Post by Pinacolada on May 8, 2008 22:44:29 GMT -5
Hey, folks. In the interest of being the "glue" -- at least part of it
-- for the Commodore BBS community, I'd like to propose (for now) two
separate voice chats (IRC is okay, but I'll get to that later).
I chatted on the phone with Cyberjank the other night (something I
haven't done in several years), and it was most refreshing to hear his
concerns and desires for the BBS community, moving forward with new
software development, and retaining users' interest in BBS's. I think
this may prove fruitful if expanded in scope. We tend to be isolated,
working on our own BBS's. If we come together as a community, it would
be helpful.,
The reason I want to have separate chats for sysops and users (again,
we may merge them in the future, but for now let's keep them
separate, okay?) is because the two groups have vastly different
expectations, aims and goals.
The intial chat could be just used for getting to know each other.
Personally, I've been getting to know Dpak; and his involvement has led
to several new friendships on his friend Mouse's "ddial" system, in and
of itself a type of BBS. (Look up "ddial" on Wikipedia and you'll find
a link to Mouse's page.)
Dave "Metal Mage" Hartman said it best: "There are three levels of
BBSing: level one, you're a user. Level two, you're a sysop.
Level three, you're a developer." Some folks here might only care to be
a user. Others might have been a sysop in the past, or are currently
one, or want to become one in the future. Developers and idea people
are certainly welcome.
Later on, a few chats down the road, users are welcome to join, to
voice their opinions, concerns and thoughts about the state of BBS'ing.
I know the "80sbbs" Yahoo group might be interested; I'll see about
posting over there at some point. I've lurked for a long time, might
be time to actually post something worthy of discussion.
I have posted elsewhere in this forum about Qnext; a free Java-based
chat program which allows 8-way VoIP chat, remote desktop sharing under
Windows, and "zoned" file sharing; those who don't care about Commodore
files are not aware they are being shared. You might want to check it
out; <http://www.qnext.com>. My account # is 291402, account name
MacLir (yeah, I should've created a Pinacolada one; I guess it wouldn't
be that hard. I'm not locked in to using one particular account, after
all.)
One technical difficulty that prevents me from actually joining the
voice chat -- hence the proposal for an IRC-style chat room at this time
just to get things going -- is the web cam I'm currently borrowing. It
has a microphone in it, but so far I cannot find drivers for it under
Windows, and there is no discernable FCC ID on it to look up the
specifics. It has a Philips logo on it, but that is all I know. No
model number, either. Support in Linux is dodgy; it sort of works, but
not very well, mainly due to the horribly obsolete video card I have. I
have another on the way, thanks to the kindness of a friend, and will be
putting it in this machine. (I'd originally wanted to put it in my
Windows box to improve the frame rate of Second Life, but... upon
consideration, it's not that important, really.)
Anyway, the time, date, and chat medium are to be determined; this is
more of a preliminary idea than anything concrete. I want to gauge
interest to begin with; we'll work out the details as time goes on.
I have a few topics noted that I would like to speak about; I'll
release that information if anyone feels like responding to this
thread. A preview follows:
"Unfortunately, users often expect sysops to read their minds in terms
of features and implementation. The "leave feedback" command is
integral to every single BBS package I've ever run across. After all,
what BBS exists in a vacuum? Sadly, this seems to be an under-utilized
feature of the BBS; and this is a very plain command to use -- so it
makes me wonder which additional features users might be missing
out on."
Please, spread the word to other forums you may know of (with a link
back to this one if you please). For now I would like it
primarily to be Commodore BBS's under consideration (yes, a bit of bias
towards my favorite platform!), how to strengthen the community and
encourage participation by users, perhaps later we could expand it to
other platforms (IBuM... boo).
-- for the Commodore BBS community, I'd like to propose (for now) two
separate voice chats (IRC is okay, but I'll get to that later).
I chatted on the phone with Cyberjank the other night (something I
haven't done in several years), and it was most refreshing to hear his
concerns and desires for the BBS community, moving forward with new
software development, and retaining users' interest in BBS's. I think
this may prove fruitful if expanded in scope. We tend to be isolated,
working on our own BBS's. If we come together as a community, it would
be helpful.,
The reason I want to have separate chats for sysops and users (again,
we may merge them in the future, but for now let's keep them
separate, okay?) is because the two groups have vastly different
expectations, aims and goals.
The intial chat could be just used for getting to know each other.
Personally, I've been getting to know Dpak; and his involvement has led
to several new friendships on his friend Mouse's "ddial" system, in and
of itself a type of BBS. (Look up "ddial" on Wikipedia and you'll find
a link to Mouse's page.)
Dave "Metal Mage" Hartman said it best: "There are three levels of
BBSing: level one, you're a user. Level two, you're a sysop.
Level three, you're a developer." Some folks here might only care to be
a user. Others might have been a sysop in the past, or are currently
one, or want to become one in the future. Developers and idea people
are certainly welcome.
Later on, a few chats down the road, users are welcome to join, to
voice their opinions, concerns and thoughts about the state of BBS'ing.
I know the "80sbbs" Yahoo group might be interested; I'll see about
posting over there at some point. I've lurked for a long time, might
be time to actually post something worthy of discussion.
I have posted elsewhere in this forum about Qnext; a free Java-based
chat program which allows 8-way VoIP chat, remote desktop sharing under
Windows, and "zoned" file sharing; those who don't care about Commodore
files are not aware they are being shared. You might want to check it
out; <http://www.qnext.com>. My account # is 291402, account name
MacLir (yeah, I should've created a Pinacolada one; I guess it wouldn't
be that hard. I'm not locked in to using one particular account, after
all.)
One technical difficulty that prevents me from actually joining the
voice chat -- hence the proposal for an IRC-style chat room at this time
just to get things going -- is the web cam I'm currently borrowing. It
has a microphone in it, but so far I cannot find drivers for it under
Windows, and there is no discernable FCC ID on it to look up the
specifics. It has a Philips logo on it, but that is all I know. No
model number, either. Support in Linux is dodgy; it sort of works, but
not very well, mainly due to the horribly obsolete video card I have. I
have another on the way, thanks to the kindness of a friend, and will be
putting it in this machine. (I'd originally wanted to put it in my
Windows box to improve the frame rate of Second Life, but... upon
consideration, it's not that important, really.)
Anyway, the time, date, and chat medium are to be determined; this is
more of a preliminary idea than anything concrete. I want to gauge
interest to begin with; we'll work out the details as time goes on.
I have a few topics noted that I would like to speak about; I'll
release that information if anyone feels like responding to this
thread. A preview follows:
"Unfortunately, users often expect sysops to read their minds in terms
of features and implementation. The "leave feedback" command is
integral to every single BBS package I've ever run across. After all,
what BBS exists in a vacuum? Sadly, this seems to be an under-utilized
feature of the BBS; and this is a very plain command to use -- so it
makes me wonder which additional features users might be missing
out on."
Please, spread the word to other forums you may know of (with a link
back to this one if you please). For now I would like it
primarily to be Commodore BBS's under consideration (yes, a bit of bias
towards my favorite platform!), how to strengthen the community and
encourage participation by users, perhaps later we could expand it to
other platforms (IBuM... boo).
