Talk:The Matrix

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One or two articles?

From the looks of it, when I first wrote this article I intended to make a separate one for the Matrix. Given that a) both were the same BBS, just the names changed and b) it was the Matrix longer than it was America On-Line, I'm not sure that makes sense. I'm thinking now there should just be one article covering the BBS's entire existence. Any thoughts? --Lkseitz (talk) 23:01, 4 January 2018 (PST)

  • I think one article would be sufficient, but it would be nice to have a simple redirect to the AOL page from the Matrix page. The original BBS that Rocky started in the early '80s was named "Birmingham BBS" which eventually became America On-Line and then the Matrix. There was a nice B'ham News article written sometime in the early '90s that interviewed Rocky and gave a lot of history. I saved the article, but unfortunately I put it in a "safe spot" so that I wouldn't lose it, and it's still there to this day, buried in a box or a file cabinet. (-: Robert Matthews (talk) 10:02, 5 January 2018 (PST)
    • You can search the Birmingham News archives. The catch is you have to go down and just pick the paper from the lengthy list. (Aren't you glad Alabama is the first state, alphabetically?) I searched for Rocky Rawlins and found these relevant articles, but didn't buy any of them.
  1. "Local Internet On-Ramp Ready Fore Traffic" (November 11, 1994)
  2. "Slow Ramp Onto Internet Local Access Lags, But Future Appears Bright" (December 26, 1994)
  3. "From The Board To The World Matrix Evolves From Local Board To Web Provider" (August 5, 1996)
  4. "Local Men Refused Stock, Took Cash For AOL Name" (January 12, 2000)
You can also find a complete archive of Birmingham Telecommunications News in the external link at the bottom of that article. (Although I'm working on something that lets you search them.) --Lkseitz (talk) 19:30, 5 January 2018 (PST)
  • Thanks for the link to the archives website. Too bad you have to pay for every article, but I guess that's how they make money. However, now that I see the dates for articles about Rawlins, I might print them out the next time I'm at the downtown library. With the passage of time, my memory is starting to fade a bit about events that took place 25+ years ago.
Rocky and I worked together for a couple of years at Complete Health many years ago, so I knew him moderately well (he was my boss). I haven't seen or talked with him much since that time, though. He was in NC the last time I corresponded with him.
I was involved with BBS'es since their inception and have all the BTN issues. For a couple of years, I ran a board, "The Bone Yard", and it's listed in the '91, '92, & '93 issues. I never wrote any articles for the publication, but did know Maisel and some of the others who contributed info for it. I think a way to search them would be useful, so if you develop something, please let me know. Robert Matthews (talk) 18:45, 6 January 2018 (PST)

(Resetting the thread indentation for simplicity.) From a quick check of early BTNs, it appears Birmingham BBS and America Online existed concurrently. The phone line used for the former eventually became used as a node for the latter. So we can probably put them all in one article. There's probably not enough information on each to make separate articles feasible anyway. --Lkseitz (talk) 12:17, 24 January 2018 (PST)

  • I agree that one article should suffice. Robert Matthews (talk) 14:04, 24 January 2018 (PST)
    • I'm a little confused about the 1989 disestablishment date in the Categories. What does this refer to? I know the BBS was active until the mid- to late '90s. Robert Matthews (talk) 07:22, 25 January 2018 (PST)
      • Whoops! That was when it stopped being America On-Line and became The Matrix, since the article was originally just about the former. I forgot to change the categories to match. Thanks for the catch. --Lkseitz (talk) 05:23, 26 January 2018 (PST)
        • So yeah. Those establishment/disestablishment categories are really useful for getting a sense of what happened in a particular year, and may, if I may say, be enough reason to go to two articles... --Dystopos (talk) 06:37, 26 January 2018 (PST)
          • I agree that it might be useful to have a separate article for The Matrix, especially since it had a storefront at one point. Also, Rocky had some other related names, like "Birmingham Net BBS" and "The Birmingham Net" and "Birmingham Web Project". For example, see this page. Robert Matthews (talk) 08:24, 26 January 2018 (PST)
            • Oh, the Internet/Web projects certainly deserve separate articles as they were different from a BBS. (Robert probably knows more about those than I do, though.) The BBSes, however, just sort of evolved from a hobby to a business, not necessarily related to the name changes. I'll have to do research to see if I can figure out just when that happened. --Lkseitz (talk) 07:32, 27 January 2018 (PST)

Flyer

  • Lee, I could already feel how excited you were going to be that I found a flyer for The Matrix on Archive.org. Then I saw whom it was addressed to and who uploaded it. --Dystopos (talk) 16:46, 6 June 2023 (PDT)