Text 767, 115 rader
Skriven 2007-03-26 10:47:00 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
    Kommentar till text 751 av Mithgol the Webmaster (2:5063/88)
Ärende: The hypertext Fidonet
=============================
Hello whoever you are...

On Saturday March 24 2007 08:58, you wrote to me:

 MtW>>> I expect dozens of thousands of users fleeing to the hypertext
 MtW>>> Fidonet because of its advantages,

 MvdV>> I do not expect that to happen, but be careful what you wish
 MvdV>> for. Do you really want FidoNet to be flooded with tens of
 MvdV>> thousands of top qouting anarchists writing under an alias and
 MvdV>> who are impossible to moderate?

 MW> No :-)

Then what is it you want to achieve?

 MW> However, I don't see how just their numbers could make them impossible
 MW> to moderate.

Not just the numbers; their attitude as well...

 MW> For example, 328th nodelist (1995-11-24) had 39827 entries, according
 MW> to the letter in ENet.SysOp by Alex Woick, 2:244/1500 (21 Mar 07
 MW> 22:36) ÄÄ which is seen at
 MW> http://fghi.pp.ru/?area://ENet.SysOp/?msgid=2:244/1500+4601a65c

 MW> This means tens of thousands of sysops, and probably a hundred or two
 MW> hundreds of thousands of points. The Golden Age of Fidonet.

 MW> Was Fidonet impossibe to moderate in that good old times? I hope not.

Things were different then. The vast majority of the users depended on POTS for
their access. Long distance calls were prohibitively expensive and so users had
only a limited number of "access points" available to them. Cutting the feed of
an obnoxious user was not too difficult then.

Today with InterNet connections, a sufficiently determined and knowledgible
user has so many access points available that it is practically impossible to
cut his feed. Today FidoNet is less moderatable than is was in it haydays. A
flood of tens of thousands of new users with an attitude will turn FidoNet into
the anarchy of usenet.

 MW> This is when the cyberspace became a hyperspace, where users are able
 MW> to click hypelinks to teleport. And an illustrated hyperspace ÄÄ after
 MW> HTML has come to life.

 MW> And this moment of the past is when the Fidonet was backstabbed.

It had fulfilled its purpose and was overtaken by something new. Happens all
the time.

 MW> The network once born by a pederast was killed by masochists,

Nice retoric but totally of the mark. Tom Jennings was not a pederast.

 MW> So Fidonet stayed non-hypertext, and now GoldNode+ Nodelist Compiler
 MW> reports only 7163 nodes ÄÄ 18% of much that once was. More than 80% of
 MW> the nodes have fled, because the masochists are always a minority. And
 MW> the net is dying slowly all that twelve years. In the world where the
 MW> number of computers grow almost exponentially, the number of Fidonet
 MW> nodes is dwindling.

So what? Size does not matter.

 MW> I am going to alter this tendency and to change the future.

I fear that I will not like the change you initite...

 MvdV>> Frankly Mithgol, or Sergey, or whatever your name is, I am less
 MvdV>> than enthousiastic about you not simply using your real name in
 MvdV>> the message header. Fidonet has a strong tradition of using
 MvdV>> real names and I would like to keep it that way.

 MW> Let me keep my peculiarity.

Why? Why can you not simply conform to the tradition of using real names?

 MW> If you need my real name as written in passport, you may always find
 MW> it in your copy of Fidonet nodelist,

The nodelist tells me who the sysop is. You could be a user on that system.

 MW>  or in my signature.

I seldom read signatures. I am interested in what people have to say, not in
the wrapper thy put around it.

 MW> What is probably more important is that my signature offers my best
 MW> Fidonet 2.0 regards.

It may be important to you, but to me - the reader - it is not important at
all. As I said: most of the time I do not even read it.

 MW> Fidonet's disadvantage. The major, the principal disadvantage of
 MW> Fidonet is absence of hypertext and hypermedia.

I do not see that as a disadvantage. There is an advantage of limiting writers
to a text only medium. It forces then to think about what they write and that
makes it more interesting.

 MW> With best Fidonet 2.0 regards,
 MW> Mithgol the Webmaster.                 [Real nodelisted name: Sergey
 MW> Sokoloff]

I seem to have some difficulty getting through to you so let me be blunt:

If you insist on keeping your pecularity of not using your real name in the
massage header, I will insist on my pecularity of not wanting to talk to people
using an alias.


Cheers, Michiel

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