8) TROUBLESOME USERS 8.1) What exctly do you mean when you say "Troublesome Users"? Believe me, you'll find out soon enough! The term "Troublesome Users" covers many people that you'll find on your BBS such as - * People that insist on paging you in the middle of the night * Users that call in lots of different names * Users who claim they can crack your BBS * Disgusting, foul-mouthed teenagers who think they are really cool with their @#$@#-talking. * Etc.. etc.. the list is endless folks. 8.2) How do I handle "Troublesome Users"? When people ask me this, the first thing I say is IGNORE THEM and hope they go away. This will work in nearly all cases. But in some cases it will not work and you will have to try other measures. If somebody keeps calling your BBS and is writing insulting messages, or is paging you all the time for no reason, basically just making a pain of themselves then you might have to take some action. First of all, just delete them, and hope they do not come back, but nearly every time they will come back. If that doesn't work then try ringing them up on a voice phone and find out what their problem is! (Now, I know you are probably thinking, they wouldn't give their real phone number, not when they know they are banned, right? Well you are correct, but try to go back to when they FIRST called [hopefully you kept records], and get their phone number from then - chances are they wouldn't give a fake phone number the first time because they aren't banned yet!) I can safely say that 9 out of 10 troublesome users are teenagers who think they are really special by being tough. (I personally think they are just having some form of hormonal overflow due to a lack of sexual activity, hence the need to be stupid. :) So please don't stress when one of your users claims to know how to crack into your BBS and destroy it, because you can bet they are going to be stupid kids who have nothing better to do. NOTE - Not *ALL* children on bulletin boards do this, only those demented/bored ones who having nothing better to do. 8.3) How do I stop one person calling in 10 different names? Good question, and believe me it happens almost every day on every BBS. The best thing you can do is to have your new users fill out a questionairre with all their details when they first call. This way it's pretty easy to see which users are fake and which users are real. The fake ones usually tend to either 1) Not fill out the questionairre at all or 2) Fill it with lots of crap that doesn't make any sense. For Example - REAL USER FAKE USER Name - Ben Cullen Name - ThE TeRmInAtOr! Age - 28 Age - 69 Address - 12 Miller St, Address - 69 Marijuana St Cannon Hill POT CITY! 5643 6969 As you can see from the above examples you *SHOULD* be able to tell the difference between a real person and someone who is an utter moron. The utter morons usually tend to fill out the questionairres very quickly, and without care so they are easy to pick. So just make sure you check your questionairres quite often, find the fake users, and just delete them. NOTE - A helpful hint is not to give first time users download access until you have checked out their questionairre answers. By doing this there is no point for that person to keep calling back and making a nuisance of him/herself. 9) ADULT AREAS 9.1) What exactly are Adult Areas? Adult areas are usually file areas on BBSs that contain explicit sexual-related material, such as X-Rated GIFS, Animations and adult stories. There are also adult online-games and other online programs that are for adults only which can be found on some BBSs. Adult areas tend to be very popular (due to human nature) with a lot of adults and would be an asset to your BBS only if - A) You make sure that children cannot get access to your adult files. B) You yourself are an adult! C) You do not put any pedophilia/beastiality type files on-line as these can and *WILL* offend some users and they will complain. 9.2) Should I have Adult Areas on my BBS? IF you are willing to make sure that children cannot get access to your adult files at any time, and you think that adult files will help your BBS's popularity then you could have adult areas on your BBS. It is entirely up to you - of course if you run a BBS that is frequented by many children, then its pretty obvious that you *DO NOT* have adult files. 9.3) How do I stop children getting access to my adult areas? If you are going to give adult access to someone I suggest you do the following - A) Make the user fill out a form which states that he/she is over 18. B) Also ask the user to kindly send you a photocopy of their current driver's license. (To check they are over 18/21) C) And just to be sure that a kid didn't just grab his father's license and photocopy it you should ring up the person once the license comes in the mail and ask for that person by name. If the person's child WAS the one that sent it, he/she will not think anything suspicious of someone calling to ask to talk to their father. (You have to be sneaky in this business!!) :) It may seem like a lot to go through, but it *IS* necessary and if you do not go through these (or similar) steps then children will eventually get a hold of your adult files and you could get into trouble with the authorities. So, do the right thing and check your user's thouroughly before they get adult access to your BBS. 9.4) Will it help my BBS's popularity by having Adult Areas? Yes, it will help your BBS's popularity, as will anything that provides your users with a "service" other than files and messages. Before you go ahead and put adult files on your BBS, ring up your local state government to confirm what you CAN and what you CANNOT have on your BBS. This is the safest way to do things, because I can assure you the laws will be different from one state/country to the other. 10) LAST BITS 10.1) Where can I contact the author? If you have any questions, problems or suggestions about the Sysoping FAQ then please email me at the following addresses - * s329058@student.uq.edu.au OR * meth@amber.apana.org.au 10.2) What can I find updated copies of this FAQ? Hopefully the Sysoping FAQ will eventually find its way into the news.answers archive, but for the moment you can email me and I will send you the latest version. I will post the FAQ weekly to the alt.bbs.* Usenet Newsgroups for a while so that it will be available at most times. 10.3) Whats this technical FAQ that you keep talking about? I will get started on a BBS Technical FAQ pretty soon (somebody PLEASE come up with a better name than that!) which will go into some detail about setting up your BBS, setting up echomail, adding Online-Games onto your BBS, etc.. etc.. If anyone is willing to help with the technical FAQ I would be grateful - it is basically about anything technical for the BBS, so, for example, you know how to set up echomail, I would accept an article (as long as you like) to put in the FAQ and you will of course be acknowledged for your help. 10.4) Where can I get shareware BBS software? Here is a list of FTP/WEB sites which carry BBS software - (This list is by no means complete (nowhere near it!) so if anyone knows of more, please email me and I will include them in later versions.) BBS Programs and Utilities -------------------------- ftp://oak.oakland.edu/simtel/msdos/bbs ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/bbs ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/bbs_programs ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/ProBoard ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/Maximus_30 ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/pcboard ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/EZYCOMM ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/remoteaccess ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/WWIV ftp://io.tsrcom.com/ftp/telegard ftp://ftp.mustang.com/WCCODE ftp://ftp.multiverse.com/pub/searchlight http://www.cloudnet.com/~jcop/o-m-n-i.html http://powerbbs.ic.net BBS Doors --------- ftp://oak.oakland.edu/simtel/msdos/bbsdoor ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/msdos_uploads/bbs_doors ftp://uniserve.com/pub/bbs_doors ftp://europa.com/outgoing/DOORS ftp://ftp.execnet.com/sys/pub/sunrise ftp://ftp.mustang.com/ftp/DOORGAME ftp://ftp.mustang.com/ftp/DOORMISC ftp://ftp.mustang.com/ftp/DOORSEC http://www.tulsa.com/sunrise.html http://www.oknet.com/sunrise.html 10.5) Shareware BBS Software Descriptions Here is a list of some shareware BBS software titles that are available for download on BBSs and the internet. I have tried to explain a little about each BBS so that it will give you a bit of an idea of each one. -=-=-=-=-=- MAXIMUS BBS ----------- Maximus BBS, in my experience, is an easy to use, well presented and reliable BBS program. I have been using Maximus for over 2 years now on my computer and it has not broken down or stuffed up at all over that time. It took me only one afternoon to configure Maximus and set it up on my computer as the installation process is just a quick edit of a few config files (*.CTL files in Maximus Language) and thats it. I was quick to learn that nearly all of the configuration for Maximus is done by editing text files with your DOS editor. This is VERY easy, even for a beginner to BBS using (as I was when I started my BBS). It can be set up with a front-end mailer to accept mail packets, or it can just be run from the built-in WFC (Waiting for Caller) mode. This is NOT a front-end, so it will not accept mail, but it is sufficient for the normal running of the BBS. Maximus already provides general menus to use, although they are *VERY* basic, and once you have got your BBS running well its a good idea to make your own menus with an ANSI drawing program. (The Draw is great for this - available on most BBSs). Maximus supports a large variety of Drop Files including all the common ones, such as DOOR.SYS and DORINFO#.DEF. With this flexibility Maximus can support almost any Online Game/Door program. File and Message areas are extremely easy to configure, again it is just a matter of editing the configuration file - simple. Overall, I would strongly recommend Maximus BBS to any prospective sysops out there who would like an easy to configure, easy to run BBS. Great for beginners. -=-=-=-=-=- REMOTE ACCESS [from miglier@huey.cadvision.com] ------------- Well, although I run a Remote Access BBS, there is MANY MANY things I do not yet understand about it. So far, I have run the BBS for around 3 months, and boy, am I glad I chose Remote Access! I have hired some professional ansi/RIP artists from ACiD and ICE to do all my menus, and opening screens (a little expensive when you get it done from the pros, but hey, it makes a HELL of a lot of difference in the way the BBS looks. I think that whoever designed the Remote Access program in the first place should be rewarded for their craftmanship, and how easy they made it to use. When I started my BBS, all I had were some basic text menus, and I put the files on-line first, making areas...that was the easiest part of all. Of course, since I had absolutely NO idea what to do next, another local BBS sysop helped me get on my feet with the board, showing me the basics, how to add door games, fix bugs (there aren't any) and REALLY customise my board. So, 3 and a half months later, my board is one of THE most popular in the city, I have about 30-40 callers per day, and the number of members has jumped to a whopping 487 people! I've been told that that is pretty good for a BBS. The ONLY problem I've ever experienced with RA, is the multi- tasking. You see, I run Win 95 now, and I am running the BBS under Win 95 full time. My only complaint is that the board slows down terribly when I multi-task other programs (again, the program is a 16-bit application, so it's not used to serious 32-bit multi-tasking). But other than that, my board is going great, I haven't had a problem with the software EVER, and now that I am sort of experienced with stuff in RA, I am expanding my board to the limits, because, with RA, there ARE no limits to what you can do with it. I plan to have full RIP graphics support in about 3 months (The REALLY professional type stuff) it will give my board an even darker comic book/anarchistic look. Then my next step is to add a few more lines. If you are interested, here's the stats of my computer and BBS: 486-DX2-66 MHz 16 MB RAM 2.34 GB HD 1.2 GB HD 780 MB HD (All for the BBS files and software) and another 1.2 GB HD for my personal use. I also have a CD ROM online, and hundreds of popular door games. -=-=-=-=-=- Renegade BBS from [terra@teleport.com] ------------ Advantages: Renegade BBS software is a very configurable package, to say the least. It has a telegard-like style (as it originated from telegard) like many softwares today have, which means a fairly familiar and simple environment to work with. It works off of the fossil, meaning that it can handle non-standard irq's, ports, etc with ease. Built in digiboard support is also a plus for those who are planning on running 4+ node bbses. RIP support is built in, as well as many other great features such as a full screen editor, built in QWK, multinode features (ie teleconferencing, paging/messaging, etc), voting, and much more. Drop files for doors aren't a problem since it supports about 6 different types. Has it's own built in questionaire language to allow tons of possibilities. Overall, it's fairly stable software... not to mention FREE software. Disadvantages: The number one complaint I've seen is that "it's dead." As far as I know, Cott Lang (the programmer) was supposed to stop producing Renegade quite a while ago since he couldn't obtain the right to sell it from the Telegard authors (since that's where it originated from.) Rumour has it though that a new version of Renegade should be out soon (like in November or something); but mind you that is strictly rumour. Other disadvantages include: lack of editing over half of the fun strings (like nearly all of the newuser questions, the file/message base/voting/qwk screen/etc headers, etc), a semi-non-standard message system (telegard 2.7 format), limited file descriptions (without a seperate utility crowding your ansi directory with file descriptions), and a lousy default setup (but who uses defaults anyway? ;) There are some minor disadvantages that advanced sysops will dislike, such as no built-in lightbar cool things, too many unneeded CR's appended to things, no screen positioning codes, a really freaky delay style, and that stupid funky pipecode/backspace bug. Also no built-in seperate language setups like RA or telegard 3.0. 10.6) GLOSSARY Adult Areas - Areas on BBSs where adult material are kept BBS - Bulletin Board System BPS - Bits Per Second Commercial Files - Files that have been bought commercially and are not Public Domain/Shareware Door - Online games/utilities Download - When a user RECEIVES a file from your BBS Download Limit - The size/amount of files that can be downloaded per day Drop Files - Files that the BBS creates to communicate with Doors EchoMail - Message areas that 'echo' your mail all over the state/country File Areas - Areas on BBSs where files are stored Line Noise - Stray pieces of information along the phoneline which can interfere with a connection Log Off - To disconnect from a BBS Log On - To connect to a BBS Mailbox - A proverbial place on BBSs where messages addressed to YOU are stored Message Areas - Areas on BBSs where messages are stored Modem - Cool little things that connect you to the world! Multiline BBS - A BBS that has several phone lines attached to it Online - Literally means On Line (on your BBS) Page - Electronically 'yells' on the BBS machine so the SysOp will go to the computer and answer the users question Pirate BBS - A BBS where commercial files are illegally obtainable SysOp - System Operator Upload - When a user SENDS a file to your BBS Users - People that USE your BBS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article is provided as is without any express or implied warranties. While every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this article, the author assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. Copyright (c) 1995 by Matthew Etheridge, all rights reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Etheridge - s329058@student.uq.edu.au or meth@amber.apana.org.au þ