Letters to the Editor

• Editorial Response - At What Age?
• Something Special about Fido
• Immaturity & Sysops

Editorial Response - At What Age?
Echomail From the Fidonews Conference
Nahum Wengrov, 2:402/633

Responding to what FidoNews Robot wrote to All, about FidoNews 17:16 [01/07]: Editorial, on 17 Apr 00, 00:16

FR> So at what age is one sufficiently mature to post in a Fidonet
FR> echo?

I don't know about Fidonet, but we have here in Israel 2 local Fido-style networks in Hebrew. The average age of most active participants is 16. The youngest participants to write regularly were 12 when they joined.

English is a second language here, and I don't think there are many teenagers here fluent enough in English to enjoy reading, let alone writing, in an international English network. Perhaps that's the reason why most of Ultinet and C-net members don't bother to write in Fidonet.

FR> Nineteen isn't such a bad age. Though the age seems far away
FR> to me at the age of 53, I seem to recall that I had most of my
FR> language skills developed by that age and had a good general
FR> idea of how people interacted. While I've got to admit that
FR> subsequent life experience has modified my approach to things,
FR> I believe that at the age of 19 I was sufficiently mature to
FR> enter conversations as an adult. But then, I wasn't online
FR> then... I was nineteen in the sixties and hardly anyone was
FR> online then! Especially, I wasn't interacting in a hobby which
FR> has somewhat passed its prime and whose participants tend to
FR> middle age rather than youth.

I was a Yeshiva (Rabbinical College) student at the age of 19, in the 70's. I didn't own or have access to a computer yet. I got my first computer when I was 25, and only bought a modem a few years later. It took me a few years of modeming to discover the Fido-style mail networks here.

By now, BBS's in Israel are mail-only or dead. The majority of C-net participants already polls their mail from their 2 Internet hubs. The future is in the Internet.

FR> Imagine... the future of Fido is in the hands of a sysop who
FR> goes by the handle of Black Death. Kinda scary, eh?

In a few years he'll probably change his handle :)

Something Special about Fido
Email to the Editor
Bruce Anderson

For some reason, decided to check out Fidonet presence on the net a couple of days ago, and was pleasantly surprised.

As part of Fidonet for about 8 years, (86-94?), and as the NC of Net 342 (Region 17), I cherish the time spent in the Fidonet community. Changing priorities resulted in me dropping Fidonet activities, but I'm glad to see Fidonet is, in this day and age of the Internet, thriving. (Some may question that description, but all things considered...)

Fidonet does have something special. Keep that in mind.

Bruce Anderson
(Past NC of Net 342 - Fort McMurray, AB, Canada
Presently of Gladstone, Queensland, Australia).
shale@bigpond.com

Immaturity & Sysops
Email to the Editor
Michael Adams
michaeladams@mail.com

Immaturity is irrelevant to young age. Here in Florida, there used to be a number of young sysops here. Around 1997, a guy shut down a system he ran since age 12. Around 1996, I started using BBS' and ran one from 7-1996 to 3-1999: Fidonet 1:374/163; the Slug BBS. My age at bootup: 15. My age before shutdown: 17 (18 in May).

We need the young people. We also need young people who could use their cable modems to run Telnettable BBS', as Internet is here to stay, and there won't be any 374 net 2 years from now. But that's another issue, and one that may be interesting.

Long live the BBS'!

Michael Adams
Former Sysop, The Slug BBS, 1:374/163

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Editor: There's a corrolation between age and immaturity to my experience, as I find most young people refreshingly unencumbered by excessive maturity. If I want to try something new or innovative, I value a bit of immaturity. The "mature" response to innovation is that the old way was good enough.