I'M CONFUSED: WHERE EXACTLY IS THE BBS?

The BBS is running as a "news server" on this machine, at the location nttp://bbs.documentary.com. If your system has something like Microsoft Outlook on it, or a brand of computers called "newsreaders", just clicking on the URL will work, even with the weird replacement for "http://". If not, you will have to start up a newsreader in another fashion and connect to the server name "bbs.bbsdocumentary.com". There is a link to a page explaining NNTP on the front page.

Usenet news, which is basically what NNTP is, is much more like how I personally remember BBSes, with subject lines, a text-heavy approach, and a lot of flexibility as to how the users can read it. There are clients, scripts, and a lot of other fun stuff out there for interacting with NNTP. Also, NNTP is one of the most stable and secure approaches to messaging in the Internet today, after being pounded on for decades by all sorts of folks. That encourages me, because I don't intend to be much of a hands-on Sysop.

Yes, my experience is that when you open up a generally unmoderated, massively-connected communications medium with small penalty for foolishness, you end up getting foolishness in buckets. I expect that over time I will be dealing with that in some fashion, and that the general tone of the BBS might morph, wax and wane. This is kind of the deal with the medium, folks, so don't be too bothered by what you find on the BBS; I won't be. On the other hand, we may transcend the limitations and make something special indeed.

Certainly. It is painless for me to create a newsgroup, and even more painless to remove it if things don't work out. I'm pretty open to suggestions and always welcome someone turning a sub-board into a personal stomping ground. Mail me at "director at bbsdocumentary dot com" and I'll add it if it makes sense to.

It seemed disingenuous to work on a such a huge project about BBSes, get a lot of people excited about the story and history, and then give them no obvious way to reach each other or to put their thoughts out in a public space. While I personally don't have a lot of distinct faith this enterprise can sustain itself with a busy sysop (me) and a crush of folks, it's a harmless enough experiment. It's worth trying.

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