Volume 5, Number 37 12 September 1988 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | /|oo \ | | - FidoNews - (_| /_) | | _`@/_ \ _ | | International | | \ \\ | | FidoNet Association | (*) | \ )) | | Newsletter ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor in Chief Dale Lovell Editor Emeritus: Thom Henderson Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings Contributing Editors: Al Arango FidoNews is published weekly by the International FidoNet Association as its official newsletter. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission standards are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1:1/1. Copyright 1988 by the International FidoNet Association. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact IFNA at (314) 576-4067. IFNA may also be contacted at PO Box 41143, St. Louis, MO 63141. Fido and FidoNet are registered trademarks of Tom Jennings of Fido Software, 164 Shipley Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94107 and are used with permission. The contents of the articles contained here are not our responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them. Everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING received. Table of Contents 1. ARTICLES ................................................. 1 2. COLUMNS .................................................. 4 Let's YACK about A User's Viewpoint ...................... 4 3. NOTICES .................................................. 6 The Interrupt Stack ...................................... 6 New Fire Service Echo! ................................... 6 Latest Software Versions ................................. 6 FidoNews 5-37 Page 1 12 Sep 1988 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= [This is essentially the text of a message I left in the BCSNet] [conference. It's being submitted to FidoNews at the suggestion] [of one of the Arrogant Hackers and the IC. A couple of points] [of grammar have been changed, some things expanded on, and some] [local references have been changed.] [Bob Gorrill is the co-director of the BCSNet Telecomm group and] [operates a number of BBS's in the Boston area. Kenyon Karl] [operates the BCS TRS-80 board (80-Boston).] > I'm sure we could some psychology student looking for a thesis > into fidonet and see what makes it so self destructive. I believe you have missed the point. There are a couple of problems that lead to "self destructiveness" as a sympton. Most of them are related to echomail. One sysop used the words "hiding behind a policy complaint". A policy complaint is a clean mechanism for resolving disputes. It sure as hell beats the general means of dispute "resolution" in this day of echomail: he who shouts loudest wins. A policy complaint would result in resolution. All blathering in echomail accomplishes is leaving the IMPRESSION that one side or the other is right, depending on who you agree with, PROPAGATING the problem. The frustrating part of all this is just how many sysops have taken the time to read Policy3? How many who bitch about IFNA have really taken the time to read the documents that form the legal "paper chain" we are bound by? Is FidoNet collectively self destructive, or is it more an issue of people trying to operate a complex system without RTFM? It's certainly not fair to say that only the people in FidoNet don't RTFM. This is the basic problem. Layered on top of it is "sysop turnover". Fully 50% of the sysops who are here now were not here a year ago, and this will probably continue for a couple of years. I am continually amazed (unfairly) by questions like: Who is Tom Jennings? Which was written first, Opus or Fido? (Clear evidence that people don't RTFM.) Most of these new sysops have a fundamentally different experience in entering the net. In the "old days", things were really much more difficult than they are now at a technical level. At a social level, this unified the net - everyone who was here had gone through a relatively difficult, common "rite of passage" to get their node number. Now, there is a plethora of choices to get yourself up and running, and it's getting closer and closer to "plug and play". As Vince says, the network has changed from a common effort to a consumer support system. Since there was no echomail, disputes occurred far less often, and were usually quite local in scope. They were generally resolved that way. Nowadays, even AFTER a dispute has been FidoNews 5-37 Page 2 12 Sep 1988 resolved according to Policy locally, it can still be carried on in echomail internationally. The formal social mechanisms of FidoNet have two major drawbacks: there is no clear means defined for alteration of the one document we agree we operate under (Policy3), and they were put in place before echomail was the force it is today. (When Policy3 was drafted, there were about 1000 nodes, and echomail was just beginning. Now there are 3500+, most of which are connected to one conference or another.) New sysops come in with their own expectations of what FidoNet is or should be. These expectations may or may not be valid, but they are often contradictory with the stated goals of the mechanisms in place (the TJ contract, the IFNA Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws, and Policy3.) Since there is no clear means to change the mechanisms, people go shovel dung in echomail. Echomail is almost like interactive TV - it CAN be a tremendous force for good ... but it also tends to oversimplify issues and polarize audiences. Words can be distorted and taken out of context, and reacted to on that basis by people originally not involved in the discussion. More and more, people take positions AGAINST this or that as opposed to FOR something. Further compounding these problems is the fact that at this time, it is not clear whether a Policy complaint can be made and upheld on the basis of echomail. Those complaints that have been made and upheld upon appeal involved explicitly illegal behaviour. Some decisions have been made at lower levels involving "annoying behaviour", but to the best of my knowledge, none has been appealed all the way up the chain. Annoying is a real tough call. There are a lot of people in the net who annoy the hell out of me. But they also make me think. And I have a simple option with someone annoying me in echomail - stop reading it. But that leaves new sysops with a skewed perception of the net. One problem that an RC in particular faces is that we're generally encouraged not to file policy complaints against sysops in our regions. (NC's are similiary discouraged from filing complaints agains nodes in their own net.) A problem an EchoMail coordinator has is that in taking the position, he basically agrees to provide all kinds of riff raff with the soapbox to criticize the services he is generally paying for. The *EC structure is in an even more difficult position, because there is no written policy for it, and recent events have halted progress toward same. This reveals a problem anyone who has been here for a while has experienced. That is that one gets sick to death of reading messages from people asking questions for the Nth time, very often in a very adversarial manner. Eventually, they stop answering. It really gets frustrating when new sysops come in and EXPECT all this stuff, EXPECT that the *C structure is supposed to help them get set up (we're not), EXPECT they should be able to get echomail, EXPECT to get a new version of Opus for FidoNews 5-37 Page 3 12 Sep 1988 free, etc. There are a lot of people in the net, and even a couple in this conference, who expect a lot for nothing. That's the question your psychology student should be looking into. TANSTAAFL. There's a lot of work to be done. It's not clearly defined, and no one is going to say "Here - go do this". Look at what Bob Gorrill and Kenyon Karl are doing - they find needs, and address them. Kenyon is a very good example of this: he spent a lot of time bitching about this or that - now he's just DOING THINGS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS. I did a lot of complaining when I first got involved with echomail (and indeed, with the net). Look where it got me. The primary question is always: Are you a part of the problem, or a part of the solution? We have enough problems. We need more solutions, and more people working toward them. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-37 Page 4 12 Sep 1988 ================================================================= COLUMNS ================================================================= YACK Yet Another Complicated Komment by Steven K. Hoskin ( STEVE HOSKIN at 1:128/31 ) Episode 9: A User's Viewpoint "So does the international mail area go through BBS to BBS or just to one person?" This was a user in (C)hat mode one night. I winced. It was like asking, "Well, what's this Network Mail thing, anyway?"-The heart of FidoNet, Network mail at NMH, and this user, who was experi- enced in the echos, was just getting around to actually seeing that netmail existed. Well, this is understandable. Today, in FidoNet, it's the echos that appeal to the users. A subject -- and LOTS of people to talk with about it! Wow! And you're in WHICH state? Hey! I visited there once! Well, I tried this... -- and so on. Okay, echomail has its appeal. I'd personally love to subscribe to well into dozens of conferences. But then I'd spend ALL my time at the BBS instead of only 90% of it. No, you can't get into everything. Not in my case. It'd be all too easy to forget the outside world. I know -- I've been there. I personally have a thing for netmail. Direct, cheap, reliable communications with other computer weenies I know? Can't beat it! I sent a 4-page letter to Ohio once; got my reply the next morning. The board charged me 18 cents and the phone call cost 14. Amazing what an amateur network of BBSs can do. Like get 4000 BBSs BSing all hours of the night. That's MY fascination. The average user today doesn't care much about netmail. In fact, around here, most probably don't even know what it is. It's not ADVERTISED much. Hey, look! A STAR TREK echo! -- and the netmail area never even gets looked at. Those that do inquire get turned off as soon as they find out it's going to cost them. But, if you don't have friends that use BBSs in other areas of the country, netmail doesn't hold much value for you. It's rather a limited conversation media. Of course, the majority of the users I see seem to think that a BBS is designed strictly around offering software for free. Oh, I carry some file areas, but I try to emphasize the message areas in the NEWUSER files. Every once in awhile it sparks a user to check out mail instead of files, and of course it's echomail they go after. But at least they're into E-Mail, and THAT's FidoNet. FidoNews 5-37 Page 5 12 Sep 1988 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-37 Page 6 12 Sep 1988 ================================================================= NOTICES ================================================================= The Interrupt Stack 24 Aug 1989 Voyager 2 passes Neptune. 5 Oct 1989 20th Anniversary of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" If you have something which you would like to see on this calendar, please send a message to FidoNet node 1:1/1. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Baker MetroFire, 1:135/14 Miami_FL_USA New Fire Service Related Echo - FireHouse Cooking I have started a new Echo for those of us who participate in FireNet. It is called FireHouse Cooking and the Echo label is FHCOOK. It is available from this system at 1:135/14 and I expect it will also be available from FireNet Leader at 1:128/16 once they've heard about it in FireNet Echo. If you would like to participate in FH Cooking, send NetMail to me at 1:135/14. FH Cooking is all about the greatest improvisational cooks in the world - the ones who cook huge meals for hungry FireFighters and Paramedics! It is geared to the LARGE recipe and LARGE appetite. Anyone interested in cooking for more than ten people at a time or providing insight into same are welcome to attend. Thanks. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Latest Software Versions BBS Systems Node List Other & Mailers Version Utilities Version Utilities Version Dutchie 2.90b* EditNL 4.00 ARC 5.22* Fido 12h MakeNL 2.12 ARCmail 1.1 Opus 1.03b Prune 1.40 ConfMail 4.00* SEAdog 4.10 XlatList 2.86 EchoMail 1.31 TBBS 2.0M XlaxNode 2.10 MGM 1.1 BinkleyTerm 2.00* XlaxDiff 2.10 QuickBBS 2.01 ParseList 1.20* FidoNews 5-37 Page 7 12 Sep 1988 * Recently changed Utility authors: Please help keep this list up to date by reporting new versions to 1:1/1. It is not our intent to list all utilities here, only those which verge on necessity. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-37 Page 8 12 Sep 1988 OFFICERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL FIDONET ASSOCIATION Hal DuPrie 101/106 Chairman of the Board Bob Rudolph 261/628 President Matt Whelan 3:3/1 Vice President Ray Gwinn 109/639 Vice President - Technical Coordinator David Garrett 103/501 Secretary Steve Bonine 115/777 Treasurer IFNA BOARD OF DIRECTORS DIVISION AT-LARGE 10 Courtney Harris 102/732? Don Daniels 107/210 11 Bill Allbritten 11/301 Hal DuPrie 101/106 12 Bill Bolton 3:54/61 Mark Grennan 147/1 13 Rick Siegel 107/27 Steve Bonine 115/777 14 Ken Kaplan 100/22 Ted Polczyinski 154/5 15 Larry Kayser 104/739? Matt Whelan 3:3/1 16 Vince Perriello 141/491 Robert Rudolph 261/628 17 Rob Barker 138/34 Steve Jordan 102/2871 18 Christopher Baker 135/14 Bob Swift 140/24 19 David Drexler 19/1 Larry Wall 15/18 2 Henk Wevers 2:500/1 David Melnik 107/233 -----------------------------------------------------------------