Callers can read articles, books etc on-line, or they can transfer them to their own computer and read them offline and print them out. They can read and post public messages about actions and events locally and internationally. They can take part in message-based discussions with people locally or anywhere the net reaches to. They can also send personal mail to anyone who also has access to the same net. They can get software which they can use on their own computer. If whoever set up the bbs was that way inclined, they could also play games on-line.
This of course would all be wonderful - if there were lots of anarchists with computers and modems. Which there aren't! More and more people do seem to be getting their own computers, but for most people in the european world this technology is still psychologically, if not financially, out of reach. Of course, for most people in the non-european world, it's not even a remote possibility.
However, computers make far better communal tools than they do private ones. Like most things, i suppose, your personal computer is likely to spend most of its life sitting idle (unless, of course, you're a demented computer geek!) But if it was to find its way into a communal space, where lots of people had access to it - and if it was set up in such a way that you didn't have to have a degree in nuclear physics to operate it - it could become a public access gateway to a mass medium.
Of course, it's not necessary for people to go anywhere near a computer to get access to news and information from an international computer network. Every time you read a national newspaper you're doing exactly that.
A good way to use computer networks for anarchist communication could be as a transport medium, bringing material into your desktop publishing program. With a minimum ammount of work, material gathered from the network could be edited, typeset and printed out in newsletter or magazine form. An international anarchist weekly newspaper, being published locally all round the world and with an international editorial collective is a very real possibility.
One thing computer communication does give us is the possibility to rival mainstream capitalist media in this way. It's all there, available and it could be done now.
So that's the "why" of anarchist bbss, what about the "how"?
If you're interested in setting up a bbs, you should start by spending as much time as you can calling up some of the bbss in your area and getting the hang of how to use them. You'll also begin to get an idea of how they work and, hopefully, how networks work too.
Ask lots of questions... Some bbs users like to look down on people who don't know much, but most of them are more than willing to pass on everything they know to someone else. Spend enough time lurking around on bbss and you'll learn everything you need to know.
However, it's possible that you don't have access to local bbss, in which case, i'd better explain the whole thing from scratch. Of course, i can't explain everything, and i can't anticipate all the problems you're likely to have (probably not even a hundredth of them - no i'm not joking!), so you'll end up having to work out most of it as you go along.
All the software should come with documentation (manuals etc), and although they'll be hard to understand and will omit to tell you the most important things, they're mainly what you should use when you set up that particular piece of software.
If you've checked out a few different bbss, you'll probably have discovered that bbs software comes in several different flavours. A few examples off bbs software names are: SuperBBS, QuickBBS, Waffle, Wildcat, Maximus, etc. They all have different approaches, but they basically all do the same thing.
The basic functions of a bbs are as follows:
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