Guest Editorial

by: Dave Hamilton

To: editor@fidonews.org 01-06-01

Warren - I wrote this days ago and forgot to send it to you. I gotta start eating fish or something..

And we'll have fun fun fun till our *C takes our listing away Dave Hamilton 1:229/622

I'm rarely short of comments about Fidonet politics, but Steven Leeman's plea for sysop support brought lots of opinions into play. Many of them were from Z1 sysops. Most sysops were offended by what they considered to be an obvious abuse of power by the Z2C/IC. Many are still offended. A netmail friend wonders how "this has slipped through the cracks of Justice."

We anti-policy folks figured this would be a point for our side. I was hoping to gain a convert or two besides Steven Leeman himself, but it didn't take long to see that it wasn't going to happen. Dallas Hinton sent me a single, contextless message in the Z1C echo, saying "I told you so." Excuse me? He told me what? That Ward Dossche has a history of abusing sysops? If he does, has anyone ever cared enough to point that out, since he was running for IC? Maybe Dallas was referring to the occurrance of power abuse that will happen within the walls of the beloved PeeFour rat's maze? No, wait, that would have been me telling him, "I told you so."

The Debating Team in favour of policy has been arguing that there is no power, or at least it exists only in the mind of the sysop who allows herself/himself to be abused. Well, well. Those of us in the hated Region 12 who by-and-large ignore P4 altogether take that for granted. You stick someone with a text editor into the /0 slot in a nodelist segment and the power has been handed over to that person for the duration of their occupation of that line in the list. The time for the sysop to imagine this power came and went with this action, and now it belongs to the *C. Whether the sysop will ever be able to get it back depends upon too many variables to enumerate here, but the current policy document leaves it with the group of RCs commonly referred to as elflords. PeeFour even gives them examples of how use of this power can be justified.

I find it difficult to empathize with folks who are calling this threat to remove a sysop "injustice" and expecting their whining to accomplish anything for any Fidonet sysop in the world. It reminds me of people who enter a religious building on their favourite day of the week, pray intensely for all the starving children in the world, then return to work, congratulating themselves on their compassion.

David Calafrancesco has a very clear understanding of Ward's policy peccadillo: he calls it extortion. David presents a cogent case that Ward's threat to forcefully remove a personal asset (Fidonet membership) from Steven Leeman unless Steven hands over other of his personal assets (internet domain names he has registered) is a criminal act. Maybe this argument is where my friend's reference to justice comes from. I'd like to agree with David but I don't know Belgian law, so I can't comment.

What I do know is Fidonet policy, and it doesn't define extortion. It gives loaded weapons to people who edit the nodelist. It does say that they can't shoot members with those methods for no reason at all. But whatever reason they come up with only has to be justified by *Cs. Sysops have no rights whatsoever. *Cs are not accountable to us. Some of them choose to be accountable to their nets or regions or zones, but they are not required to do so by policy, and this Dossche-Leeman affair is an excellent example. If you had any belief that elflords are accountable to sysops, Ward has just explained and demonstrated that they are not.

Should Ward Dossche step down? I don't think this is a relevant question. I would rather see us wonder if we as sysops should have a way to decide that, rather than just decide if we should ask him nicely to please not threaten any more sysops.

If sysops want rights we are going to have to take them back. The elflords are not going to give us rights. The Zone 1 RCC had the opportunity to give Zone 1 sysops the right to vote in our Z1C election, and they turned that opportunity down, leaving the decision with the RCs just as policy dictates.

Let me be establish dibs on the "I told you so" point for the next debate about power when the next sysop gets jerked around at some elflord's whim. It will happen again because policy invites it. If the next victim recovers it will be because some collection of sysops will ignore policy or make exceptions to it or otherwise work around it. Maybe a sufficient number of sysops near the scene will be able to grow a spine and route around the offender. We can always hope.

Editor's Note:
All of the facts stated above by David, are as true as sunshine. If Sysops want to have any say in Fidonet, they best get their act together and form a new "P5". The old P4 has eroded over the last decade as has the nodelist. A lot of it's guidelines are good, and a lot are inaccurate in todays technology, still other parts are upside down to what the Sysops want in return for supporting Fidonet.

With out Sysops, Fidonet ceases to exist. The *C's have a problem with each other as it is on many occasions. It would fall apart.

On a brighter note, should the Sysops be given voice via voting power the nodelist may start to grow again.