Editor's Corner

An Old Idea
By Frank Vest
editor@fidonews.org

In some of the original editions of the Fidonews, there were articles from Nodes about what was happening in there personal lives and other such things. The Editor seemed to encourage this as the thought was that Fidonet was a community. As example of this encouragement, I offer the following excerpts from the Fidonews:

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You are ENCOURAGED to send things in for the newsletter. ANYTHING is fit for the newsletter, such as a description of your board, problems found, questions, jokes, fixes, horror stories about wrong FidoNet numbers, things for sale, etc etc etc.

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I'm not sure that just "ANYTHING" is fit for the Fidonews, but I am willing to accept most anything. We are Fidonet. We are all different. Fidonews is the Newspaper of Fidonet. News from those members is welcome. I'll draw the line at vulgar language.

Tom went on in the first edition to write:

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Oh yeah, I did mention that ... I hereby declare all Fido users and sysops members of the FidoNet Users Group. Sounds pretty stupid, huh? Well ... If there are 100 Fido systems around the country, and each has at least 100 users, thats 10,000 people. Any group that large has advantages, if nothing other than letters to the editor of your favorite magazine. This is just a brainstorm at this point, but is something to keep in mind.

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This would seem to indicate that Users as well as Nodes are welcome in the Fidonews. After all, Fidonet is more than just a bunch of Sysops. Even with our shrinking numbers, there are still Users in Fidonet that access BBS for the message areas. I'll buy that. :)

As you have probably noticed, I've written most of the Fidonews this week. That's nothing new. I've been trying to get articles submitted, but there are always the excuses. Some are pretty good excuses, but the ones that stick out to me are the ones that blame me for articles not being submitted. Really?!? :(

I know that there are guidelines for submissions. The first Fidonews editions had some as well. IE:

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ARTICLE SUBMISSION

The format of this thing is totally ad hoc; please make recomendations as to formats, sections needed, liked, or hated, columns you'd like to see, or see removed, anything at all. If you want to submit something regularly, we can start a column for you.

You are ENCOURAGED to send things in for the newsletter. ANYTHING is fit for the newsletter, such as a description of your board, problems found, questions, jokes, fixes, horror stories about wrong FidoNet numbers, things for sale, etc etc etc.

SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE

An article should have your name, node number (if applicable), followed by the text. Text can be any ASCII derivative; WordStar, soft paragraphs, 8th bit set, etc are all OK.

Articles can be uploaded at either Fido #1 or #51, into the NEWS File Area, or by sending it by FidoNet. There is a convention for naming the files, so that the newsletter can be published automatically.

ARTICLE FILENAMES

file.ART

For article type things

file.SAL

Things for sale

file.NOT

Notices

file.MSC

Miscelaneous things

file.EDT

an Editorial

file.NEW

News items

file.WNT

Wanted items

Make sure the name is unique, especially if you send it by FidoNet, so you dont overwrite another article.

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I'm not saying that we should do as the above, but still... If you don't submit anything, you can't know if it will be accepted. Blame your lazy self. The guidelines for submission are basically that, guidelines. They are mainly technical in nature since the program that makes the Fidonews will not handle high ascii and lines over 70 characters. The rest are still "JUST GUIDELINES". Even the character and length problems are workable. I "fix" the articles that are submitted that don't meet the requirements of the makenews program. I don't mind doing this. I do mind when there are no submissions due to some complaint about the guidelines. That's BS and a bad excuse IMHO.

I've put in an article from me about things happening in my life. Hey, we all have a life and we are all members of the Fidonet community. Write something! If nothing else, when you submit articles, it just might shut me up since the Fidonews will have submissions and I won't have to write so much. :-))

Regards,

Frank