Housekeeping and You – How to keep your BBS appeti[s/Z]ing.

To keep on top of things, housekeeping is a crucial step in configuration that does so much work for you that you will be shocked you didn’t do it before.

Today, it is common to have a BBS overloaded with daily posted automatic bulletins from a multitude of sources around the globe, arriving on your system and clinging on to precious space in the message lists for months.

The sheer volume can sometimes be quite obnoxious, but this is nothing compared to the volume of traffic the packet system used to handle back during the first packet renaissance. Today though, with less organic traffic on the boards, these automated messages stand out quite a bit, and doesn’t leave a good impression for the user.

I have put together a couple of documents to help with configuring the housekeeping and post expiry system, including my preferences, which are applicable to today’s (2023) traffic currently traversing the network.

I personally am not a fan of rejecting mail on my system just because I don’t like it. There is a way to avoid outright censoring or aggressive filtering- housekeeping. This is one of the tools in the box for both FBB and BPQ systems which I find oftentimes fundamentally under-utilised.

Dear Reader,

If your bulletin board system is carrying more than a couple of hundred messages at any one time, this documentation might be very useful for you.

Housekeeping – Lifetime Expiry Tuning (BPQ32 & LinBPQ)

FBB HouseKeeping – Lifetime Expiry Tuning

Subscribe to my blog* if you would like to hear more about the new node feature sweeping the planet by storm- bringing back a form of social media that existed before Packet BBS chat and mail, read below:

Linux users get a quick head start– Stand-alone mode is ready and waiting for you. So who’s shitposting on your wall today!

(you can’t*, we don’t do that here)

WALLS I am aware of at this moment in time:

OP	ALIAS	Node / Path (all work from RIJEN)
Daria	VTYWAL	VE3VTY-7|WALL
Red	RRRWAL	PE1RRR-7|WALL
Jeffrey	PD1NL-1	PD1NL-14|WALL
Steve_353	GYBWAL	EI2GYB-7|WALL
Roy	PLWALL	WW6Q-7|WALL
Chris	WALL	KA1VSC-8|WALL
Hari	BCXWAL	YD0BCX|WALL