BBS and Gemini beginner question
I am new to Gemini and starting to see some deeper features like this bbs.geminispace.org space. I have come across the term BBS, but didn't expect to see it here in Gemini. Is BBS protocol agnostic? I'm guessing it is. What helps differentiate between a BBS, aggregates and regular socials? Is it the access via the terminal? Sorry if I'm sounding dumb, but would love to hear from real folks what really jumps out at you when you hear "BBS".
2025-04-26 · 1 year ago · 👍 gritty, decant, CarloMonte
4 Comments ↓
🦋 CarloMonte · 2025-04-26 at 11:10:
I don't think the difference is technical. BBS (bulletin board systems) existed even before the Internet was a thing. The others are new words for a modern audience.
😎 decant · 2025-04-26 at 11:18:
The basic idea is the same, but the underlining tech stack is different. Think internet forum v. forum of roman republic.
🌆 skyjake [...] · 2025-04-26 at 12:15:
Welcome to Gemini and also bbs.geminispace.org! 😊
The name of this capsule is intended to evoke traditional modem-based bulletin board systems. Compared to those, it is very different from a technology point of view, but still it provides some of the same multi-user social functionality.
Bubble, the software that runs the capsule, is actually inspired by Reddit. Bubble's gemtext UI is heavily inspired by Station:
What helps differentiate between a BBS, aggregates and regular socials?
Classic BBSs are still around and you can access them via telnet. I suppose they all have a terminal-based interface and probably all of the software assumes there is a relatively small number of concurrent (or total) users.
When it comes to forums (including web forums and bbs.geminispace.org), they typically have a well-defined hierarchy of subforums/categories for organizing the discussion. People make posts and comments and the content is hosted by the board itself.
Aggregators are just a collection of links from various sources, operating semi or fully automatically. The content is hosted on other servers.
Neither forums or aggregators often have any special intelligence controlling the presentation; you'll just see posts chronologically, by recency or activity.
With regular social networks, you typically have a flat hierarchy of posts. A big differentiator is that these are designed to scale up to hundreds of millions of users. This affects how the content is presented: there is some sort of a complex algorithm that controls the feed, attempting to surface content tailored to each user specifically.
🚀 zkbro [OP] · 2025-04-26 at 21:47:
That clears a lot up, thanks all! I actually came to bbs.geminispace via a "Bubble" link which confused me to no end, so appreciate that explanation too. The inspiration from Reddit is a nice touch, being able to segregate into topics. I'm starting to see the subtle differences now between places like Station, Antenna and here, also where the content is hosted, and how a gemlog, or tinylog can be aggregated (or not). I feel like content is quite discoverable with all these tools. Appreciate the hard work you all put in to make it so!