Xref: utzoo news.admin:1927 news.sysadmin:644
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!gatech!udel!burdvax!bpa!temvax!pacsbb!sweissm
From: sweissm@pacsbb.UUCP (Steve Weissman)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: use the news
Message-ID: <345@pacsbb.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 88 00:27:22 GMT
References: <1063@hubcap.UUCP> <369@wpg.UUCP>
Organization: PACS - Philadelphia Area Computer Society, Penna.
Lines: 49
Keywords: expanding news readership
Summary: Our 1800-member organization lauunched a Bulletin Board System (BBS)
	 that offers a BBS-like interface to Usenet.

In article <369@wpg.UUCP>, russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) writes:
> 
> > What kind of novel ideas does anyone have about getting people who aren't 
> > already interested in unix/usenet/computers to realize what a powerful
> > resource usenet is?  I am not trying to drum up business/traffic on
> > usenet because I don't have anything better to do, I just think that it is
> > a shame that so many people here are missing out on such an important 
> > tool, just because they don't... realize what usenet is.
> 
The Philadelphia Area Computer Society (PACS) launched a Unix-based
BBS a year ago to promote better communications between our large
membership and more than 30 Special Interst Groups (SIGS). Most of
our members have no interest in Unix (yet!), although we have a small
but active Unix SIG. We put together home-grown software that offered 
some custom features for our needs, as well as the usual public messages 
and file downloadings that characterize most "BBS's".  

Our members are issued accounts on our system, which run a BBS main menu 
as a shell for member logins (no Unix savvy required).  The interface to 
private mail, including uucp-style addresses, is transparent to the "BBS" 
mail front end. 

About 3 months ago, we got netnews 2.11B software working on our
4-line dial-in system, and put together a series of shell scripts
that allow users to read "all news" or "Specific newsgroups",
and automatically maintain a subscription list which can be
erased to re-initialize, or disabled ( "-x" option of readnews), based
on simple menu choices.  In other words, we traded off some nice 
features for a fairly simple interface to readnews and vnews.  I also 
added a "T"ips command that displays a few pages of fast advice to a 
first-time user concerning the mechanics of news-reading.

The real challange, as other articles have mentioned, is publicity
and motivation.  In our case, we prepared a one-page handout summarizing
a few neat features of Usenet (stressing mainly the non-technical
topics in English), and have been writing a series of gung-ho articles
for  our monthly newsletter.  At a recent Computer Festival geared to the
general public, we ran demonstrations of Usenet.  All of this has generated 
a modest groundswell of interest (we're up to 100 regular readers after 2 m
onths).  The best publicity, however, came when I forced a sign-on bulletin 
for all BBS users that said:
>>>  The 200 articles on basketball in rec.sport.basketball
>>>  probably won't interest anyone.  Basketball is a silly game.
THAT got some attention!

   Steve Weissman, PACS VP and pacsbb system administrator
   uucp:   {ihnp4,att-cb,rutgers}!{bpa,cbmvax}!temvax!pacsbb!sweissm

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