Talk:Bulletin board system

Bank Of Montreal access to terminals, WTC Bombing I planning and organization at Toronto, Medical access to malware on terminals with doctor's personal notes on family medical history, House Of Lancaster II, Condominium Real Esate access

In Flint, Michigan, a 21-year-old man was charged with distributing child pornography through his BBS in March 1996.,

• This should be rewritten in past tense regarding infiltration by domestic counter surveillance on NDP family access to Ford Oakville.
• A bank colleague friend of mine in North Burlington near the Nelson Quarry has a personal recollection of escort agency internal affairs related to Flint 18 and older strip club access to local Cola wars affiliated business. How this affects the O'Connor (redacted --LED BodyBuilding (talk) 10:00, 28 January 2021 (UTC)) nee Christensen Catholic Church matter in Detroit via Halton Catholic Board Of Education I'll be able to provide references soon enough re The decay of the Detroit Fire Department and the demise of combustion-fired Mustangs (Ford) at Michigan. LED BodyBuilding (talk) 09:53, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Economical viability of ACU

A recent edit by user:DesertPipeline added a {{cn}} template to a footnote claiming that an Automatic Calling Unit was not eceonomically viable. Does anybody have access to ACU prices during the BBS era? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:43, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

User:Chatul: Wouldn't checking what the prices were violate the no original research policy? If there are no useable sources out there that state what this note states, are we able to leave it in the article? Please let me know your thoughts. Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 02:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

It should be legitimate to add a footnote along the lines of "The Bell 801A ACU cost $foo/month at the time." with a source and leave it at that. If the text gave a price, then Is the knowledge so self-evident that it really does not need to be cited at all? in Wikipedia:Citation needed#When to use this tag and WP:BLUE would apply. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:31, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

User:Chatul: Okay; that sounds reasonable to me. Thanks, DesertPipeline (talk) 10:23, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Problem with SkyPix date and source

The "Presentation" section of this article says "The Amiga Skyline BBS software was the first in 1987 featuring a script markup language communication protocol called Skypix..."

To support this assertion, it cites part of an email to Jason Scott, producer/director of The BBS Documentary, from Scott Lee, a later maintainer of the SkyPix technology. The relevant passage of Lee's email says "This was all around the '87 time frame which I think pegs it as the first graphical point & click BBS UI..." (emphasis added)

This is hardly authoritative. It's just a vague recollection.

(Making it worse, the WP citation lists the publisher as "Jason Scott for Wired Magazine (?)". This is nonsensical. The excerpted email is hosted on Jason Scott's bbsdocumentary.com website, which has nothing to do with Wired.)

In fact, a search of discmaster.textfiles.com for contemporary releases of SkyPix-related software, turns up no evidence in support of a 1987 date.

For example, the title screen for SkyPaint v1.0 says "1988", not "1987":

SKYPAINT Version 1.0 - Release
Copyright (c) 1988 by Michael Cox - All rights reserved
SkyPix graphics protocol Copyright (c) 1988 by Michael Cox
Brought to you by INCOGNITO software

The file "AtrTerm.DOC" for Atredes/Skypix "demo term" v1.1 has the following copyright at the bottom of the file:

ATREDES, SKYPIX, and SKYPAINT are Copyright © 1988, 1989
Michael Cox. All rights reserved worldwide.

Or the "SkyPlay.doc" documentation file for the SkyPlay Skypix File Player:

SkyPlay is Copyright (c) 1989 by Michael Cox but is FREELY REDISTRIBUTABLE.
The Skypix Graphics Protocol is Copyright (c) 1988, 1989 by Michael Cox.
The ATREDES BBS SYSTEM is Copyright (c) 1988, 1989 by Michael Cox.

Anyway, I feel like the content of these contemporary files far outweighs Scott Lee's vague recollection nearly 20 years later.

So I would suggest removing this source, and changing 1987 to 1988.

Also, please note the same problem exists in the Skypix article. I have made the same suggestion in Talk:Skypix.

Kirkman (talk) 00:41, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Kirkman:Hearing no dissent, I have corrected the article with changes based on my argument above.

Kirkman (talk) 14:06, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Color64 into Bulletin_board_system

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was merge. SmallMender (talk) 15:50, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

---

Reasons: - Color64 on its own has relatively low notability and a lack of verifiable secondary sources

I found, however, the following websites mentioning Color64:

• https://theoasisbbs.com/color-64-bbs/
• http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/expanded.html
• http://www.zimmers.net/bbs/index.html
• https://color64.com/

In other words, it is possible to expand the article, but not reliably confirm the content.

Linked pages could be redirected to the BBS article or to a section in the article if creating one is justifiable.

SmallMender (talk) 21:35, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Support the merge proposal, for the reasons you outline, but primarily for short text and context; I think that a section is warranted, and the redirects should of course be in place post-merge. Klbrain (talk) 08:47, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merge section Color64 into Software and hardware

I recently merged the separate Color64 article into Bulletin board system as a section (see: discussion). However, the added section is at odds with the general layout of the page. I would like to incorporate it into Bulletin_board_system#Software and hardware, possibly as an extra paragraph or as an extension of the paragraph mentioning other BBS software.

Tagging @Klbrain who was also in favor of the merge. SmallMender (talk) 16:50, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

It's just one random BBS software package out of an era with dozens for every platform. I don't see that it is significant enough to warrant the undue weight of its own section in this article. Material should not be added without references - if there are no references, it's probably not going to warrant including in an article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:54, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Should then the section be removed entirely?

The only available references I could find are mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bulletin_board_system#Merge_section_Color64_into_Software_and_hardware SmallMender (talk) 16:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)