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Skriven 2011-09-25 00:18:46 av Janis Kracht (1:261/38)
Ärende: FidoNews Vol. 28 No. 39 Articles
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                         Sustainability Part III.

                          Richard Webb 1:116/901

     Last time I was making some broad comparisons between Usenet and
     Fidonet.  It should be obvious to most of you where I'm going with
     this, at least the outline of the picture is probably in your mind.
     But, let's continue anyway.  Let's zoom in a bit closer, maybe it
     might help us all to see what's happening here.

     I live in North America, I get my feed in North America.  I can't
     tell you for sure about other continent wide backbones, or even if
     they exist.  But, I'm sure that the North American Backbone  is a
     good indicator of what's happening elsewhere as well.

     There are as of September 14 206 echoes listed in backbone.na. OF
     those 84 are only of interest to computer hobbyists. 39 other
     echoes are of no interest to anyone outside of Fidonet. This
     indicates that 123 echoes on the North American Backbone That's a
     whooping 59% of all echoes listed on the backbone. That's right
     folks, 123 echoes would have zero relevance to the public at all.
     Almost sixty percent of echo tags carried on the backbone have no
     relevance at all to someone not a sysop or whose primary interest
     isn't computers.  Incest, in case you missed basic biology is not
     a healthy way to maintain a viable population.

     Ten of those echoes which might be of interest to someone not a
     computer hobbyist are gated newsgroups.  IF they want those, all
     they need do is boot up outlook and go to their favorite nntp host.

     Speaking of your favorite nntp host, I just had a look at the
     groups offered by mine.  Over 26,000 newsgroups.  That may have
     changed as I heard they were going to drop the alt.binaries
     hierarchy.

     We all know what Fidonet offered in its heyday that Usenet didn't.
     Moderated forums that were maintained for the most part to keep
     that user participating.  Usenet was considered by many to be a
     vast wasteland of spam and various scams perpetrated by people who
     used it to reach a wide audience.  But, as our numbers started to
     decline we forgot how to promote.  WE deemed promotion unnecessary,
     after all, the nodelist is shrinking, too bad, so sad, "want some
     cheese with your whine?"  I still talk to folks who are engaged and
     interested who will remain active in Fidonet as long as there is a
     Fidonet.  Some of them even do a bit of innovation.  The key to
     keeping those nodes listed is the users as I've already stated.

     We've all heard "build it and they will come."  There's some truth
     to that, but first you've got to tell them you built it.  If not
     that great "they" you're looking for don't know you exist.  In
     those early days of Fidonet "they" discovered you because their
     friends told them they could enhance their experience with that new
     wonder box they bought.  They learned about shareware, try it
     before you buy, discussion groups available even if the internet
     wasn't yet a local call and they didn't have money for Aol
     Compuserv or Prodigy.  But, along the way when internet providers
     came to town we forgot to promote, we let the moderators of our
     special interest echoes grow apathetic and leave.

     Still they'll come, if they can get most of what they want from one
     source they'll be more than happy to patronize a bbs again.  Many
     tell me they'd be more than happy to patronize a bbs, if they found
     one that offered what they wanted.  Note I keep coming back to ham
     radio, because that's one of my major hobbies.  For a long time
     after returning to Fidonet I had a point who called once a week to
     pick up mail.  He dropped off before the ham-fdn was formed
     however.  Would he have contributed to it?  Probably.  Did he post
     in the ham echo?  No, he lurked in both ham and amateur_radio but
     found little there.

     I use him as an example because he's a fellow with a wide variety
     of interests.  Other than the ham radio echoes though he wasn't
     interested in nostalgia or politics, he lurked in the linux echo
     and avoided the rest of the general interest echoes.  After a few
     months he just quit calling once a week to pick up mail bundles.
     HE didn't feel they were worth the ld call anymore.  Here's a guy
     who would have participated had he found conversation to
     participate in, and probably would go hunting for that great piece
     of software or that file to contribute to the ham-fdn.  But, he
     could get most of what he saw in the ham echo in a more timely
     fashion elsewhere, even if he grabbed a mail bundle every day.
     It's conversation he's looking for, and he wasn't finding it. in
     Fidonet echoes potentially of interest to him.  Yeah I know, and
     told him as well, start one.

     In another Fidonet publication I recently referenced people using
     usenet to promote various web based forums on a variety of
     interests.  Often the response from the users of the group they're
     seeking goes like this.  "Why participate in your forum with the
     slow to load pages, the pop-up ads and the like?  I can log into my
     nntp host and get newsgroups on a wide variety of topics of
     interest to me.  I only have so many hours in the day to devote to
     online conversation and already participate in one or two web-based
     forums of interest.  What makes yours so special?  If I choose to
     patronize yours I have to give up another one ... " same old story
     with similar points touched.

     Face it, we're probably never going to get back to the day of
     36,000 individual sysops in Fidonet.  Those days are gone.  But by
     putting a little effort into offering a wide variety of message and
     file echoes to that user we keep the user interested, and keeping
     the user interested enough to log on or become a point is how we
     keep that sysop interested in keeping a node in the nodelist.


     FIDONEWS Vol 28 No 39              Page 4          September 26 2011




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