Answer Of The Week

• From: Aleksej R. Serdyukov
• Dear Reverend Visage
• From: Todd Sullivan

Does Fidonet need a Policy?
From: Aleksej R. Serdyukov

Sure, but of course, with some changes..

Basically because it is old (11 or 12 years is not good for policies, either real or computer).

1.2.1.2 Points - heh, I don't like some of the part ;) ok..

>1.3.1 FidoNews
>FidoNews is a weekly newsletter distributed in electronic form
>throughout the network. It is an important medium by which FidoNet
>sysops communicate with each other. FidoNews provides a sense of
>being a community of people with common interests. Accordingly,
>sysops and users are encouraged to contribute to FidoNews.
>Contributions are submitted to node 1:1/1; a file describing the
>format to be used is available from 1:1/1 and many other systems.

Hmm.. May be, it is for those times, when the editor was 1:1/1 ?

>2.1.9 Private Nodes

>Private listings which are for the convenience of one sysop (at the
>expense of every other sysop in FidoNet) are a luxury which is no
>longer possible.

I think it is neordinary and... if it was true, there weren't so many Private nodes ;)

>4.2 "Bombing run"

I think it would be very useful to replace it by more modern word - "spam".

I haven't said also, that P4 says main part of FidoNet is NETMAIL. And echos are only mightly but not biggest part of it.. It calls "netmail" "normal mail", (like all software, but software cannot detect it exactly ;)

Dear Reverend Visage,

Dear Editorbeing,

This article is submitted by Charles Herriot (c.herriot@sympatico.ca), late of 163/110, late of Region 12, etc, etc, who managed to chain Doc Logger to a keyboard long enough to get this screed wrapped in fish and sent off to his adoring fan...

Roll da flic, Frank...

Dear Reverend Visage,

I've cued up the soundtrack from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and cranked the volume past the pain threshold in order to play "Let's Do The Time Warp Again." I needed appropriate ambience to wade through the Important and Urgent Question posed as this week's topic. It would be crass of me to mention that it has been the exact same Urgent and Absolutely Pressing question since Fido was a puppy, back when less than 70% of Cher was plastic appendages.

Bundled in the same issue of Fidonet was a rather petulant screed from my dear friend Andrea Santos who was whinging (whinging, not whining...never whining) about the End of Civilization that might ensue if geographic purity (has a sort of fascist cadence to it, doesn't it?) were allowed to be sullied by the evil swine in Net 229. Andrea blows the usual headgaskets speculating about the UnPatriotic motives of Net229 and assures us that Her altruism is of a richer hue, a firmer weave, than those node-mongering anarchists in Net229. She urges them to either go to hell, or Region12 ( same thing) if they don't share her cloacally restricted sentiments. (Oh for pity's sake, stop snickering. Andrea is a Western Art Treasure.)

To get back to the original issue: Do we need policy? The answer is self-evident. Of course "we" do. Where else will socially maladroit people find refuge when their limitations might otherwise compell them to recognize that rules and regulations are a perfect substitute for common sense? Where else will people whose daily lives indicate that they lack management skills, or cooperative skills, can accelerate themselves into lofty titles and positions of authority. Look on the bright side, without the titles that go with the Policy dictated fiefdoms, most of these people would have been deprived of their highest achievement in life. To want such powers or authority in Fidonet is perhaps a little demented and deranged but insisting on the absolute need for Policy is a kindness to them. Take Andrea, for example, she is made whole - sanctimoniously satisfied - by whipping on the little puppies in Net229 who DARE to question the insanity of the Geographic Rule. Okay, so maybe she needs more vegetables in her diet or perhaps needs a real hobby, but you have to allow for a world where her needs are equally important as that segment of the population possessed of any shreds of common sense. The socially inept need love and understanding too, you know.

I see also that the poor Editorbeing is doing the usual handwringing about what should be "allowed" into the electronic pages of his organ. It is a dilemma that has plagued all Snooz editors and they never seem to achieve grace with their answers before they undergo spontaneous human combustion (a Snooz editor occupational hazard.) Flooding into the Snooz editor's mailbox will come the usual mouthbreathing demands that The Snooz be kept free from extraneous drivel (like this article, for example) and left as the sole preserve of the Plastic Pocket Pen Protector club who can discuss the gruesomely technical aspects from the tinfoil shrouded sanctity of their basement apartments. The same people who send this sort of WhineMail(tm) are evolutionarily incapable of actually writing anything else. They know what they want, damnit, they just need a Big Person to hold the crayons and actually write it. At this point it is de regeure to quote the seer and prophet, Tom Jennings: ("Make mine a double cheese", Tom Jennings, April, 1987) Which lends a sort of historical impramentur to whatever dead horse is being flogged at the moment. Personally, I think it a damned fine thing that the last Snooz was 3 pages of articles followed by 17 pages of a telephone book. It would only have been better if Rosanna Arquette's phone number had been in there.

The sad and simple truth that causes Snooz editors to eventually become insane or to become sociologists (which is pretty much the same thing) is that there are only three people who actually read the Snooz. The *C-beings avoid it like the plague because gawd forbid that they stoop to accountability or communication, and the legions of sysops only cherish it for the bragging rights they can attain from the incredible transfer speeds they achieve in whipping it out to their downstream nodes' trash baskets. Dallas Hinton reads it to satisfy himself that it is safe for children to read, and the third reader is stuck on the Falkland Islands with 30,000 sheep. Hell, even poor Mr. Bonner's heartfelt request for a little civility in the echoes was probably lost on almost everyone. (I'd have read the article myself if I hadn't been in such a frenzy to find Rosanna Arquette's telephone number or to discover if the software upgrade to my Sinclair ZX-81 was listed in the software section.Sorry Warren, as they say "poo happens".)

To attempt to bring home the cows on this rambling piece, one of my favourite exclamations of the Policymongers is the aghast expression: "We have to have rules. Why...Why...without them we'd have... (meangingful pause here).. that would be anarchy!" (followed by another pause to wipe the rivulet of spittle from their chins.) You can try to get these mouthbreathers to understand that the concept of "anarchy" is not synonimous with "chaos" but it is largely futile. You can almost imagine the life-crisis these same people would face if their peas ever touched their carrots on the dinner plate - my gawd, more anarchy. Fidonet was created as an exercise in workable anarchy and would have done fine had it not been hijacked by policymongering claim jumpers who recognized that the very premise of two individuals making an intelligent compact ruled themselves out as participants. An egalitarian society must embrace the cretinous as well as the lame, and so it is that Fido is replete with people whose approach to rules make Mugabe look like a dangerous populist.

I must go, Visage, your secretary is screaming again which is a real puzzle because it has only been five minutes since I parked the D9 Caterpiller beside my desk. As the good and decent people that we are, we should send her speelunking in Afghanistan.

Regards
Doc Logger
Furlang Island,
South Pacific

Does Fidonet Need a Policy?
From: Todd Sullivan

That all depends.

Check Fido performance, manners and efficiency before and after Policy. Whichever's better (and I'm betting it was /before/) is your answer.

I'm going to stick my neck out and declare Policy isn't at fault. Policy was written - apparently - by the *Cs.

The question /should/ be "Does Fidonet need a completely new collection of *Cs?"

Todd Sullivan