We started an electronic community network called the Redwood Free-Net. We thought we were doing a great thing for the community. Our area in Northern California is rural and hard pressed economically. The timber industry is dying as the trees run out and there isn't much other business to replace it with. We hoped that our electronic network would act as a launching pad for new cottage industries that would spring up along the infobahn.
I work at the county library and have an interest in computers. One day I was going into the library and I looked around at the beautiful surrounding hills. It suddenly struck me that this was the natural habitat of the electronic cottage. Those hills are peopled with under-employed and over-qualified entrepreneurs. Many of them already have computer skills and it seemed to me that if we could get them plugged into the global network they were just the right people to develop the new services and industries that I felt sure were coming our way.
So I worked hard to set up the framework for an entry level training ground for telecommunications. It seemed to me that the biggest single impediment to getting our community on line (aside from the phone rates) was the educational gap, the gap between the average person and the one who knows exactly what to do when they see the little percent sign on the screen that means a UNIX operating system is ready to take your every command, every command you know at least, and therein lies the problem. The global network runs mostly on UNIX which is a system of cryptic codes that tell the computer what to do next. There are easier-to-use tools being developed for the Internet but there isa learning curve. We needed to build an entry level system that would teach people the skills and introduce them to the value of the net. It looked to me as if we should start with something that was very, very easy and use it to promote on-line computer literacy just as the library has traditionally promoted book literacy. We found some affiliations and a lot of encouragement and finally some funding to build an electronic network based at the library. We decided to use the graphic software called FirstClass.
Meanwhile we were blessed with a local entrepreneur who decided to answer our prayers by installing a local Internet node. This meant that we could connect our little network to the global network without paying the hateful and gouging long distance charges. We worked out a very favorable arrangement with the provider. He generously donated our access to the Internet.
We got a donation from the Friends of the Library to buy two computers that would be for public access at the main branch. Thus anyone could come in and use the system. We were not going to be just for a computerized elite.
So on the first day of 1995 we opened our new system to the public. Redwood Free-Net was born quietly. We did no grand opening promo- tion because, frankly, we were struggling to set up the hardware and software.
Our new modems were late in delivery. We had a borrowed computer running the Internet connection because on our limited budget we couldn't seem to come up with what we needed.
Meanwhile we added new users as it got around by word of mouth that there was a new system in town. Not only in our town but, thanks to a sweet arrangement through the county's leased telephone lines, we were also a local telephone call in the three largest cities in our region. This connected our community in a new way. Those beautiful hills are nice to look at but they make it mighty hard to get around this part of the country. Now we could connect with our neighbors without paying long distance charges.
The new users registered in a steady way. On average and with very little variation we were adding 7.5 new users a day. We allowed easy and automatic registration. When you dialed in with your computer you were presented with a form that asked you to fill in your name address and phone number. As soon as you did so you were granted full use of the system. In fact the software is not very fussy and would let you in even if you filled in nothing but a name, any name, and a password. More about this later.
Our modems came in and we found a suitable bargain for our Internet server. We were off and up and running.
We offered a lot of discussion groups. We had volunteers to run several special interest discussion groups. They could set the tone and keep track of what was happening in a particular area of the system that was set aside for their special interest. We had one on environment, another on earthquakes, one on Buddhism, the county museum had committed to a presence and we had a ton of imported stuff that focused on news and education.
Later we added a Christian group, skating, and a new age conference. Another addition was a conference that reflected the political outrage of someone who posted masses of information about government corruption and conspiracies. More offers came in for a variety of new conferences as eclectic as our community.-
We got a lot of strokes from users who recognized that there was a lot of value represented by Redwood Free-Net. It promised even more. Many of us shared the vision of turning our area into a model for the developing industry that is being called telecommuting. Nobody quite knows what this new industry will look like. After all, that's what makes it an opportunity. We are reasonably sure it is coming. We think we have the kind of innovative people that will come up with the new angles and directions to create services that operate over the networks.
Many of the users who saw the potential volunteered their own time to support the system. It had always been recognized that the system would depend on this kind of grass roots activism. We had no staff to micro-manage anything this complicated. We were dependent on the community to build its own network as it saw fit. We had neither the means nor the inclination to run it as a top-down organization. If it was to develop as a new kind of resource it would have to be allowed to grow organically.
So the calls were coming in, people were amazed that we offered all these services for free. New computer owners were calling the library asking how to connect. Salty old network veterans who had run a BBS (Bulletin Board System) or written BBS software were connecting. And young people were connecting.
The youngsters especially liked the chat feature. This is a feature that allows two or more users to type to each other in a live dialog. The kids love it because it is so social and with our out-of-town connections they could meet new friends on the Redwood Free-Net. Once they made their new friends they could keep up a correspondence that, without the Free-Net, would have cost them a fortune in long distance charges.
The chat was so popular that our four lines were full long before we expected. We have a conference especially for discussions of policy. We presented the problem of the busy signals and suggested three possible solutions: we could add more lines, kill the chat feature, or shorten the daily time allotment.
It seemed to me that adding more lines was ideal but cost money. We didn't have much money.
Killing the chat feature was attractive to me as I had not really thought much about it as a value when envisioning the network. As I thought about it though I realized that chat was what people wanted. In other words we had a dramatic market survey going on here that said "the people want chat". The best pro-chat argument came from my dear partner who pointed out that it was "better than TV". That was very persuasive because I despise TV. I also recognized that chat was the best typing teacher in the world. The pressure of keyboarding your best wit in real time is a wild and challenging experience. Definitely fun and spiced with a level of adrenaline not often found in typing class.
The third solution would mean cutting down the daily time limit. We had set the limit to 90 minutes per day per user. That was fairly liberal but, since we had not instituted police powers to control new registrations or validate them, I knew that if we made it too restrictive people would begin to register with false identities to get more time.
There was considerable input to this discussion. The ideas were kicked around as they had been since the earliest days of this project. Some arguments developed but it seemed the ideal solution was still to expand rather than restrict usage.
So I went back to our original approved budget and found that we had saved some money in our actual versus our projected purchases so there was a few hundred there. We also had a fund that accumulated $300 in donations for the public access computers. The local Macintosh User Group had a fund that had been collected for the Free-Net which I thought had $500 but turned out to have only $400. At the next meeting we agreed to put that money toward adding more lines and we collected another $60 by passing the hat. I got another $20 donation from a supporter at the gym the next day. All together we got enough to get approval to add four more lines.
All seemed fine except that more and more people were registering as new users and it became clear that by the time the next batch of modems arrived we would be needing more again. It looked as if we would be caught in some kind of expansion spiral and needed to take a look at serious long-term funding. I had thought we should be in line for some of the federal funds that were being set aside for electronic community networks.
Fine but who was going to write those grants? I was burned out. The engaging process of putting together the hardware, learning the software, and answering the hundreds of support questions that people asked as they learned how to connect and navigate had left me with way too many hours and too few breaks. I vowed to take time off and relax. Let the Free-Net run itself.
Unfortunately the moderators were beginning to complain. They couldn't get in to take care of their conferences because the lines were all busy with chatters. Some of the chatters were rather abusive. There was a steady increase in the number of new registrations that appeared to be phony names for the purpose of getting more time on line. You have to doubt someone named Micky M. Mouse who puts their address as Disneyland. In fact I started deleting any user that failed to include an address and phone number in their registration. Some would just reappear the next day.
There was one complaint about some abusive language that one user had reportedly used toward an eight year old girl who was exploring the chat feature. The girl's father asked what the rules were about accountability of our users. The answer was that we were making this up as we went along. All suggestions and volunteers were welcome to help make a civilization of this frontier.
Then suddenly there was Bubba. A new user with no address and no phone number started calling in terrorizing the chat sessions. He used foul and abusive language to enrage whoever was on line. I would delete the Bubba account whenever I was on line as I would do to anyone who didn't provide an address and phone number. Using the name "Bubba X. Huhuna" he would call in at all hours and register again exactly the same and act in exactly the same way. The other users started to complain about the obnoxious Bubba and ask that something be done.
There was uproar. People who were trying to write a message or navigate around the system were interrupted again and again in rapid succession by Bubba's invitations to chat. If they were foolish enough to accept they were subjected to insults and racial slurs until they became disgusted and tried to return the insults.
Some users were obviously enjoying the uproar and insulting Bubba for sport. Bubba was playing the classic flame-bait and it looked as if his friends were throwing a few coals on the fire. Meanwhile we were trying to deal with the jammed lines. Whenever I would get on line I would see that what was going on was chat. The chat was obviously addictive. Bubba did a high profile demo on how to deal with the withdrawal that set in when you used your daily time limit. You just register again with another name. Some would just add a middle initial to their real name. Some would use the name of a relative or use the legitimate account of a family member who didn't use the network much. Some would simply invent new accounts.
The situation got discussed. There were many calls for control. I suggested we start a special area for such diatribes. commonly called flames. Flame wars are a familiar, if unpleasant, feature of life on the networks. There is something about the medium that allows the uninhibited flow of self-righteous rage. In a chat session one night a user was describing an imaginary "Bubba-Net". He called it "the worst BBS in the world. A system where there is nothing but flames". I thought Bubba-Net would be a good name for the new area.
Meanwhile the situation was intolerable. We had left all the doors open to the delicatessen and were infested by rats. So we set about springing a plan to slow down the chaos. We planted a fake letter from Bubba which said he was being sent to military school by his father. The letter said his father was taking away his computer so he wouldn't be on line any more and thus he was giving his password, "asshole" (that was really it!) to the network at large so that anyone could use it and keep his foul reputation alive.
Then we posted some more messages from Bubba that were obvious fakes to show that Bubba could now be anyone. These were rather wimpy notes that just kind of diluted his persona. Sure enough. Bubba disappeared.
As I said I was burnt out. I needed a vacation and I took one. I flew off to Los Angeles to chill (my friends agreed I must be in pretty bad shape if I was going to L. A. to relax). I went to restaurants and movies and had a great time. I left the Free-Net in the capable hands of coadministrator Anthony. I took a laptop computer along but managed for once to not log in and just enjoyed myself with the shallow pleasures of Tinsel Town.
Finally I logged in only to find an urgent message from Anthony. Someone, it could only be our Bubba, had registered a new account using Anthony's name. It is a shortcoming of the FirstClass software that it allows this possibility. As long as one uses a new ID there can be multiple registrations with the same name. Well, a new Anthony appeared on the board boldly soliciting the most demeaning homosexual encounters with anyone who would chat and sending similar e-mail to anyone in sight and posting such messages in public areas. The real Anthony responded by killing the account of his unwanted evil twin, cutting off all new registration and then set about deleting the insulting messages. I fully approved his action and told him just to leave it that way. No new users until we could develop a policy that would work.
I posted a message in the policy conference saying what I thought we would have to do. Much as I did not like the idea of playing cop and verifying every user as a legitimate accountable individual it seemed to me we had clear evidence that the alternative was not viable. Nobody was going to stay on a system where anyone could imitate you and post obnoxious or illegal messages in your name. Eeeek! So I put out an appeal for volunteers to help with the validation of existing users and asked for ideas on how to do the validation for new users.
When I got home, rested and ready for action, there were several offers of help and some suggestions for the new approach. Within a few days we set up the system so that all new users and any unverified existing users could not send messages and could not use the chat feature. Now anyone could browse and read anything on the net but could not send mail and could not engage in chat until they proved they were a real and accountable citizen.
First I went through the existing user list which included hundreds of registered users (real and imaginary) and validated everyone I knew personally. As soon as someone sent me a FAX with their ID or stopped by the library and identified themselves or phoned in their library card number they were given full privileges.
One would think the traffic would have dropped off considerably but noooo. All four lines were busy anyway and the new registrations kept on coming in. I was as busy as could be trying to keep up with the users calling in and faxing me IDs and stopping by the reference desk to either register or validate their registration.
No one asked to have their account deleted because of the new regulations. Several had asked to have their accounts deleted when they learned that, under the old system, they could be imitated by cyber-vandals. They withdrew their requests and stayed with us when we imposed the new system.
Today I will create a new conference called Bubba-Net. We have a moderator and some enthusiasts. It will be a quarantine area for flame wars. There will be warning signs at the entrance. I think it is an important part of our history. For us Bubba-Net is a kind of historical monument like the Alamo. We have been told by some who may know that it could even be visited by Bubba himself. After all, his registration is there for all.
We still don't have our four new lines and modems but I think we are going to need a lot more. We need a grant writer. I think we have a future.
Pat Hunt February 16, 1995