Re: on community building (Was: Re: Shell providers?)

On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Julieta Shem wrote:

Kaz Kylheku <433-929-6894@kylheku.com> writes:
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On 2024-03-08, vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:

We like to give customers a soft landing when turning
down services.  I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions
for good shell providers, places like Panix.

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That concept mostly went away 30 years ago with free Unix-like operating
systems that run on low-spec consumer hardware.
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"bare-bones" for the users I'm thinking of.  Some of
them might be able to transition to being a system
administrator, but a lot just want to run tin, pine,
mutt, irssi, tf, and so forth.

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To access some remote shell account you need a machine
that is internet connected and can run SSH. That machine
can just run a freeware OS with all the above packages.

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That's all true, but it seems that people like to share a system
together because people love to belong to a community.  In the
beginning, I believe such communities were mostly made of local people
and the Internet has sort of destroyed that.  I believe people still
long for these local communities again.  BBSs connected local people.
The Internet seems to have done the opposite.
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(*) On community building
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There's also this conjecture that a person can't deal with more than N
people.  The number I usually hear is 150.  In other words, human
communities should be small (and local).
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One principle I think about to achieve that is one begins a community
but others can only come through invitation.  If someone misbehaves, we
know who invited that person---the tree of invitation being public.
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Yes, we lose anonimity.  Perhaps anonimity is overrated.
>

I run a community for IT-professionals and have been doing so for close to 10 years. I think what you say is correct and that there definitely is a need for it.
If you don't have one, start one! =)