Nostalgia BBS Going Down

Running a Major BBS or Worldgroup system? Let everyone know!

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Malakai
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:02 pm
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Nostalgia BBS Going Down

Post by Malakai »

Nostalgia BBS will be going down June 14th, 2007.

Why? For several reasons. We were very optimistic for over a year that things would grow. Things grew, then became slow, then grew, then became slow again. It fluctuated - we didn't have a problem with that.

As we got more games, more files, more features, we did notice an increase in traffic. At first, we asked new users to sign up using their real information. Many didn't want to do that. We altered the rules to allow them to at least fake it, with information that sounded real. This is when we got our first kick in the ass. Sesame street, Transylvania, 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.

We moved to manual verification. The fake accounts increased, and many people from the same IP address were starting to make multiple accounts.

A few months shy of a year, we decided to re-vamp the BBS, to try to slow down fake accounts. We created guest accounts, which allowed people to come check out the board before signing up, as well as to read all of the forums and download all of our files in the libraries. We also allowed anonymous FTP access - Same reason, don't waist our time with fake accounts if you're just coming on-line to download.

After that, as well as appx 250 hours of work and several hundred dollars more put in to the re-vamp, things got worse again. Some people were making 30-50 accounts per IP.

We made it clear that there were plenty of other BBSes out there that didn't require any address information, etc, if they did not want to actually adhere to the simple but firm rules.

Around this time, we started having ISP problems. We also moved the servers to a new location and was actually working on putting more money in to the BBS. The talk of adding phone lines, more battery backups, and a backup media device to one of the servers, as well as trying to get majormud were on our list of things to do.

The fake accounts got worse. They were now getting offensive/vulgar. So, we had to shut down new account creation completely.

For about a week, we had to sit down and think about the future of Nostalgia BBS. Do we do away with new signups completely and run on an invite-only board? Our BBS theme was family-friendly, anti-leet. By making the bbs invite only, it would be putting the board under the leet category. It would go against the grain. It would mean limiting our user base to a small quantity of people, with very little new signups in the future.

To sum every thing up, we were in a position of which we really had to put more money in to the BBS, in which we really didn't have, and were having a lot of ISP problems that don't seem to want to go away, and still feel that many people had set out to ruin the bbs for everyone else. We've had to deal with 1 or 2 issues like these before in the past, but when everything hits you at once, we thought it just wasn't worth it to go on, for us at least.

So, instead of just shutting our doors down completely, we wanted to give a heads up, that we will quit running Nostalgia BBS on June 14th, 2007, but yet still try to find some one that will open it back up, with the same ideals that we had about what Nostalgia BBS should be about - creating a family-friendly bbs, which supports all types of BBS software and doesn't hold worldgroup above any other BBS.

Between hooking our BBS up through a synchronet server, adding a BBS List Area, putting out many non-worldgroup bbs files in the libraries, as well as adding a graffitti wall and ansi art gallery (which we never got around to finishing the ansi menus for, but it's still there to look at), we've bridged the gap between worldgroup and other, one-line bbses of the past.

We believe in preserving BBS history for future generations. We were put down some times by friends locally for running a BBS, for reasons like "No one will ever play a BBS, after playing Star Wars Galaxies" and "World of Warcraft" - or "Any new video/pc game in general." To those people, I say to you "If you believe that way, fine, but don't bring the fellow BBSers of the world in to your close-minded equation."

Some of these same people use to spend every-waking hour of their time on muds, trade wars, mutants, etc. Their negativity towards bbsing is only contributing to the decline of the BBS. They don't teach their children, grandchildren, younger siblings, etc about the way of the BBS. They slap them with a playstation and fill their bellies full of countless bags of potato chips, hotdogs, and hamburgers, and other junk food and tell them to sit down, play their video game, and shut the f**k up.

I'm not leaving Nostalgia BBS on a sour note, despite being kind of sad and disappointed about several things, but I'm leaving before there is a sour taste for BBSes. Just because I'm not running Nostalgia BBS after june 14th, it doesn't mean BBSes aren't still going to be part of my life. I may still test software/mods for rick if he needs any thing done and will try to stay in contact with the BBS community.

What happens if Nostalgia BBS doesn't find a suitable candidate to run it? I'm not going to lie. I'm going to be picky about who I will allow run the BBS. When dealing with any thing that has so many registration numbers and the potential to be abused, it may be a hard decision that I won't take lightly... It's possible that if I don't find any one suitable in x ammount of time, I could bring it back up sooner or later..

frcorey
Posts: 414
Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2006 10:52 pm

Post by frcorey »

yeah, it's ruff,
I had to get global control for my system to keep the crap down. mostly 12 year olds trying to hack worldgroup. then one finally did, I logged on one day and he was playing with all my sysop stuff.
that was it for me.

Malakai
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:02 pm
Location:

Post by Malakai »

We've had several hack attempts in the last week or so, as well as an attempt at pop3/bouncing, which they couldn't get through to, and even a few attempts to get around the no new signup system.

I didn't realize it, but people can still sign up through the web server part of the board when worldgroup is a closed system. They can't do anything on my system, luckily, because new signup users are automatically put into an unverified class, with a key that worldgroup won't take... So, they wouldn't be able to do anything. If some one ran a closed system but had their previous config set to give new users member access, then that could pose a problem.

If worldgroup ever gets re-done, that's one loophole that needs to be closed.

Raven
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 8:15 am

Post by Raven »

sorry to hear this from both of you.

malakai for shutting down, that's a tough thing to do. but sometimes necessary.

hopefully you will open it up at some time in the future again?

i shut mine down about 2 years ago thinking i would bring it back up again, but alas, it's still down. :(

Malakai
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:02 pm
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Post by Malakai »

Well, Nostalgia BBS is offline now. We are keeping the website up, for news and information, if we ever set the bbs back up or get any one else to run it, etc so that people won't have to e-mail us, asking for news, etc.

http://nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net

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ccs
Posts: 193
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2006 7:55 pm
Location: Cape Cod Ma
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Post by ccs »

Malakai wrote:Well, Nostalgia BBS is offline now. We are keeping the website up, for news and information, if we ever set the bbs back up or get any one else to run it, etc so that people won't have to e-mail us, asking for news, etc.

http://nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net
I can set up a list server for you if you want. Then you can email your users. If you got their Email addresses.

Joe
++++++++++++++++++++
Retro BBS Games
Telnet://bbs.retrobbsgames.net
++++++++++++++++++++

Malakai
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:02 pm
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Post by Malakai »

Thanks for the offer, but I didn't take e-mail addresses on new user signups, unfortunately.

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