Letters to the Editor

FIDODOWN
By: Kent Anderson, kand@onr.com

To the Editor:

Thanks for publishing the very frightening statistics on the shrinkage in the Fidonet nodelist.

These figures become even more alarming if one looks behind them and realizes that over one third of the nodes listed are not BBS's open to the garden variety user. They are administrative, mail only or private nodes.

Many, many cities, towns and villages in Zone 1 have no BBS at all, and to participate in any way, a user must telnet into a Fido BBS. We owe a huge vote of thanks to those SysOps who provide these services. It may not be too long before that is the only way for a participant to access Fidonet.

It is almost unbelievable to me that one who has experienced the chaos of the Usenet Newsgroups can prefer them to the moderated echoes of Fidonet. We all need to become evangelists in this regard, and spread the word about Fidonet and echomail. If we do not, it will certainly perish.