Dear Chatham BBS: WTF
I am a nerd. I admit it. I am fairly well socially adjusted, but I have an adversarial personality and I enjoy arguing about things. There, I admit it. This means I am pretty inclined to post to internet web forums. A long long time ago there was a little BBS called NANDO here in the triangle. I was a NANDO regular, and I made lots of friends there that I still have to this day (well, some of them.) Eventually, the operators of NANDO closed it down, they gave us several months warning. It was sad, but we were able to transfer the most important relationships to the "real world" and stay in touch with the people we had grown to care about.
For the last few years I have been posting on the Chatham BBS. It was a great place to get information about my community (recently, two teachers were able to get their donorschoose grants funded through the bbs, and many people posted classified, announcements, etc. I once rented my house through it.) as well as good political discussions (sometimes heated, as is human nature, but always informative.) That is, I have been posting on the Chatham BBS until yesterday.
You see, yesterday, randomly, for no apparent reason, this BBS was closed. Not just locked, but closed. All the posts, gone. All the contact info for other users, gone. Nothing. Fini. I know it sounds weird to be attached to people you've never actually met (except I know many of you reading this know exactly what I mean) but I am sad. I have spent the last few years talking to these people, and now they are just gone. They probably live less than five miles from me, but I have no idea who they are, and probably never will.
I understand that the owner of this BBS can do what he wants, it's his BBS, his bandwidth, etc etc, I can understand how it got tiresome, I guess, but I can't help but be a little mad, too. It's very dicombobulating to have the rug pulled out from under me like that with no warning, no explanation, and no chance to get any kind of closure. I guess, at the end of the day, I only have one thing to say.
Bah Humbug.
posted by Rachel at
11:01 AM
5 Comments:
Yep, I'm sad too. I guess the negative vibe become too much for Gene. I hope he rethinks it and doesn't let a handful of negative cranks ruin an important community tool. But I do understand if he had enough of the gripping and having to babysit.
I would say the griping was only about 5% of what went on on that board, and he never really did that much babysitting, anyway.
Whatever, I guess. It's his world, we're just living in it.
WTF, indeed! I'd be very sad. They could have at least given you a little bit of warning.
Oh that really does suck. I mean I understand wanting to take it down, but not giving notice is just wrong. I still remember that last night on nando and staying up as late as I could to be on as close I could be to the end!
He could have removed the negative posts and warned/banned the problem-causing posters instead of taking the whole thing down. Baby out with the bathwater, anyone?
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