Nice! Lots of good ideas being thrown around.. I like that
@itix
You are the living proof that we need ratios. Why do you think everything is available for your leeching pleasure on the internet? Because there are still a few dedicated souls out there who take the time to *upload*. If nobody upload files, there are no files to download. I completely disagree with your philosophy. I think it is rather shallow and selfish, and it is one of the reason why there is no sense of community anymore: because people don't contribute.
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About the 800 number. It IS a good idea, but I don't think I'm ready to shell out some of my hard earned cash to setup something that may very well fall flat on its face. I think it has to do with your potential user base. I'm aiming at the Amiga community. And as much as we love thinking we're an army, in reality we're but a small bunch of people scattered all over the globe. The simplest, and free, way to reach everyone is the internet. This forum is a rather brilliant example of that.
I do really agree with the fact that the SysOp needs to be very present, at least at the beginning, to make sure it grows to a point where the BBS community generates its own activity.
The software I chose, Synchronet, offers a lot of expandability. You can access the filebase by FTP, you can access the message boards on the web, it supports IRC, unlimited nodes, pop3, ssh, telnet and of course, dialup. So if the BBS should prove popular, there's quite a number of options for expansion.
Also, this is a very small operation. I'm not trying to make a huge juggernaut of a system. Mostly because I don't think people will flock to it in any case. And I also do plan to continue living normally, so using my own phone line would be rather impractical and mu budget doesn't allow for a second phone line at the moment.
As for the montly plans for an 800 number. These require that ~20$/node be paid each month. There are various reasons why I want to stay away from dialup as much as I can. First and foremost is the cost of setting the hardware and phone lines up. Second, I'd most likely have to make the board users contribute financially every month and this is also a no no to me. I don't want to have a business, I want to have fun with a couple of like-minded people. Furthermore these plans are time-limited. 1000 minutes for 20$ for 30 days. That's roughly 33 minutes per day. So *every* users would have to share that 33 minutes until another 20$line and 20$ modem are brought in. And even then it only makes the BBS freely available one hour each day. It's just not practical unless there is a lot of money involved and a strong community to support it.
I also chose telnet because it's one of the oldest protocols (1968 I think?) still supported. Every OS (well except Vista...heh...good!) has a host of telnet clients available for free. Whereas a dialup will require people buy a modem before being able to log on.
The reason why most telnet BBS feel like "interneted" crap is because they are exactly that. Most of them use the stock menus and configuration. To me, a BBS is like an amiga, it's a little thing thats fun to tweak add personalize. I'm presently in the processing of de-grading the software. I'm editing the java sources to remove the more "modern" stuff that wasn't part of the old BBS scene. There's also a crapload of ansi menus to change if this system is to have a personality all its own.
I do plan to "animate" the BBS though. MOD-making contests, 32 color image contests, Global War toureys... Y'know, try to make it fun so people WANT to contribute to the board. Try to find a recipe that would make users connect 3-4-5 times a day like we used to back then..."just to check if Dude X replied to my message". Im also keepnig the number of nodes low because I do want people to get a "system is full" message once in a while. Remember the time spent in your "Comm" program redialing 87 times in a row until you went "OMG OMG OMG IM IN!!!!!" and then everything inside the BBS seemed so much more exciting? Ahhhh memories
Ok this post is getting way too long. heh.
