You make some interesting points. I have not considered NNTP. I used to spend a lot of time reading newsgroups, to the point where I wrote up the charter for what became rec.boats.building. I abandoned the newsgroups after I started this BBS.

My reason for starting the BBS was several fold. I wanted a place where I could talk with people who shared similar interests to mine in a very focused niche, and I wanted a way to increase traffic to my business site.

The newsgroup scene just seemed to deteriorate into less focused discussions or they often get taken over by one or two zealots with an agenda.

At the time I started this BBS I did not think there was enough interest in the kayak building niche to sustain a newsgroup and it didn't occur to me to host my own.

I think the ability to occasionally moderate the discussion has helped keep this BBS of good quality. I don't think the signal-to-noise would be as high on a publically hosted newsgroup.

I also like the fact that it keeps people in the same web based environment that they are used to, instead of switching to some other system. It offers the opportunity to fairly seamlessly join the discussion. I also think that there are some features available here that are not available elsewhere, for example posting pictures.

And from a strictly business stand point, it is to my benefit to be able to include some visibility for my business name. While I try to keep it low key
it does remain a consideration.

I am very open to suggestions and appreciate your comments. I am always looking for ways to improve the system. The computer geek in me is quite willing to invest more time than strictly makes sense in an effort to make this stuff work well and increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Please feel free to comment on how it could be improved.

: [IMHO]
: I would also like to say that it also now looks alot more like a newsgroup,
: which in my mind is what it should be. I never really understood the
: purpose of trying to make everything run over HTTP. Newsgroups have been
: around for a LONG time, they are fast, efficient and in my opion the best
: format to hold group discussions. If you wanted to reduce your bandwith,
: then switch to NNTP. Almost every web-browser has a news client built in,
: so there is no real problem for the users.
: There would be two ways to do this: 1) Host a news server on your server
: machine. This would mean that you keep control of the newsgroup, but
: people must contact your server directly to access it. This would use
: bandwith, but not as much as the current solution.
: 2) If you have enough subscribers (which I am sure you do), then you can
: apply for a TOP level news designation. There is already rec.boats.kayak,
: so you could have rec.boats.kayak.guillimot, or rec.boats.kayak.strip .
: This would mean that this newsgroup would be replicated all over the world
: (for free) to all current running news servers. Users would not have to
: log onto your server, just there local news server, and you would not have
: to host a news server. Thus your bandwith usage would be only that
: produced by the traffic through your Guillimot site. All users would also
: have increaded speed since they would be hitting a news server that was
: close to them and not the other side of the world. You would however lose
: the "control" that you currently have over the BBS.
: [/IMHO]

: I think your site is great, I have bought your book, and plans, and am about
: to build my first bost. Please do not think this is a critism (not sure
: how to spell that) of you or your site, it is just my frustration at the
: "internet" / "computing" community at consistantly
: re-inventing the wheel.

: Ian