BBSs were a very varied scene and experiences doubtless varied a huge amount. That's true with online communities in general but the BBS scene may have been even more varied than most.

Also even ten years ago, the heyday of BBSs was 20-25 years in the past. It's hard to reconstruct things from that relative distance. For example, I was looking at Boardwatch Magazine archives and what I find only goes back to about 1993 when a lot of BBSs were on the cusp of transitioning to ISPs.