your own depending on what you bought. The anonymity was more complicated as you can see, but yes, it did help quite a bit to have some sort of reputation attached to your name. A BBS handle could carry weight across many systems, and word did spread. Some Sysops were pretty nasty to people and went out of their way with that, but I think most people accepted it and didn't do things like try to take them to court like we have today. Somehow, whether they knew who you were or not, it just was not worth it and getting other users to accept you in one form or another was important. This happened via message bases, uploads (try to be top, avoid being banned for bad uploads), new user signup, games, and more. So souring your reputation had a cost if you were an avid BBSer, and even more so if you had met people in real life. I think anything remotely similar to BBSs in terms of success needs to do at least some of these things: - No frills access - Tie things together as a cohesive hole - "Character" per system. Logging on to X should not be the same as logging on to Y, but familiar enough to still be usable. - Distributed (run by a person/people) - No advertising. Advertising is at the root of ruining a lot - Cross-over between the real-world and the virtual-world. Ex: In person meetings. - Sense of urgency - Connections to several rabid groups of sub-culture that will drive future updates, modding, usage, etc. In the old days, this was HAM Radio operators, ANSI artists, Anarchists, Punks, Crackers, Warez kids, Phreakers, D&D players, and many other groups. - Decent give and take type systems. Ratios, time, and chat often worked this way and sometimes were all interconnected. The more you upload, the more time you get, and the more you can chat for example. Many more things, but I'll stop there.