r/bbs • u/kpmgeek • Dec 28 '24

BBS Software Best way of handling fanfiction on a modern BBS software package?

Looking at building a fandom-based BBS, an I remember back in the day fanfiction was usually just shared as text files in a files section. Does anyone have a setup that's a little bit more functional? With chapter support, notifications, and remembering position?

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7

u/electronicchicken Dec 29 '24

I've never heard of a ready made solution for this.

I applaud your idea to make a board with an actual theme and purpose that might develop a community.

If you go with Synchronet, I'll write a module for you that will do what you've described.

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u/kpmgeek Dec 29 '24

I was going to go with synchronet on Linux so I’d love to collab on that.

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u/electronicchicken Dec 29 '24

It's possible that something already exists and I just don't know about it, so if anyone has a suggestion, it's welcome.

If not, I guess my initial assumptions are:

  • This is terminal / textmode based
  • All (permitted) users can submit their own work
  • Work needs to be organized in some hierarchical way (eg. user -> series -> book -> chapter)
  • Should include a tagging system for categorization and filtering (genre, fandom, nsfw, etc. etc.)
  • Users can subscribe to something in the hierarchy or a tag so they're notified when "user" posts a chapter, when "book" gets a new chapter, when "series" gets a new book, when something new is posted with a certain tag
  • Reader metadata stored per user re: read/unread status, position in chapter

Initial follow-up questions that spring to mind:

  • Collaborative work? Yes / no / how would you want it to work
  • "Comments section" per chapter/book/series? (Would just be a veneer over the built-in message base functions)
  • Editing / writing online in a text editor, or just uploading files created elsewhere?
  • Some kind of markdown format for stuff like italics? (We already have a thing for this, I believe)
  • Available via other protocols? (eg. on the web, or uh ... gopher, nntp, etc.)

I could go on and on and on so I'll stop there, but that's something to start with.

3

u/taalmahret Dec 29 '24

i am interested in this as it would fit my hobby of a series of text that covers short essays and then package them together as i write them chapter by chapter.

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u/electronicchicken Dec 29 '24

I'm currently envisioning a somewhat generic/customizable thing that should work for you as well as OP. Primarily for organizing text files, but would also serve as an art gallery.

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u/kpmgeek Dec 29 '24

All of this is pretty spot on, also having to implement Unicode translation if we allow people to upload files.

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u/electronicchicken Dec 29 '24

Synchronet already has a fair bit of that translation in place, so probably not a huge issue.

1

u/kpmgeek Dec 29 '24

Yeah, a big question of mine would be whether it substitutes things like curly quotes with ascii-friendly ones or just puts a ?. I'll have to investigate this week.

3

u/mistfunk Dec 28 '24

Sounds like you want a BBS ebook reader door!

1

u/kpmgeek Dec 28 '24

Basically but with an interface for adding texts.