gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (03/14/84)
Someone recently noticed that a number listed in the last three RBBS lists was out of service. This is a general and ongoing problem. My house's second phone line, 415-863-4703, was the number of the PCNet ABBS for more than a year. When the ABBS was removed to become an anti-nuke BBS in Menlo Park, I continued to get about the same volume of calls (about 10-20 per day). I put a tape recorder on it with a message giving the new number, and this didn't seem to help either. I continue to see it in lists in magazines, though it's been down for more than two years. The number was recently disconnected; I pity the folks who get it as their new phone number! The problem is that the people who publish the lists don't call all those numbers. They don't even know anybody who calls all those numbers. They got 90% of the numbers out of some other list. When I was maintaining such a list, I tried to run thru it over time, but never even called a third of the 150 or 200 systems on it. Given the existing national hobbyist networks, it wouldn't be hard to generate a master list from regional correspondents. Anyone could send in a message saying "I've called these 3 systems in the past month and they work." If a listed system didn't get mentioned by correspondents for two months, it gets struck from the list (or listed as "maybe dead" and struck off a month later). A rich, dedicated individual could program their autodialer to call all the systems in a list, though this would have problems on systems with callback or restricted hours.