Subj : Re: Ping
To   : Frank Linhares
From : Jeff Bowman
Date : Sat Mar 08 2008 12:55:31

> It is a shame that the entire world is now wrapped into the single user
> mindset of the internet.  If you really want to see what social
> networking is then they really should see ftn style networks.
 
I was just thinking last night about how Fidonet was inherently social, because so much of it was manually managed.  To be added to the nodelist, you had to ask someone.  To setup a link with another sysop, you had to ask.  And that's not to mention that the entire point of Fidonet was to talk to people in the first place.  The internet requires very little communication with other users to get anything out of it, so you find a lot more people who never had to develop any social skills.  That's not to say that there's not still plenty of great people there too though, probably more overall than Fidonet ever had since it's so much larger.  The internet is also a great resource and collection of technology in general.  But I'm quite sure the ratio of crappy people vs good ones skewed dramatically since the BBS days.
 
Anyhow, the thought crossed my mind because I got to thinking on how one might make Fidonet more appealing to more people, by automating aspects such as getting a node number and things like that (assuming it's not already fairly automated, I have no idea these days). And while it could be done easily, as I've automated websites before myself to remove any need for constant admin interaction for frequently used aspects, you lose that personal connection with the users and it just becomes more of a faceless service, like so many other things on the net as far as the user is concerned.  For some things that's fine, for others it's not.  And in terms of Fidonet, gaining users vs losing the personal touch is a hard trade-off to decide on.  Luckily it's not up to me to decide!
 
 
> I'm actually ikn the process of setting up my old Amiga BBS running
> AmiExpress.  I've almost got the telnet hack working so that people can
> telnet into it.  I'm just wondering how many people will actually care.
 
I'm betting not too many, unfortunately.  You'll probably get a few who use it out of novelty though.  And for those people alone, it might be worth it, because they'll get some nostalgia out of it.
 
I wrote some software to solely run door games via telnet, most of the Seth Able ones, and got some interest from a handful of friends for a few weeks. Some lost interest faster than others.  Occasionally someone will ask me to start that machine up, but I usually leave it off these days.  But just the fact that some of these people were folks who never got to play these games back in the day makes it worthwhile in my opinion.

--- D'Bridge 2.98
 * Origin: FyBBS (1:229/500)

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