Sat Mar 27 2021 11:07:24 AM EDT from darknetuser

2020-11-09 23:18 from IGnatius T Foobar
I think at some point in the future I'm going to rewrite the text
client, maybe even switch it over to use the REST API that is being

built as part of webcit-ng. If I did it in Python I could probably

hack one together in a weekend. Could be fun. Maybe even build it in

a way where your <G>oto loop takes you through multiple servers instead

of one. That would be cool.

I don't like how that sounds. I understand it would force you to install a webcit instance in order to be able to use the text client.

I prefer it the other way around myself: for the text client to be core functionality, and the web stuff an addon.

Strongly seconded. As few dependencies as possible for text.

Could you add petscii (commodore) to the text served by citadel over telnet? I know the petscii character encoding is well defined and documented. I just don't know how to make citadel do it.

It is awesome seeing tiny little things that have been broken for a while getting resolved. The activity in Citadel right now is just in time. 

I can't wait. I'm stoked to have gone from a Pi3 to a 4 core i5 with 1TB of SSD running a VM... and I'm excited to have Citadel moving forward in a way that I can safely and easily implement on that platform once it is ready. 

Improvements in the web client, in the text client, in the setup and configuration... cleaning up the code, making it easier to install and reconfigure. All of these things make me super happy. Even if I never break 3 to 5 regular "callers"... 

My Nephew operates a bunch of nefarious sites in Europe - You know the kind - they *look* like legitimate sites in style and content - if you're not being careful, you could BELIEVE you were on skynews.com but a careful inspection reveals you're on skyenews.com... 

Anyhow, he was asking me why I don't send tickler mails out to users "we haven't seen you in a while and miss you." 

And my response was - that is what the nightclub does - they send you flyers and mailers and texts and emails, "Come see DJ Funk Spasm with 4 stages and cage dancers this weekend! $5 well drinks, $1 shots, and $.25 green beers!" 

I said, "I'm the local pub full of a small group of career alcoholics who all know that they can speak freely without offending someone, and they don't want OUTSIDERS who will be offended and don't understand the culture showing up." 

With the success moving to the VM - I am strongly considering splitting to a more commercial "Wallofhate.com" and a more pub-like "The Sanitarium BBS." 

One will have an agenda and be designed to create traffic and profit - and the other will be for real people. The fact that they're both owned and operated by the same entity will be somewhat hidden - or at least, not advertised.  

But... I've got to get what I have settled first before I consider that. 

Tue Apr 27 2021 18:36:16 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Heh. I committed a bunch of changes to the text client today. None of them will have any effect on the visible application, quite yet ... it's just a program that has been neglected and deserves a little love. Aside from much of the code being written more than 30 years ago when I was a bit sloppy, it also still has support for a lot of things that will never be needed again (xmodem? cygwin? non-ansi terminals? servers more than 20 years old?)

There are a lot of assumptions one can make in 2021 that could not be made in 1987. And we're going to start making them. It will cut loose buckets of cruft.

I think some kind of node based cross-pollination is a great idea - and will probably create better engagement and increase traffic. Especially as it scales. 

Wed Apr 28 2021 14:44:55 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Public access Citadel sites will always be a bit off the beaten path. That's kind of the point. It's just one of many things Citadel can do, and the text client works pretty well in this use case.

In the future, federation/syndication features will allow multiple sites to operate and share content, but hopefully it will be a lot cleaner and smoother than what we did in the past. It's a very long road, shedding assumptions that were made in the dialup era.

Honestly, I was originally considering JUST publishing the text client - I didn't have a lot of interest in the web-client or attracting NEW users - I had considered just catering to OG Citadel users who would PREFER the Text client. 

But the Sacramento Citadel community doesn't really seem to like one another much, any more - and doesn't seem to have the nostalgia for the old days that I have. They've got a group on Facebook and they barely talk to one another. Even the ones that agree with one another. 

It is a little sad. I've had a couple of the curious from the old Sacramento Citadel scene show up a few times - but eventually they lose interest and stop checking in. Others... even ones who've been accused of being part of "my circle of Right Wing followers who hang on my every word," on Facebook - won't even log in. Facebook turns people into Zombies. The WalMart/Target of Online community. 

Thu Apr 29 2021 10:54:35 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

It's still there ... it may even work, who knows :)

To understand why the text client is so peculiar, you have to understand that it is the direct descendant of the original "dialup BBS" code from the 1980s. It's literally a standalone BBS program that had its local datastore ripped out and replaced with a connection to a server.