Subj : ERRORS in Route List!
To   : Dave Hamilton
From : Carl Austin Bennett
Date : Mon May 14 2001 07:26 am

 CAB> Maybe net 229 would have more sysops still up and running than 
 CAB> region fourteen, but how would you ever get them all together at the 
 CAB> same place and time?

 DH> Net229 never had net-wide get-togethers. Even half way between Oshawa 
 DH> and Thunder Bay was unrealistic. It was the internet that brought 
 DH> net229 together for the first time.

Net 163 used to have some sort of regular gathering, I think "beer 'n burger" 
was the term they used in order to avoid anything as formal-sounding as "sysop 
meeting".

Net 249 also had something vaguely similar, but on a much smaller scale.

There were about eight who'd usually show up, back in the days when we figured 
no one would be willing to pay $1/hr to log onto a commercial provider and that 
they'd go broke while us BBS folk would keep going strong.

Famous last words, eh?

At its peak, the Kingston & Area BBS lists ran about two pages. There was one 
group visibly absent from any sort of local sysop gathering here, though: the 
1:249/3xx nodes are 100km west of the rest of the net, so it was impractical 
for them to attend.

I'd imagine the idea of a local sysop gathering wouldn't have worked for some 
of the smaller nets like 1:248 and 1:2603, because usually it was a small 
fraction of sysops that'd turn up, and even a 25% turnout in a net with four 
nodes in town meant one person would show up. :)

That 1:248 was split between Brockville and Cornwall likely didn't help either. 
Nothing like 100km or so to split up a group of hungry sysops.

--- Msged/LNX TE 06
 * Origin: Pause-Caf‚ Kingston 613-549-5599 telnet:cafe.dyndns.org (1:249/116)

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