RE: Social Media Subsitute
BY: All

Since Facebook and Reddit are getting rid of certain confrences due to censorship, maybe we need to come up with a way to encourage those people to consider the bbs so we can have more future users for our bbses and traffic for fidonet.



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On 02 Aug 20 11:31:59, Matt Munson said the following to All:

Since Facebook and Reddit are getting rid of certain confrences due to censorship, maybe we need to come up with a way to encourage those people t consider the bbs so we can have more future users for our bbses and traffic for fidonet.

Ahh, this idea again. This has been discussed soooooo many times over the years.

Once again, the only newcomers who will join Fido these days will be
tech-guys looking for a nice bit of nostalgia. Not casual users fed up with social media. Fidonet doesn't have fancy graphics or an easy interface or "hook" to keep people interested. Its just a silly message exchange using software that one must have quite the tech skillset to configure properly.

There has to be software dumbed down enough so non-techies can easily join
and thats coming from a Fido developer point of view. I did the best I could with D'Bridge but its nowhere near easy enough for the non-techie.

No sane person in their right mind will configure a mailer, tosser, nodelist compiler, message editor etc. Nobody does that. Its 2020, not 1990.

If someone writes that wonderful dumbed-down app, *then* we can talk about Fido being a serious alternative to social media.

Nick

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On 03 Aug 20 19:37:47, August Abolins said the following to Nick Andre:

D'B is a good all-inclusive "kit" for something to join the Fidonet fray.

But it wouldn't cooperate for me. :( It just kept certain outbound messag on
Hold and never sent them anywhere. I had to give up on it.

I'm not sure where we left off with that, but D'B will not connect to a point system of another node. I'm not sure if thats what the problem was or not but we can always circle back if theres time.

So.. most people here are insane? LOL The future does not look very bright all.

LOL C'mon... whats normal about continuing to use a silly message network nowadays in 2020?

Even a dumbed-down app would need basic core of credentials at configuratio not unlike what D'B requires at install. There won't be a one-click one-st solution. Some understanding of the terminologies used would also be a bene to the member/user.

The thing is, you can instantly join FB and Reddit and 4chan and all that. You just can't do that in Fido.

I think we talked about this before; likely any new app will just be an extension off someone's BBS.

Nick

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On 08-02-20 21:53, Alan Ianson wrote to Matt Munson <=-

I think another option would be apps designed for Fidonet messaging for the Android or IPad users since that seems to be the way people do
their messaging these days on their tablet or phone.

Definitely needed. Well, offline mail is an option, especially for boards that support QWK over FTP.


... Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.
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On 08-04-20 22:36, Alan Ianson wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

Yep, QWK is well supported and has been up and running for about the
same amount of time as FTN networks. It has a dependency on a BBS
though. I don't think that's a bad thing myself but folks today are not (in any numbers at all) going to sign up at a BBS to join the conversations that are going on.

Well, I'm not sure what you're proposing, or if it even makes any sense, because the BBS is the entry point to the network. Sure, you can run a point, but there's a lot more complexity there. And for those of us who want mobile access to existing accounts, the point paradigm is totally wrong. That would be like logging into social media and finding all your stateuses and group memberships are different on every device you own!

The BBS at least provides something that can keep track of those variables across multiple devices.

In the 80's and most of the 90's if you wanted to get online you got on
a BBS but that's not the case anymore. BBSs are among my favorite
things but they don't have the place in the world that they once did.

I think the idea of apps for a tablet or phone, or other device is interesting but it's not easy. We'd need a way to serve those apps also
so we'd have to design, implement and maintain that on top of what we
are already doing. We would need to experiment with all that to find
what can work.

You may be going a bit Internet centric with this and overthinking it. :) What's wrong with a network where you choose your home base (i.e. BBS?). With cooperation from BBS authors, you could simplify the signup process to "username and password", with the rest of the info being stored in your profile on the device and sent to the BBS during a registration "handshake". And of course, if you register on your mobile device, you can simply login later from your PC. :)


... I know exactly what a sextet is... But I'd rather not say...
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