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   *  PHILE 2: THE CHANGING PIRATE WORLD                 *
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There've been some complaints this summer about the changes in
pirate boards. The following was snatched and sent to us from one
of the best boards in the country.  We've been complaining about
lamerz for a long while, and it seems they are taking over.
We've shared this with some other sysops, and they pretty much
agree that kids, which is a state of mind, not an age, have
pretty much moved in to tie up lines. Seems there's not a lot of
ideas on what to do about upgrading the quality of losers, so we
thought we'd toss this out for some discussion.
                              * * *

S1:  I'm almost ready to quit.  Things have not been that
great with us and the competition is doing pretty good.
Lost a lot of good users.  Now all I ever get are losers or
leeches. Getting kinda fed up I guess. . . .  Well I and a
few of the other sysops I know have, it's all going to the
kiddies now, we have seen at least 30-35 new local pirate
boards and about 100 or so new pirate boards nationally
spring up within the last few months, and they are all
pretty much 15 and 16 year olds who run things pretty shabby
in our minds.   They have hurt many boards including us for
competition of callers.  You will start to see many old
timers like us go by the wayside for awhile while they clean
up, then maybe later on, we might all come back like we did
a few years ago when the smoke clears.

S2:  Yeh, the number of "kiddie Klubs" grows as the ease of
getting modem/pc gets more popular, but those I've hit have
been so fuckin' lame!!! Mostly the games, which is fine, but
the way that other stuff, what little there is, is
uploaded--like, just collapsing a hugh file into a single
data set and uploading. God!

S1:  Get used to it, thats what you will find on most of
them from now on, as we old guys start to fold our tents up.
Many of my friends have been saying that when mine and 1 or
2 other boards they call go, that might be the end of their
calling days for business stuff.

S2:  Yeh, it gets depressing to call some board, struggle
for the access and find there's nothing there. Damn. From
the guys I've talked to, they also bitch about the time, the
new stuff coming out and how hard it is to keep on top of it
all....but these guys are the "neurotic collectors, " and
not much into using it.

S1: Thats right, and they usually don't support you after
they get what they are looking for.  Thats what has hurt us.
We had some great guys for awhile that kept supporting us
until they got all the stuff they wanted, then they said
adios.  Plus the pcp cap has hurt...

S2: Isn't there a law against lamerz, or has that been
protected by the constitution?  I haven't pulled down
anything good since school let out in the spring and my
original disk sources moved home for the summer.

S1:  Yep, most of these new pirate boards are guys back from
Illinois U that ran campus boards, so they all started up
for the summer and have been murdering the good boards with
their instant access and easy files deals.  They have been
having giant leech parties and all.  If I go down, it would
be for quite awhile I guess, maybe a year or so, depends on
how things are I guess.  I really hate to, but things are so
slow, I just can't see wasting the electricity when it goes
unused all day.

S1:  Well, maybe come the fall, it'll pick up, 'because it does
seem to be slow all over on nat'l boards....but you're right
about the kids going home and opening up boards---at least a
half-dozen from our school did, but these were guys who
leeched from boards here, and my guess is will try to leech
some more when they get home...take the money and run type
thing... interests me, they usally just tell me how great
they are and that whoever they mention can vouch for them
even though they mention they aren't into files or calling
BBS's that much.  So you can see why I'm a bit hesitant in
granting them access, besides they never read what I put up
for new user access either, so they waste both of our time.
Now I just usually give access to users here I have talked
to about a guy who applies first before I go any farther.
Thats how I can tell that they are either kids or losers
since they don't know the ropes, it always glares out of
what they type when I read these things, comes from years of
experience sifting thru all this BS.  When I find one that
looks like a winner, it's like a needle in a haystack,
happens only once in a long while or wait.


Yes and it pisses me off very much.  As soon as I reopened
membership about 6 months ago after 2 great years of none of
that BS, all of a sudden I'm getting losers constantly tying
up my line each day recalling for access and it has been
irritating me a lot. Thats why the number has to be changed
at my expense.
Would go would it be, they'd just tie up the line from guys
who were willing to upload instead of download,  everyone
who is willing to pay, is new and has nothing, or isn't on
any good boards.

No this is like CB's.  You can get away with anything as
long as your parents don't know about it and you are
anonymous from the law.  I'm afraid it's a plague that will
haunt BBS's for awhile unless enough of them start setting
up guidelines like I tried to do, and not give them access,
but as you can see, it doesn't work, when most of the boards
are kids anyways.

Yeh. Well, maybe they'll grow up, except there always seems
to be more where they came from (grin)....well, it's maybe
time to get all the sysops of good boards together in a
union or something.

We have tried many times.  It's a lost because.

Bummer. Can't think of any cheery words of wisdom....just
hang in there and hope they all get run over by drunken
white sox fans, or something.

They are drunken white sox fans.   Yeh well we will hang
around at least a couple more weeks, then who knows.

OK---but if you go down, you'll be missed. You just don't
know it.

S1: Well maybe and maybe not, I know there are better boards
around, but if they are getting half of what we aren't then
maybe they will fade also.  I hope not.
Like the Joni Mitchell song..."ya don't know what ya have
til it's gone." Well , Tell it to the losers.  right?

S2: God, how far we've come in tek in just a few years. That's
impressive.  Well, one thing the kids don't have going for
them is high tech and perseverance.

                              * * *
      Old timers have seen a lot of changes in the pirate
      world in the last two years. Let us know your gripes
      and opinion.

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