FidoNet needs some love. reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2015-04-17 23:22 So, I was seriously considering starting up a BBS. I was getting frustrated telnetting around, and I wanted to sort of put together the sort of board I'd like to use. Anyway, way back in the early 90s I ran a board which was a Fidonet node. I was curious about how active Fidonet was, and whether all the dead echoes I find on boards are a result of the network being essentially moribund, or, possibly, misconfigured. So I started Googling around. I wanted to see a Nodelist in particular. A Google search on Fidonet goes here: http://www.fidonet.org/ This is also the page the Wikipedia article on Fidonet lists as the official website. Well I know that website has been barely touched in years. But it's worse than that. Consider this: http://www.fidonet.org/genlinfo.html This claims that: > FidoNet consists of approximately 10,000 systems world-wide As of when? > which comprise a network which exchanges mail and files via Modems using a proprietary protocol. Do they still? > They are connected for the purposes of exchanging E-Mail to the Internet thru a series of gateway systems which interact with the Internet via UUCP with cooperating UNIX-based smart-hosts which act as their MX-receivers. > With some exceptions, you cannot Telnet or FTP to a FidoNet site, only communicate via E-Mail and Usenet News. Well, you can tell how old this is by this last bit. The policy document is from 1989. That might be fine, but one would think there'd be some updates since then given the Internet. The Active Nodes link - arguably the most important one - goes [here](http://www.ftngate.net/fidonet/). It is unclear how or where to get a Nodelist. Fido News, if it still exists, dates from 1999: http://fidonews.org/ A link remains to Zone 6, which hasn't existed in something like 8 years. Now, a few things are obvious: * It is 2015, and the relevance of Fidonet is unclear. * It's not going to be anyone's priority in 2015 * But surely something as historically important as Fidonet deserves, at very least, a single, up-to-date web page. I don't mean this message as a complaint or to slag anyone. I'm just wondering, for those of you who run Fidonet nodes, what is the state of the network? Can it be salvaged? Where can I download a Nodelist? Does anywhere parse the Nodelist and create a nice clean BBS list? Would there be interest in doing so? Describe your current experience with Fidonet. Is it still active? Which echoes are reliably active? Any ideas about the website? WHOIS suggests the domain is owned by some fellow named Ward Dossche. Is he still active in the BBS world? I think I found some social networking sites that suggest he was Zone coordinator, presumably for Europe, until 2014 (he may just not have updated this in his social networking profile and is still active.) What are currently the most active BBS networks. It seems like there are too many boards and not enough users (meaning, a lot of people are throwing up stock software and not doing much else with them.) By the way, [Zone 1's Web Page](http://www.z1.fidonet.org/) shows a last updated date of 2004. **EDIT:** * [Found current Nodelists here](http://www.filegate.net/nodelist/). * [Found current Fido News here](http://www.fidonews.ca/fnews/index.html). Echomail stats are included, showing what's active. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- oh_nater · 2015-04-18 00:51 WWIVnet or bust ! ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- slewp · 2015-04-18 02:30 Thanks for posting, I've wondered the same in the past. Thanks for posting any updates here ---------------------------------------------------------------------- f15sim · 2015-04-18 02:53 Unfortunately it's still very much Fight-o-Net. The fidonews echo is a shit show that's populated by the worst of the old guard. Janis Kracht (sp) does a good job for Z1 despite the best efforts of the jerks in Z2 and Z3. Long live Net 138! :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2015-04-18 14:42 What are the problems exactly? Viva net 140 :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rastervision · 2015-04-19 00:42 It was used as a means of communication in the Egyptian uprising a few years back. It would be ideal for developing countries, where the communications infrastructure isn't well developed. In places where the internet is inexpensive and easy to get on, there are now better options, such as reddit. It's real value, in developed countries, would be during natural disasters. Message packets could be shared between people on some sort of mesh network, allowing people to get information even if the internet and power grids were down. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- samalex01 · 2015-04-19 05:35 I agree. The last Fidonet board I ran was around 2001, and I got a feed from a guy in Canada (can't remember name) that was supplying feeds for lots of Telnet boards. Now'days it seems Fidonet is more there for nostalgia, and most conversation is through DoveNet, Usenet, or a few other QWK networks out there. Also when the Reddit link gets setup that'll gate more content into the BBS world. Net 388 on how I miss thee... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- samalex01 · 2015-04-19 05:39 I just found this for your nostalgic pleasure: https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/host- tables/FIDONet-Hosts.txt I'm unsure when it was published, but I assume 1993 or prior because it lists Brazos de Dios BBS here in Waco (Net 388) which was a board that ran from the Branch Davidian compound right up until the power and phones were cut. The Sysop Wayne Martin died in the fire. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-04-20 14:03 I keep thinking about getting fidonet on my board, but I share your experience - none of the echos seem very active. ;/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- f15sim · 2015-04-20 21:18 Read the FidoNews echo. You'll see. Z1 Sysops is pretty brutal as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-04-21 03:17 FUCK FIDONET ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-04-21 03:19 dovenet is full of lame ass wannabe sysops, usenet is full of spammers (best used for binaries) and all 'qwk networks' are dead. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-04-21 03:20 i joined fidonet a few times. always had problems with my feeds. then when it was working it was just a handful of people arguing in the sysops echo. just not worth it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-04-21 11:47 Really... Mro, why do you even bother with BBSing anymore if you hate it so much? DOVEnet and Agoranet are both pretty active. Maybe all of these nets look so dead to you because many people block you because you come off consistently so negative and mean-spirited? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-04-21 16:37 That's pretty much how I see it too. Agoranet, DOVEnet are both pretty active - I see the occasional post or two on MusicalNet as well. I'm not on Fidonet because it just seems to be pretty dead whenever I see it on other boards so I never bothered to set it up on mine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-04-21 16:38 I wish WWIVnet had some sort of QWK gateway so I could add it to my Sync board. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-04-30 14:56 its all about the Users, and there arent any. Look at dovenet, its all sysop users. Im guilty too. Maybe the key is to hide it, but web forums uodate quicker than the slow bbs week long.coversation styles. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-05-03 02:10 quit being such a faggot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-05-03 02:14 also dovenet isnt the entirety of bbsing. nor is synchronet. you may fit in nicely with those lame people but not all of us do. you dont have enough time or hard work invested to question me about this or that. i have put a LOT of time and money into helping people over the last 15 years and i dont have to explain myself to some lame ass who is another flash in the pan sysop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 02:16 And now I'm tired of defending you. You really are an asshole like everyone says. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-05-03 02:17 yeah you're right. it would be great to have some actual real users interact in message bases. if you notice, a lot of these conversations drag on for a long time and dont really go anywhere. it's probably because it's just the same handful of people. they dont even change the subject lines when talking about other subjects. btw, nolageek sorry for being a negative nancy and feel free to downvote my post if it gets your little dick hard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2015-05-03 02:26 obviously i need nobody to defend me. i do a great job of that myself. you're another one of those dicks that fits in great with those dovenet and angora net fags. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2015-05-03 02:54 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 03:15 I upvote posts that are helpful or topical and downvote ones that are not. You're the one that seems to get off on being mean spirited. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 03:23 I have a few regular callers and none of them are sysops, many of them post on my local subs from time to time. I agree, many of the discussions are by sysops on their own boards, but that's the nature of the scene now. It is driven largely on nostalgia at this point - but after a year of being back after taking my old board down about 15 years ago, I'm glad to see discussions going on - why does it matter if it's sysops or non-sysops? I'd like to see more users in general, I don't care if they all run a board. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 03:57 I don't question your experience. I'll be the first person to admit how helpful you were to me when I was getting back into the scene - I'll also be the first to tell you when I think you're too negative. I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, you're negative. However, as someone who cares a lot about BBSing I try to be helpful to new users when they have questions. As a moderator of this subreddit, I simply ask that you stop making personal attacks on people when they disagree with you. Yes, I know synchronet isn't the entirety of BBSing - that's why I run a mystic board for my friends back home and a x/84 board for fun (although I admit I suck at python so it's not the greatest.) I enjoy modding my synchronet board though, and I've gotten more and more comfortable with javascript and baja. I ran a wwiv board for almost 10 years (2 lines for a few of those years as well as provided internet access to users via SLIP/PPP) before I took it down in 2000 so I have some history before my current 'flash in the pan' board - that I've had running for a year and half which will soon be running on a dedicated server in one of the best data centers in the country (work perk!) It's not going anywhere any time soon. Get over yourself. If you spent half as much time being respectful and positive to new users (and others) as you do telling us all how awesome you are I bet it'd go a long way to helping the scene that you're so convinced is dead. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-05-03 13:40 regular callers? wow.. I think Ive had people show up over the span of a week to download stuff, and once they get their fill, that's it. You can only LORD and TW2002 so many times. > -=-=-=-=-=- Trade Wars 2002 ver 3.09 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > 09:20:00 AM 05/01/27 : TW Maintence program ran -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > Extern completed normally... > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > 03:19:45 PM 05/01/27 Neozeed(1): Ran Tradewars 2002. > 03:19:57 PM 05/01/27 Neozeed(1): Normal exit > 06:03:05 PM 05/01/27 Guest(2): New Player on Trade Wars > Under the assumed name of Guest > 06:03:59 PM 05/01/27 Guest(2): Normal exit But then again much to my surprised there is someone out there probing around. A few years ago I ran a tw tournament for some other forum thing when everyone was going all nostalgic, and it was going well for a week, then as soon as someone misses a day for whatever reason it all goes to hell. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-05-03 13:43 > a lot of these conversations drag on for a long time and dont really go anywhere It's the medium. It's a pain in the ass to check bbs messages with a phone, or god help you if you are in some shitty network that blocks telnet. BBS'es never were that good for immediate, it was all batch back then. The problem is that modern systems do messaging much better. The only thing BBS'es have is MS-DOS based doors. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 15:10 Well, I don't want to sound like I'm getting tons of call - but I get 3-5 callers day most days, some of them call more than once a day but my last10 doesn't show them multiple times (I need to fix that. :)) I don't have a downloads section, I didn't have one 'back in the day' either. Just never was my thing. I like the social aspect of it more I guess. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 15:17 And that's why most of the conversions are amongst sysops - I log onto my board probably 5-10x a day, I bet others are similar. We're on the board more so we see more messages and reply more. I disagree with this notion that only sysops are calling each other - I rarely have sysops call my board (though perhaps because I'm on IRC all the time and we talk there?) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-05-03 15:34 well the only people who would care long enough to chat would be sysops, or former sysops... Or people like me that always wanted to sysop but were constantly thwarted on getting a dedicated phone line. IRC just shows how there are better things to do it in the future. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with the fun of running a BBS on OS/2 2.0 in 2015, but seeing it work is still pretty cool. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-05-03 15:40 When I first set this board up nearly four years ago, I thought the best thing I could try was MS-DOS doors, as they tend to run better on OS/2 than Linux+DOSBox as they can interact with eachother. So I managed to get ahold of the LORD and TW people to buy a copy although I changed names of the board... but whatever I thought it'd be cool.. Then I saw everyone has a copy of it running so big whoop. And even when I managed to get people playing it, very rarely were people on at the same time, just because of how people were spread across the world. Oh well I guess it's the retro in a VM thing, sure I can run SIMH, and have a super decked out VAX-11/780 that would be far larger than my apt, just as I can keep running OS/2 like it's 1992. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 15:48 And that's part of it. Also, BBsing is still very popular in countries where the internet is heavily regulated. They're not just a retro/nostalgia thing elsewhere. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-05-03 15:52 I'd laugh if there were any in China. I tried dialling the Hong Kong boards, but I don't get anything. Any leads on these underground boards? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2015-05-03 16:56 Although probably not so much underground, an example of a Taiwan BBS is PTT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTT_Bulletin_Board_System) I'm not sure ho old these stats are but wikipedia says: "more than 1.5 million registered users, with over 150,000 users online during peak hours. The BBS has over 20,000 boards covering a multitude of topics, and more than 20000 articles and 500000 comments are posted every day." The board isn't in english, so it's dificult to understand whats going on. I have never seen a current "BBS List" but I've read articles that have said there there are a bunch of them online. And theres a few asian ansi sites.. http://www.cambus.net/taiwanese-bbses-and-unicode-ansi-art/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- autowikibot · 2015-05-03 16:56 ##### ###### #### [**PTT Bulletin Board System**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTT%20B ulletin%20Board%20System): [](#sfw) --- > >__PTT Bulletin Board System__ (__PTT__, [simplified Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters): 批踢踢实业坊; [traditional Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditiona l_Chinese_characters): 批踢踢實業坊; [pinyin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin): *Pītītī Shíyè Fāng*, telnet://ptt.cc) is the largest terminal-based [bulletin board system (BBS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system) based in [Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan). It was founded by Yi- Chin Tu and other students from the [National Taiwan University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Taiwan_University) in 1995, and it is currently administrated by the Electronic BBS Research Society as a [non- commercial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-commercial) and [open- source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source) BBS. >PTT has more than 1.5 million registered users, with over 150,000 users online during peak hours. The BBS has over 20,000 boards covering a multitude of topics, and more than 20000 articles and 500000 comments are posted every day. >==== >[**Image**](https://i.imgur.com/5RZHIzA.png) [^(i)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pttlogin.png) - *PTT login screen* --- ^Interesting: [^Roadgeek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadgeek) ^| [^Bulletin ^board ^system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system) ^| [^List ^of ^bulletin ^board ^systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li st_of_bulletin_board_systems) ^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+cqx1rcp) ^or[](#or) [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+cqx1rcp)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| [^(FAQs)](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/wiki/index) ^| [^Mods ](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1x013o/for_moderator s_switches_commands_and_css/) ^| [^Magic ^Words](http://www.np.reddit. com/r/autowikibot/comments/1ux484/ask_wikibot/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2015-05-04 00:00 Heh I bet that one isn't accessible from China where the internet is restricted. They shut stuff down all the time. Although reddit is allowed, go figure.