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These dial-up BBS's were populated by tween-aged kids? If so, I'll change my tune and become encouraged. I wasn't engaged in anything similar at that age.

chc 16y ago
I was involved in a few of AOL's teen (which is what we called 13-year-olds back then) message boards in the mid-'90s, and the level of discourse on some of those was excellent. The Teen Religion & Faith board remains to this day my mental model of an ideal online community. The conversation was great and the community was adept at either reforming or spitting out bad users (and that was despite the fact that we tried as hard as we could to keep the forum under the radar of the AOL moderators).
tptacek 16y ago
Yep. Ostensibly, the topics we were there to talk about were things like "how to get free phone calls from pay phones with Radio Shack DTMF pads" or "is the sequel to Monkey Island better than the original" or "what ANSI group had the best pack this quarter" or "should we tell everyone that In Utero is the worst album ever so it doesn't become popular and get ruined by jocks" but, just like on HN, conversations ranged wildly and hit politics, religion, and pop culture. You can imagine the age range of people participating in conversations like this.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  I was heavily involved in the Chicagoland BBS scene in the 90's (disallusioned society, damage inc, whammy bar), and my recollection was that the age group was much more teenager (and even early twenties) than pre-teens. I was 15-17 when I was most involved, and I remember a lot of us being really weirded out when we found out the admin of disallusioned society was only 13.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I was an op on Whammy Bar and NBFC (Mike works with me, Ken is an old friend of mine). You're right, it's teenaged. I'd like something that would scale down to 10+, but 13+ is just peachy.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      Whammy Bar was one of my fav's. Small world. :)
      - tptacek 16y ago
        I think at one point I had done the ANSI banner for Whammy Bar.

chc 16y ago

I was involved in a few of AOL's teen (which is what we called 13-year-olds back then) message boards in the mid-'90s, and the level of discourse on some of those was excellent. The Teen Religion & Faith board remains to this day my mental model of an ideal online community. The conversation was great and the community was adept at either reforming or spitting out bad users (and that was despite the fact that we tried as hard as we could to keep the forum under the radar of the AOL moderators).

tptacek 16y ago

Yep. Ostensibly, the topics we were there to talk about were things like "how to get free phone calls from pay phones with Radio Shack DTMF pads" or "is the sequel to Monkey Island better than the original" or "what ANSI group had the best pack this quarter" or "should we tell everyone that In Utero is the worst album ever so it doesn't become popular and get ruined by jocks" but, just like on HN, conversations ranged wildly and hit politics, religion, and pop culture. You can imagine the age range of people participating in conversations like this.

michaelchisari 16y ago
I was heavily involved in the Chicagoland BBS scene in the 90's (disallusioned society, damage inc, whammy bar), and my recollection was that the age group was much more teenager (and even early twenties) than pre-teens. I was 15-17 when I was most involved, and I remember a lot of us being really weirded out when we found out the admin of disallusioned society was only 13.
- tptacek 16y ago
  I was an op on Whammy Bar and NBFC (Mike works with me, Ken is an old friend of mine). You're right, it's teenaged. I'd like something that would scale down to 10+, but 13+ is just peachy.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    Whammy Bar was one of my fav's. Small world. :)
    - tptacek 16y ago
      I think at one point I had done the ANSI banner for Whammy Bar.