Goodbye, CompuServe
It's the end of an era, and for some of us, a very personal loss. CompuServe is closing.
Yes, I know, you're probably scratching your head and saying, "Didn't they shut down years ago? My granny used CompuServe!"
Your granny wasn't the only one. Back in 1992 friends in science fiction fandom started asking me, "What's your email?" I looked at them blankly, and a kind soul explained to me how it worked.
"You mean I can send a message to anyone, anywhere?"
"Sure, as long as they have an email address."
I needed email for my responsibilities as event coordinator for the first night of ConFrancisco, the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco. When I asked which service was best, I was told GEnie, Prodigy and CompuServe were all good choices, but many preferred CompuServe because of its civility--moderators kept forums from erupting into flame wars. This appealed to me, so I became 71702,3077 at CompuServe.com. I also had a couple other accounts at free sites and I immediately saw the difference. I described it as "...the difference between a toll road and the Interstate. I'll pay a little extra for clean rest stops."
My two forums were the SF forum and the LitForum, but I soon gravitated almost exclusively to LitForum. They were talking about books! Authors hung out there! One day I tried my hand at a writing exercise and after I posted it, people asked "What happens next?"
That was how my writing career began, and about that time I was invited to be on the Litforum staff. While I was working on my first novel CompuServe evolved. I remember its heyday when it branched off into the Romance Forum (where I was librarian in Erotic Writing) and that helped lead to the founding of RWAOnline, still my "local" chapter. We would staff the forum on Christmas day to help newbies navigate their way onto their new computers (some of which were preloaded with CompuServe accounts) and we encouraged writing and discussion and shared stories of our children, our jobs, and our losses.
Around 1997 AOL bought CompuServe and I recall turning to a friend and saying, "It's like an honors fraternity being taken over by Animal House." Things began to change, and not for the better. We pulled back from our expansions, cut back on some forums, began to see massive changes as the world moved from dial up to free wifi where you could access anything.
And yet, CompuServe endured. Now our forum was Books and Writers Community and I was still on staff, as Section Leader for Erotic Writing. Over the last 10 years I would tell people I was at CompuServe and they'd look at me strangely and say, "They're still around?" But for those of us who hung in there, it was a valuable site to talk, to share what was new in our lives, to discuss books and writing.
It seems odd to say that CompuServe's closing is like the loss of a friend, but that's how it feels. The staff is working to move all of us who want to stay in the Books and Writers Community to a new site, but it will be different.
So thank you, to all those who made CompuServe a site for civil discussion for all those years. I will miss the clean restrooms.
Yes, I know, you're probably scratching your head and saying, "Didn't they shut down years ago? My granny used CompuServe!"
Your granny wasn't the only one. Back in 1992 friends in science fiction fandom started asking me, "What's your email?" I looked at them blankly, and a kind soul explained to me how it worked.
"You mean I can send a message to anyone, anywhere?"
"Sure, as long as they have an email address."
I needed email for my responsibilities as event coordinator for the first night of ConFrancisco, the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco. When I asked which service was best, I was told GEnie, Prodigy and CompuServe were all good choices, but many preferred CompuServe because of its civility--moderators kept forums from erupting into flame wars. This appealed to me, so I became 71702,3077 at CompuServe.com. I also had a couple other accounts at free sites and I immediately saw the difference. I described it as "...the difference between a toll road and the Interstate. I'll pay a little extra for clean rest stops."
My two forums were the SF forum and the LitForum, but I soon gravitated almost exclusively to LitForum. They were talking about books! Authors hung out there! One day I tried my hand at a writing exercise and after I posted it, people asked "What happens next?"
That was how my writing career began, and about that time I was invited to be on the Litforum staff. While I was working on my first novel CompuServe evolved. I remember its heyday when it branched off into the Romance Forum (where I was librarian in Erotic Writing) and that helped lead to the founding of RWAOnline, still my "local" chapter. We would staff the forum on Christmas day to help newbies navigate their way onto their new computers (some of which were preloaded with CompuServe accounts) and we encouraged writing and discussion and shared stories of our children, our jobs, and our losses.
Around 1997 AOL bought CompuServe and I recall turning to a friend and saying, "It's like an honors fraternity being taken over by Animal House." Things began to change, and not for the better. We pulled back from our expansions, cut back on some forums, began to see massive changes as the world moved from dial up to free wifi where you could access anything.
And yet, CompuServe endured. Now our forum was Books and Writers Community and I was still on staff, as Section Leader for Erotic Writing. Over the last 10 years I would tell people I was at CompuServe and they'd look at me strangely and say, "They're still around?" But for those of us who hung in there, it was a valuable site to talk, to share what was new in our lives, to discuss books and writing.
It seems odd to say that CompuServe's closing is like the loss of a friend, but that's how it feels. The staff is working to move all of us who want to stay in the Books and Writers Community to a new site, but it will be different.
So thank you, to all those who made CompuServe a site for civil discussion for all those years. I will miss the clean restrooms.
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