Text 4096, 103 rader
Skriven 2004-12-23 10:35:28 av Gordon Lewicky (1:153/307)
     Kommentar till en text av SHANNON TALLEY
Ärende: Re: Z1B <> EP1
======================
 Quoting SHANNON TALLEY to GORDON LEWICKY 
 Subj. Re: Z1B <> EP1, dated 22-Dec-2004 15:02 

Hi Shannon,

 > I dunno Shannon, but I think your mind is fixated for some reason
 > on the word "backstat" while you are viewing in your mind the
 > "backbone" list.

 ST> Yes, That's exactly what was happening.  I'm thinking "statistics" in
 ST> one lobe, while backbone is being uttered in the other.. <grin>

Heheh... it's funny how the ole noogin works when it get's caught
up on one word. I bet you could swear you "opened up" the
backbone.na file and never notice that it was the backstat that
was highlited. ;) I've done it myself many a time. Open a file,
say, "that's not it", close it just to reopen it again. See one
word, think another. :)

 ST> At one time, they were all very active.

Well, I wouldn't say all were "very" active, but they generally
had more then just the mod's rule postings in them each month.
I can recall some which would trickle in the odd msg for over a
month, then go great guns for a few weeks, then go back to the
typical "huh, did this area die?" postings, along with the typical
reply to of "Nope" :)

Right now, there just isn't enough posters out there to hit every
echo, and obviously, a lot of those who do post, stay in a
relatively small group of echos.

Not sure of what your uplink can offer, but there is an areafix
command %QUERY which on some tossers will return the traffic in
each echo that you are linked. I use this 2 or 3 times a year,
along with my own bbs's stat program for the msg base, to determine
which "live" but "dead" echos I can move over to passthru and not
have show up online. For me, this has always been a manual
procedure. I do get PO'ed at the self-appointed echo rescuers who
take dead lapsed elist echos, re-list them, and then in a few
months realize they were dropped by the old moderator for good
reason, so they then submit a whole slew of "DROPS" which 3 months
before they supposedly rescued! That PO's me off to no end!!
 
 ST> Well -- you are correct, however I think we've reached a serious
 ST> enough time point in Fidonet to consider dropping more of them simply
 ST> because they have gone over a year without traffic.

I would say that a year without traffic is a good reason to drop
an echo, but I would think that the elist robot is dropping those
that lapse, so a lot of these empty echos are having their updates
sent in to the Elist so they can't be dropped. What can you do?

 ST> I agree.. But then again, how many of these moderators have since long
 ST> gone..?  We honestly don't know.. The keepers of the list haven't been
 ST> keeping up with it.

I dunno, I agree with the NAB when it comes to the list. Mail
movers are hands off. Yes, when the system was put together, it
was designed for ease of additions and maintaining mod/echo info.
It was never tied to traffic. Echos have never been subjected to
minimum traffic. If you wanted an echo, you created it, submitted
it to the Elist, waited for the ack receipt and submitted that to
the echolist robot for adding. Even the 2 robots, Elist and
Backbone, are separate entities, operating at arm's length from 2
different systems.

The whole NAB system is designed on the premise that the echo is
the mod's, and they, the mods, hold all responsibility to get it
listed, boned, updated and dropped at their, the mods, discretion.

I can understand both sides of the argument, but I sure wouldn't
want to have the job of verifying every echo, and what rules would
you decide by. What's the limit for life? What if the mod is
present, doesn't really care about the dead echo, but won't take it out
of circulation. Does any one of us have the right to say you can't
have that echo? How many msgs a month makes the grade? What if
the msgs are all rules and "this alive?" and "Yeup, it's alive"
msgs. Does that constitute a dead area?

The real final arbitrator is we the sysop. We either make the area
available in our readable msg base or we don't. We areafix it or
don't. I was PO'ed at all of drops by rescuers. I had to delete
those areas manually, by reading the "backstat all the time. I
finally got fed up and asked for a drop routine from my software's
author, so it would delete any area found in my msgbase but not
found in the list. It would already add new ones, just didn't drop
them at the time. Now, my only concern is empty areas, but my
software shows the users how many msgs in each area, so there
really is no excuse for entering an empty area, unless they are
like most people, and never read the screen or they want to post a
new msg! :)

Anywho, Merry Christmas to you and your's as well. :)

Cheers...
Gordon Lewicky (Pdk)

email glewicky@telus.net   www.milkyway-bbs.ca


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