Back in the late 80s or early 90s the community service bulletin board phenomina started when Dr. Tom Grundner started up the Cleveland Freenet which became the nucleus of what became known as the Free-Net system. The original group of systems (which I believe included Youngstown, Peoria and TriState in Cincinnati as well as the original Cleveland Freenet) used software first developed by Case-Western Reserve University. It was slow and cumbersome but it was a start. Later versions of this Freeport software and the CIX software, developed by Steve Shoemaker for TriState OnLine, were vastly improved and the concept of community service bulletin board systems spread rapidly. While the CWRU Freeport was good and the CIX was even better, in my opinion - an opinion probably shaped by the fact that this is where I first became involved with the Net as Steve's first beta tester of the CIX software, the availability of the World Wide Web technology so lent itself to the community bulletin board concept that it is now probably the most popular means of providing this wonderful service to people all over the globe. I have tried to accumulate a
list of these many community service systems with the necessary links to them. This list is no doubt out-of-date and becoming more so even as I write but it should provide net surfers with plenty with which to wile away the winter nights. I have identified those using the World Wide Web technology by [www] behind the listing.
There is also a very complete list maintained by the Organization
for Community Networks at their Web site.
I would appreciate hearing of new sites and of corrections to my list from any of you out there in Cyberland.
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