Edited by author 06-13-2007 02:38 PM
A BBS (for such is imho what we need) will not succeed in FDL's context unless it is implemented using some or all of these guidelines:

1. It should be frontpaged on FDL — that is, a pointer to it should appear there. On the way in, there might be a brief description of how the BBS and FDL blog interact...
   
2. Once people arrive at the BBS, they should be encouraged to register and then to login using their usual anonymous FDL "handle" or "nickname." (Many modern browsers (e.g., FireFox) offer the facility to remember usernames and passwords, such that whenever you return you are already logged in as yourself.)
   All the BBSes I have ever seen offer registration with a known, true, never-shown email address; this is for verification that there's a real person who is registering, rather than a 'bot, and as a place where email-type subscriptions can be delivered, should the user choose that optiion.
   
   
3. People should be free to start up any topic they want, except in one particular section: Topics tied to particular FDL blog-posts. In that section, there should be one Topic per base Blog Post.
    
   
   There should be another section for upcoming events. It should be the responsibility for someone (the Mods or their delegated person(s) to take that info, which can be contributed by anyone, and transfer it into the FDL Calendar (q.v. elsewhere).
   
   There might be another section called "Miscellany" and another for "Casual chatter"... implementation decisions.
   
4. During the on-FDL-blog "life" of a Topic, the only venue for discussing it should be, as is usual and expected, the FDL comments on the post. As soon as the post is superseded by another, comments in the blog on that post should be closed, and all further comment should be placed in the BBS Topic associated with that Topic. This is reflective of the reasons people like to post in a "live FDL post's" comment string: They know that the "currently online crowd of FDL community members" will see and maybe pay attention to what they write. However, when a new post comes along, the crowd moves along too, leaving a few sorry stragglers to continue the abandoned conversation, then finally realizing that something new is under discussion, and move on themselves.
   
   This is the reason we appreciate the "new topic upstairs" convention. If comments are closed, possibly with a pointer to continued conversation in the corresponding BBS Topic, the existence of a new Topic would be unmistakable, and the "new thread upstairs" convention would be obviated.
   
   Consider what will happen to our "EPU" and "OT" conventions.
   
   If a BBS is implemented according to this sketch, nothing would ever be OT — there is always an appropriate other topic where formerly OT comments can be placed, and the "Unseen Topics" function will ensure that the crowd of other FDL'ers will come across your "formerly OT" musings. Thus the crowd can read, asynchronously to the current Base Post, whatever "formerly OT" thing you want to say.
   
   The "EPU" would similarly be less necessary, since the BBS's Unseen Topics command will ensure that the crowd will read it as they read through the comments given during the on-Blog life of the base post, and thereafter in the BBS Topic associated with that blog Topic.
   
5. It is an implementation decision on whether (a) the BBS Topic should contain the full text of the FDL "base post" or just a pointer back into FDL. (I lean to having only a pointer back into FDL, with only the main Topic Heading surviving. (e.g, "Yet Another Dynamic DOJ Duo"or " Standard WaPo BS").
   
6. It is an implementation decision on whether all comments made directly into the FDL comments on that "base post" be transformed into BBS "replies" to that "base post." So, for a very busy Topic that had perhaps 326 replies before being superseded by another, the BBS Topic corresponding to that base post would already have 326 replies before being opened for commentary. I, for one, would like this option. And lest you think that this would produce a welter of commentary for people to read, this would not occur with a good BBS's "Unseen Topics" functionality and reverse-chronological ordering of replies.
   
7. All the above mechanisms will bind the FDL blog closely and productively to its "sister BBS," making them symbiotic and "sum greater than the parts." If hit-rate is important because ad revenue is tied to it on the BBS, fine-and-dandy. The BBS should be implemented with space for advertisers too; and then, since the "FDL blog/sister BBS" pairing will become more attractive, users will use it more and ad revenues will increase concomitantly.
   
8. It may well be that the proprietors of FDL (whom I don't know personally, I just respect them a whole lot!!) are uncomfortable with the notion of "opening up" FDL to BBS-style commentary. To them, I say: The FDL community you have created with your efforts and intelligence has grown too large for the simple blog model. Imho if you meld the existing blog more-or-less untouched with a symbiotic BBS, I confidently predict that FDL will experience a second level of growth as your online functionality expands to more fully serve the needs of its community. The FaceBook, with its FDL group, is/was a valiant attempt, but it's imho not the right tool to blend with FDL.

OK folks, whaddayathink? Over to you.

Please remember, I am most emphatically not advocating the use of QT as the FDL BBS engine. Totally the wrong user model here.

Edited by author 06-13-2007 10:45 PM
To buttress the points I've been making, I give you this post from the FDL blog:

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raven @ 6

We are supposed to rush over from the other thread so we can play duck duck goose?

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I put it to you that this sort of comment is symptomatic of forcing what "wants to be" a BBS-style posting into a blog-style model. "The math doesn't work," as a certain Preznit would say. :)

Can you explain a bit more about your comment on my comment. We were engaged in a pretty good conversation when repated "fresh thread" messages appeared. When I went there everyone was doing "I'm first"! Seemd silly to me.

Hi raven -- I assume you're talking about my /m17 ^*. You are quite right, it was silly that the NEW thread was, at that early time in its life, still in its birth stage, when ppl normally play the trivial "ZED, I'm first!!" game. So when you made the jump into the new thread, there wasn't much THEN to talk about. So, I think you might have been wondering, "Why should I have left the old thread simply to walk into this ZED-playgroup?" :)

(FWIW, I too think that the ZED game is a waste of time -- and that ppl play it to advertise that they were Johnny-on-the-spot first to see the notation that "a new thread is upstairs," or else just happened to jump into the 'Lake as the new post is put up.)

And if that's what you were thinking, imho you were right -- because we work within the normal conventions of the any standard blog.

Wouldn't it be convenient to be able to finish a conversation despite the fact that a new blog post had been put up for commenting? That's the thought-experiment that I was alluding to when I said "... this sort of comment is symptomatic of forcing what "wants to be" a BBS-style posting into a blog-style model." ... I meant nothing pejorative about your posting in FDL. I was merely observing that you were working, as we all do, within the available tools for conversing.

Consider what we now use. Think of each blog-post as a single "tube" (: thank you Sen. Stevens :) within which we converse. That tube is perforce used to discuss the blog posting, but occasionally there are various off-topic interjections that we are supposed to note by saying "Pardon the OT..." and sometimes a whole OT conversation, or more than one, that occur within a single tube. That's because at any one time, only one current tube exists.

When a new blog-post is put up, a new "tube" is created, and the "crowd" in the old one empties out except for stuff that is "EPU'd." To defend against their thoughts not having been exposed to, and read by, the moved-on crowd, some people re-post their thoughts in the "new tube," and we are supposed to note that fact by saying "EPU'd from previous topic..." This is imho a symptom of our using the wrong communications tool to handle ongoing conversations across "tube boundaries."

A good contemporary BBS allows multiple tubes to exist at the same time. Anything "OT" can find a home outside of the tube dedicated to comments about any particular posting, and (because of the NEXT UNSEEN capability of a good BBS,) the "crowd" can be depended on to read it, albeit asynchronously and separately from the blog-comment tube.

These are complex concepts, but it's my view that anyone who has used a good contemporary web BBS and a good contemporary web-log already recognizes the difference. I'm one of those ppl. I think that if FDL and a BBS are hybridized along the lines I sketched, the sum can be better than its parts. I further think that the main FDL blog we know and love would be changed only slightly in the process.

Dat's wot I meant. Hope this clarification, which I should have put in my /m17, is what you were curious about.

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^* QT has a nifty convention that you can write SLASH M # SEPARATOR and it will hyperize that into a link to the indicated previous message #. It will pop up a window with that message # in it. This trick isn't really necessary in this case, since mine immediately follows yours, but it's kinda handy when the message being commented on is way before the reply. NB: Still not endorsing the use of QT for FDL's discussion area! :)

I did not take it as a negative comment. You obvioulsy know way more about this than most of us and I was interested to see if I had you right. I'm working toward understanding and this has helped. Thanks

Edited by author 06-14-2007 10:31 AM
PS

this is the site I am used to using most often

http://www.chevytalk.org/fusionbb/index.php

Oho. Nice. With ads, no less! Loox like a pretty standard multi-topic BBS. At the bottom of the front page it says FusionBB™ Version 2.0.1 ©2003-2006 InteractivePHP, Inc so it's one of many contemporary licenseable BBSes built on the PHP language.

Since I've never owned a Chevy (VW, Volvo & 2 Mustangs did it for me), I didn't register. So tell me pls, does ChevyTalk have anything like Next Unseen-by-me or New Posts/Replies since I was here last?

In other words, how do you get directed to new stuff? Tnx for keeping the discussion going! :)

Yes, I can see new posts each time I log in. It has a number in a little box on each topic to let you know. I have a 66 Truck and this site has been incredibly helpful as I have rebuilt it almost from the ground up. I have never waited more than a couple of hours for an answer and have even had people send me parts for free. The mods do a nice job of keeping folks on topic and moving stuff to chit chat when needed.

Edited by author 06-14-2007 05:34 PM
Tnx for the info raven. Sure sounds like this BBS is helpful to you! I'm glad of that.

Three followup Q's if I might:

1. In the ChevyTalk BBS, is there the concept of "email subscription" either to a particular topic, to topics that YOU post yourself, or to the entire BBS? So that when a reply is posted or a new Topic is begun, you get an email to notify you to check the BBS?
2. Is there an RSS feed? Not to worry about this Q if you're not into RSS feeds yet...
3. Can you register and use a "handle" that keeps your real name and email addy confidential?

Tnx :)

I'm late in joining this discussion so my comments may have already been hashed over by others. It looks interesting., I think the guidelines from S.O.S. make a lot of sense. Some other models that might be useful in addition to a BBS are: Chat, Persistent Chat, Document Library, and social bookmarking.

Chats:

We already have a basic chat model with Gably but it would be good if these chats could become long term objects that had the ability to evolve over their life. It is sort of a cross between a real-time chat and a thread.

Doc Libraries:

A document library could be simply a set of useful indices's to other material or could be used to a) Storing long writups b) Cooperatively developing long writeups.

Social Bookmarking: A cross between Google Bookmarks and Diggs. This could be implemented as part of an index and link oriented doc library too, where the references (links) could contain metadata like ratings, commentaries, links to related materials, etc.

I would support having a bulletin board with a topic for each new blog post, as well as ongoing topics and a social area. I regularly use a couple of bulletine boards and have ongoing friendships with the folks.

However, it doesn't seem that FDL wants to support this effort now. I wonder if one of the top level people would be willing to post a link to a poll to check the general level of interest.

Also, Dan, the 13 requirements seem to be making things pretty complex. But I'm posting this in the middle of the Giuliani 12 commandment thread, so my viewpoint may be jaded.

http://www.johnbridge.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1

a forum I frequent regularly

well, I don't understand ANY of the techno-talk here....but I signed on because I like the fdl community, but don't always like some of its more, uh, dictatorial tactics.

Three followup Q's if I might:

   1. In the ChevyTalk BBS, is there the concept of "email subscription" either to a particular topic, to topics that YOU post yourself, or to the entire BBS? So that when a reply is posted or a new Topic is begun, you get an email to notify you to check the BBS?

Yes, you do subscribe and you can also become a "supporting member" that gives you some extra bennies.


   2. Is there an RSS feed? Not to worry about this Q if you're not into RSS feeds yet...

No

   3. Can you register and use a "handle" that keeps your real name and email addy confidential?


Yes, you control what is visible.

Tnx :)

Edited by author 06-15-2007 05:42 AM
I also hope that this situation is not perceived as critical or adversarial by Jane, Christy et al. It may be that they are so buried trying to provide the valuable service they do that there just isn't the time or interest in changing. FB seemed like fun and no one had top do any work to get it going. As far as dictatorial tactics, working with a huge number of whiny liberals and the occasional wingnut troll would test anyone!