About the system, continued
Our early 1980's experiments with on-line information revolved around remote systems like Dow Jones and Info Globe. (The Toronto Globe and Mail was/is arguably the world's first electronic newspaper.)
And CompuServe in particular was famous for making text from newspapers available to anyone with a computer and a modem - pretty much the first time anyone in the United States had thought of doing that on anything resembling a large scale. We also looked at the technology with a view towards support for people with disabilities ‒ we were quick to latch onto the notion that people with special needs might enjoy the ability to travel across the telephone network, to "socialize" and do research at a lower price point than that which existed with CompuServe. Our initial guess was correct - BBS's evolved into repositories of information that wasn't available anywhere else.
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Early computer networks ran on the telephone network for the most part and the experiments were smaller in terms of hardware and the number of staff and volunteers on board, eg. there was often a single programmer and one or two operators associated with the average BBS. But there were generally more features, with the feature sets peaking around 1994 and the rise of the graphical interfaces that faster processors made possible.
In many ways the rapidly changing, rich feature set became a documentation nightmare. Today (2026) web-based forums software seems to be centered around a smaller set of features and styles... and in the case of phpBB, documentation continues to be a bit spotty when compared to the old Stelex, where there was a user guide and context-sensitive help available at every prompt.
(Heh heh... we strove to have a comprehensive system, but - even though I was doing 1" Ampex reel to reel video in 1970) I never got around to digital video; with phpBB there are actually a few tutorials available.) (YOUTUBE LINK)
Technical support for this installation of phpBB was provided by Marc M.. The back end is a lot more complex than the BBS used to be, but it's a toss up as to whether the web provides better access and functionality overall. In particular privacy issues increased in scope with the onset of the World-Wide Web, and there's the whole issue of cookies, so be sure to read the generic privacy policy that come with phpBB.
The Stelex home web page is at stelex.net and the sysop's e-mail address is "roman" at stelex dot net.
Thanks for your interest... - Roman Kowalczuk
...
And CompuServe in particular was famous for making text from newspapers available to anyone with a computer and a modem - pretty much the first time anyone in the United States had thought of doing that on anything resembling a large scale. We also looked at the technology with a view towards support for people with disabilities ‒ we were quick to latch onto the notion that people with special needs might enjoy the ability to travel across the telephone network, to "socialize" and do research at a lower price point than that which existed with CompuServe. Our initial guess was correct - BBS's evolved into repositories of information that wasn't available anywhere else.
----------
Early computer networks ran on the telephone network for the most part and the experiments were smaller in terms of hardware and the number of staff and volunteers on board, eg. there was often a single programmer and one or two operators associated with the average BBS. But there were generally more features, with the feature sets peaking around 1994 and the rise of the graphical interfaces that faster processors made possible.
In many ways the rapidly changing, rich feature set became a documentation nightmare. Today (2026) web-based forums software seems to be centered around a smaller set of features and styles... and in the case of phpBB, documentation continues to be a bit spotty when compared to the old Stelex, where there was a user guide and context-sensitive help available at every prompt.
(Heh heh... we strove to have a comprehensive system, but - even though I was doing 1" Ampex reel to reel video in 1970) I never got around to digital video; with phpBB there are actually a few tutorials available.) (YOUTUBE LINK)
Technical support for this installation of phpBB was provided by Marc M.. The back end is a lot more complex than the BBS used to be, but it's a toss up as to whether the web provides better access and functionality overall. In particular privacy issues increased in scope with the onset of the World-Wide Web, and there's the whole issue of cookies, so be sure to read the generic privacy policy that come with phpBB.
The Stelex home web page is at stelex.net and the sysop's e-mail address is "roman" at stelex dot net.
Thanks for your interest... - Roman Kowalczuk
...