On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 11:45:57PM -0500, dmolnar wrote:
BBSes seem special in that the resources available are so *drastically* limited. A BBS with one phone line could serve one user at a time. When one person is on, nobody else has a shot. So a BBS without upload/download ratios runs the risk of collapsing pretty quick under the weight of [...] (On the other hand, I also gave everyone a 90 minute time quota; way more than most people ever used. So perhaps this "quotas or die" doesn't hold true universally. Anyone else have anecdotal evidence from BBSing? )
Hmm. In the 1980s, I ran a BBS using GBBS on an Apple IIe and later an Apple IIgs with first a Sider ][ 20 MB and then some SCSI 40 MB HDs. GBBS just supported one user at a time, of course (I recall the DiversiDial or somesuch software on the Apple II allowed as many users as you had Super Serial cards or AppleCats), so I had the leech problem. Another way around it was to limit access to the download area to pre-approved users or folks who came with recommendations or folks, as you say, who contributed something first. Some BBSs took this to a bit of an extreme and asked pretty pointed questions, like "what are your latest/best warez?" before assigning an account. -Declan