Subj : FidoNews 38:20 [02/09]: General Articles To : All From : FidoNews Robot Date : Mon May 17 2021 02:28:28 ================================================================= GENERAL ARTICLES ================================================================= 100 IPv6 nodes By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555 This week's list of IPv6 nodes is special. It has been a decade ago that the first Binkp IPv6 connect was made and in the beginning the growth of IPv6 nodes was exponential. About 5 years ago the growth became linear ad 2 years ago the growth leveled of. It seemed that the growth of IPv6 no longer compensated for the shrink of Fidonet and I had already come to terms with the idea that we may never reach 100. This year we had some influx of returnees and also some new nodes. A significant fraction of them entered Fidonet full dual stack. That gave a boost to the number of IPv6 capabable nodes and now all of a sudden we passed the 100 mark. And the winner is:.... 100 1:134/102 Shelley Petersen Native Hurricane El. f Congratulations to Shelley. Actually Shelley is not the 100st sysop to run an IPv6 node. She is now #100 on the list. Over the years some of the IPv6 nodes have left Fidonet or stopped supporting IPv6, but I have not kept records of that. The list is a record of currently active IPv6 nodes. So now what? Up to 200 of course! ----------------------------------------------------------------- BBS curation and community building Kostie Muirhed - 1:134/101 Partially to celebrate the return of net 134, and partially inspired by Steve Weinert's recent article recounting his experiences returning to the scene, I figured I might try my hand at submit my first Fidonews article. Before getting into the meat of things, I'd like to offer a quick plea that you do not take any of the following in a critical or negative manner, as it's meant to offer a positive outlook and one opinion at looking forward to the future. I, like many, was first baptized into the world of BBSes and the futuristic feel of worldwide echo discourse during the height of popularity of both in the 90s. While I was among the ranks that started splitting their phone usage between the BBS world and the Internet, I never found a replacement for the intimate and curated experience found on a well maintained BBS and was saddened every time another local board dropped off. Around that time, as many will recall, there was a major rush of boards onto the Telnet scene. I was like a kid in a candy store "calling" into boards from all over the continent without concern about long distance rates, always curious to see what experience the sysop had carefully and proudly put together for their users. The expanse of different ANSI and RIP artwork used for answer screens and menus, and the changing out of screens and artwork for holidays and special occasions was purely magical. Every board had a slightly different feel to the community as well, and you could quickly get a feel for the types of users you'd encounter during your visits to a particular board by the types of message areas they had, and the message counts in each. Somewhere along the line we've lost a lot of what made this hobby such a unique experience for newcomers. Note that I'm not saying we've lost what made this hobby great, as there's still a great deal to differentiate the experiences from the wider internet in a positive manner, and there's certainly opportunity for positive change. What I am saying is that as a whole, as a community, we seem to have moved away from creating an inviting and memorable space and experience for newcomers and returning faces, and more towards setting up our own personal utility portal to access the message groups. If I pick a random listing from the telnet BBS list, I can almost guarantee I'll be met with the stock Synchronet menus, 200+ fidonet and othernet echoes thrown into a message group, the same couple pre-installed doors, and more often than not these days it'll be hosted off in the cloud on some cheap vps. I know I've been guilty of hoarding echoes too, but nobody wants to wade through 200+ message groups to try and find one they might be interested in reading or posting in. Nobody is going to use the new message scan if the default is ALL those groups either. The default menu set for most board software is either objectively bad, or so common that it quickly gets very samey for anyone calling more than a couple boards. If what attracts you personally to the hobby is just having your own personal portal but you just want to feel like someone else *could* use it, more power to you and you'll hear no further criticism from me. For the rest of us who enjoy putting things together for external consumption or community development though, we're missing some opportunities. I don't want to try to dictate the best or right way to get the curation experience back, but here are some ideas for starters: 1) If you run your board in the cloud, try setting a terminal up to monitor it remotely. I had a caller the other day who was born after the scene had died down, but had heard about telnet accessible boards through a semi popular youtube channel. I broke into chat with him and his mind was BLOWN. Remember that feeling the first time it happened to you? I'd hazard a guess that that moment started many of us down the path to becoming sysops. 2) Toy with the idea of curating a selection of echoes that fit the interests of a community you can picture building. Maybe that community is centered around where you are physically, or maybe it centers around an interest or subject that you find interesting. I'm not saying you need to remove everything else, but maybe at least put that curated selection in a group of it's own and make sure the rest are off for scan by default, or whatever the equivalent is for your software package. 3) Try finding a unique door game that you enjoy or enjoyed. 4) Update or customize your menus. Either fully, or just adding some art or ANSI/RIP into the mix. 5) Change out your art. Be it your answer screen, your logon screen, a bulletin, or logoff. Change something. You don't have to do all of the above, or necessarily any of them if you have other ideas. But my challenge to everyone this week is to change or update ONE thing on your board this week, and then tell someone about it and get feedback. I won't promise it will bring new users screaming and hollering to your door, but I CAN guarantee that it will remind you of the joy of building something unique to put out into the world. I know I'll be trying to take my own advice; I hope you'll join me. Peace, long life, and happy trails to you all. Kostie Muirhead (1:134/101) ----------------------------------------------------------------- --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0 * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0) .