Editorial

Dr. Thom and Mr... hide?

Prologue:

Echo Holders in the Village of Fido have long relied on the machinery of Dr. Thom's Laboratory to protect their tenuous holdings. But the Holders have long been warned that vigilance is a necessary price for this protection, for certain Raiders have studied the workings of Dr. Thom's machinery, and know when an echo lies unwatched. Could the whisperings of the Elder Echo Holders be true... that one of the newer raiders, Mr. Tom, has gone into hiding rather than face the Elders who have discovered that Mr. Tom is the evil Alter Ego of Dr. Thom?

Cast of Characters:

Thom LaCosta

Thom is the operator of "The Other Robot," which maintains a data base of echo tags, echo moderators, and echo rules as used in Zone 1. Thom is also nodelisted as Echolist @ 1:1/21 in recognition that his echolist is considered definitive (i.e. a moderator listed in his echolist is considered official despite any claims to the contrary). Thom received this administrative node number primarily because he had the only operating echolist at the time that Adrian Walker dropped his efforts. Thom currently moderates 35 echoes himself, according to Elist 109.

Tom Knowles

Tom is a user on Thom LaCosta's BBS who began moderating about 9 months ago. In the echo MODERATOR, he has become a controversial figure, known mostly for his authoritarian style of moderation. He invites critics of his moderation to leave the echo and maintains that echo participants have no say in the tone he sets for the echo. Tom appears to be in hiding right now as he is accused of being, in reality, Thom LaCosta. Tom is currently listed as moderator for seven echoes.

Ruth Argust

Ruth is a famous Super-Bitch, best known for moving her net from Region 10 to Region 12 when Bob Kohl threatened to dissolve her net. Ruth has noted that Tom seems to have unusual access to Thom's equipment, including special access to the elist robot and access to Timed, a sysop editor which only operates locally on a BBS. Ruth draws her evidence from the very posts of Tom Knowles in the MODERATOR conference, so fabrication is out of the question, and maintains that the most likely explanation is that Tom Knowles and Thom LaCosta are one and the same. Neither Thom nor Tom have addressed this accusation to date. Ruth moderates nine echoes on Fidonet.

Bobby Queen

Bobby has never met an echo he doesn't like, as evidenced by the fact that he is currently listed as moderator for 133 echoes. Bobby operates primarily by searching the echolist for echoes about to expire, either because the moderator forgot or is no longer active. He acquires the echoes by emailing a moderator update immediately after the echo expires, thereby causing the robot to accept his update as a new listing. Bobby was surprised that Tom Knowles was able to elist some of the echoes he was after, and notes that this would be possible if Thom LaCosta made the changes before the expired listings were available to the public.

Bob Moravsik

Bob has nothing to do with what's going on here, but I thought I'd give him honorable mention because his reputation as an "echo raider" exceeds Bobby's. Bob, however, only has 20 echoes listed... he's just managed to raise more hell with what he has :)

The Story:

The history of Tom Knowles actually comes in two parts. First, his echo acquisitions as detailed by Bobby Queen recently in a public post:

----

Elist902 Tom Knowles first appeared and elisted the following echos...
BGFAX
ECHOPOL
MODERATOR

I had been querying the robot that month and all 3 were in my list of ones to update.

Then he took a break because he might have thought that someone might figure out what was going on. Then he reappeared...

Elist907 Tom Knowles reappeared and elisted the following echos...
REC
ZEC

Again I had been querying the robot and those 2 were on my list also. :)

Elist909 He reappeared and this time elisted the following 3 echos...
FIDONET
JUNO
Z1_BACKBONE

Again all 3 were on my queries that month and all 3 were updated on the 1st. That is one thing about Tom Knowles that you will notice. Also that month his updates showed up funny on the eladd.txt in that months packet. :)

Elist910 or as he put it out elist109 He again reappeared and elisted the echo...
WORDSTAR

----

Of course, Tom's ability to successfully raid echoes does not conclusively prove that he's an alter ego of Thom LaCosta, nor even that Thom is working in concert with him. However, there are two eye-raising points to be drawn from this record.

Anyone who can beat Bobby Queen to an expired echo listing has to be noted as a master of the technique. And yet, Tom Knowles was never heard from prior to his first elisting.

And a look at the echoes he raided indicates an uncommon interest in administrative echoes, which are normally of zero interest to non-sysops.

How so odd that a new face should appear from nowhere and show mastery of techniques which would be known to Thom LaCosta and gain control of echoes which might be of interest to Thom LaCosta...

The second part of the story focuses on Tom's moderation of the MODERATOR echo. There is actually more in the postings of Tom Knowles to suggest a common identity with Thom LaCosta than in the history of his echo acquisitions. In reading of the posts of the last few weeks, I am struck as to the similarities in writing style between Thom and Tom. Tom likes to quote the rules he has written as totally sufficient and completely justified on his own authority... Thom takes the same attitude in his activities. Tom likes to promote the concept of "voting with your feet" as the ultimate recourse - Thom has used the same arguments in the past. Tom uses an unusual "slashed" style in his sentences which I've noted in Thom's posting in the past. It goes something like this: "If you don't agree with/can abide by the rules..."

None of these observations are conclusive, but there's enough coincidence here to raise an eyebrow.

Then there are events which just don't make sense unless one suspects a ruse. Tom posts from Thom's BBS, and yet several people report that there is no Tom Knowles listed in the Baltimore area. Could Tom be posting under an alias... or telenetting in from some other location? Is Thom's BBS even telenettable?

Tom has Thom post the echo rules in his behalf, ostensibly because he can't figure out how to upload a text file to the BBS. But is it logical to believe that a user who shows a complete command of elisting procedures and may even have access to Thom's operating system could be too clueless to upload a text file? Even if Thom's BBS doesn't support this capability, terminal programs such as Telemate can accomplish this.

Of course, none of these speculations are conclusive... but one item seems conclusive to this editor... as posted by Ruth Argust in the MODERATOR echo:

----

Tom Knowles wrote in a message to C.A. Klingel:

TK> @MSGID: 1:261/1352.0 80315d81
TK> @REPLY: 1:2410/351.0 380094be
TK> @PID: timEd 1.10+
TK> @TID: GE 1.11+
TK> @CHRS: IBMPC 2

Hey I didn't know that a user on a BBS could use TimEd! Wow, news to me. How do you have that configured since it's impossible!

TimEd can only be used locally. Did you know that Thom LaCosta also uses TimEd to post under the same node number?

Watch it, neither of you have updated for the Y2K bug.

I think that the jig is up.

*ruth*

----

Though one echo participant pointed out that a remote user could conceivably use TimEd through a Doorway program, this is unlikely. First, most Doorway programs launch a secondary copy of COMMAND.COM to give a remote user access to MSDOS while the BBS is still running. This secondary copy of COMMAND.COM has much less conventional memory available to it than is required by many programs, so it may not even be possible to run TimEd through such a program. Secondly, giving a remote user access to MSDOS enables them to do such things as formatting the hard drive, downloading the user passwords, installing themselves as sysop... in other words, Thom would be unlikely to give such access to anyone unless his BBS security is incredibly lax. It's more likely that Tom Knowles was sitting at the keyboard of Thom's system in order to use TimEd to quote a message to C. A. Klingel... a likely event if, indeed, Thom and Tom are actually the same person.

Epilogue:

The most likely outcome of this story is a weakening of the echolist system as a means of identifying the actual moderator of a system. Certainly, Tom Knowles authority as a moderator is non-existent by now, and Thom's credibility as echolist keeper is diminished by the knowledge that he'll use his position for the trivial acquisition of echoes. At this point, it almost doesn't matter whether Thom posts on the subject - his silence won't cause the growing conviction that he posed as Tom Knowles to diminish. The evidence supporting this seems too conclusive.