From: elendil@mintir.new-orleans.la.us (Edward J. Branley)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs,comp.bbs.misc
Subject: Re: Is BBS the correct name?
Keywords: BBS jargon, semantics, growth, info systems
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 92 10:39:09 CDT
Organization: Minas Tirith BBS, New Orleans, LA

sac@Apple.COM (Steve Cisler) writes:

> I'd like to hear from BBS sysops and others about what
> the limits are tothe definition or an electronic bulletin
> board system.
>
> Is there a size limit? I am aware of huge systems that still
> call themselves a BBS, irrespective of disk space or number
> of lines coming in.

Not to my knowledge.  I know folks who run large, multi-line systems who are
quite proud of their 10-20 lines, and still think of their systems in the same
manner as the one-line guys.  There was a time a few years ago that folks were
getting into the 'I've got more disk space for files than you do' stuff, but I
don't see as much of that as I used to.  With the proliferation of BBS nets,
there's been a lot of specialization.  You've got the guy who runs the online
games system, the guy with the multi-line chat board, the guy with the 1 gig
hard drive and all the latest shareware, etc.  They're all tied in (more or
less) nowadays through the nets, so they complement each other instead of
compete with each other.

>
> Is it a state of mind? Some commercial and private systems
> seem to shy away from the connotations of BBS and have
> chosen other names like 'information support system' or
> information network.
>
> At ONE BBSCON I sensed that some commercial operators were
> looking for a new sort of legitimacy, not linked to what I
> think are the honorable amateur/hobbyist roots of the
> BBS movement.
>

That 'new sort of legitimacy' is primarily because the larger operators want to
remove themselves from the free BBS mindset.  I'm not critical of this desire,
since those guys do provide very good services.  It's the old 'Why should I pay
$50/year or more for a BBS?' attitude that they're trying to leave behind.  The
problem is that they're caught in between.  The file downloaders will probably
pay the fees, since those systems let them download stuff without hassles, no
u/d ratios, etc.  The people who call BBSs for conversation, however, still
have a hard time separating the big systems from the little ones.  That's
because there's essentially no difference between a one line fidonet system and
a 20-line fidonet system.  Same goes for a Usenet system.

The large operators have come a long way in terms of what they offer their
users/subscribers, but the commercial services like Compuserve and GEnie still
offer a great deal more.  So, the large systems get lumped back with the small
ones.

I don't think it's fair to classify the large operators as less honorable
because they are commercial and not amateur/hobbyist, and maybe they are
entitled to some sort of re-classification of their systems.  As a
amateur/hobbyist type sysop, I'd be for it, since it would sharpen the
differences between their systems and mine even further.




|Edward J. Branley                         elendil@mintir.New-Orleans.LA.US|
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