Revisiting the Bulletin Board System from a local community perspective
As you may know, I have a bit of a history with text based online services (writing Zeus BBS amongst other things) and I?ve been sporadically re-investigating that world over the past few months to ascertain whether there is any aspect that has relevance in today?s Internet enabled society, other than a heady nostalgia trip.
Most of the key features of bulletin board systems have indeed been entirely replaced. For example:
- The provision of local downloadable files has been entirely surpassed.
- Messages (local and FidoNet technology distribution) have been replaced by email, online bulletin boards, newsgroups, mailing lists etc. The ability to replicate messages across a network and for a BBS to provide an access point to those message bases would seem to have use within linking intranets or other closed systems but has little relevance in the wider public environment.
- Some games, and other online ?doors? still have an active community using them, though any that are actively developed seem to be moving towards web or custom client interface rather than a text based one and who can blame them!
With just those top-level points I was able to write off all of the three years work I had put into Zeus, let alone the fact that it was written for the Amiga and the work involved in porting it (yes, I considered it), even if there were any interest in such a thing, would really not be worth the effort.
That was a bit sad, but hey, suck it up and let?s move on.
I did however uncover one aspect of running a BBS that has not quite been explored or exploited as fully by the nebulous Internet: leveraging and enhancing local community.
This is a bit of a sweeping statement but allow me to expand on it with a bit of history:
Because of the phone call pricing in the UK when BBS’ were in their heyday, it was only realistic to call local systems after 6pm. During the week much higher rates applied in the mornings, dropping down a bit in the afternoon, and then cheaper still between 6pm and 7am (could be wrong, haven?t checked), with weekends being at the lower rate all day. Also, to complicate matters further, calling local numbers (within a certain distance) was cheaper, and beyond that distance it again got much more expensive.
There was many a case (myself included) of people being floored when receiving their phone bill for the quarter after discovering the world of BBS?. I think my first bill was about ?400. Ouch. Stories of people receiving much higher were commonplace. How we all loathed BT. And Americans (only because they got free local calls in the US, lucky buggers!)
Once the pain of that initial shock had worn off, and if you (or your partner/parents) hadn?t thrown the modem out of the window vowing vehemently never to use it again, it was a case of finding the local BBS? and limiting most of your activity to those, with only the occasional visit to systems running in distant and exotic locations. Like London.
It should be noted that some unscrupulous types actually did manage to get free phone calls using a technique called Phone Phreaking but they?re obviously evil and we won?t dwell on them.
This imposed costing structure actually had quite an unforeseen benefit to UK BBS? on the whole. While we wouldn?t receive as many callers as our state-side cousins, the ones that we did tended to be from the immediate local area, which meant that communities developed both on and off the BBS.
It was a grassroots type of community that was happening all around the world. There were local meetings (invariably down at some backwater pub), regional meetings (again, usually a pub) and even international meetings (never went to one but I assume it was at a big pub)
And, to finally rejoin the thread of my initial statement about local community, it has not yet widely been accomplished via the Internet, for two reasons:
- You can (generally) access any site in any part of the world instantly and, on the whole, anonymously (most BBS? required that you registered before you could access them)
- ?Social Networking? sites, or most services run by large companies approach community on a top-down model, which is fine ? to a point ? but doesn?t create the same experience as a bottom-up community such as BBS? had.
As an example of this second point, take Facebook for instance. It?s all about your personal network. Well, it seems you have a choice: either to restrict it to people you?ve met (which is how I prefer to use it) or else gather as many ?friends? as possible for whatever personal or business reasons you may have for doing so.
Now, there is a general Brighton page/group for all the people who say they live in Brighton (I don?t, but Lewes isn?t an option so Brighton is my closest choice ? that?s a big fail right there for me). But that?s it. There?s no structure beyond that within that single grouping.
Ah, but Alex, says you, there are lots of other pages and groups that you can join for your specific interests, or create your own and stop whining.
But, says I, these are all first-class pages and groups that have absolutely no relationship to each other so there are competing groups on the same subjects and who knows what fevered ego?s lurk in those admin positions.
This isn?t common to Facebook either. The top-down model of a community can only go so far.
By now, you?re probably waiting for some grand payoff after reading this long article but sadly I don?t have one for you. Sorry.
I am however still ruminating on this issue and perhaps it will spark a bit of discussion.
I think there are still important insights to be squeezed out of user interaction in the BBS age. These people put up with fairly basic interface and (some, not all) got a lot of rich life experience out of it (I saw this again in even sharper focus when working on Wapscallion, an even simpler interface!)
Anyway, this wasn?t the post I started writing! On to that now?
