Jeff Smith wrote in a message to All:

 JS>    I acknowledge Allen's interest in reviving dead echos by
 JS> injecting them with activity from the internet. And compliment him
 JS> for his efforts to filter the incoming messages from the
 JS> newsgroups. But a lingering question in my mind is "Is this the
 JS> best answer?". 

Ah..what would you propose....say having a set number of echoes a person
could list?  Moderators need to get someones permission to list echoes?

The biggest reason folks can collect echotags is that other folks don't
have the interest to keep their listings active.  

The last echo-collector of note in Fidonet is no longer active as a
collector....and the tags were/are being recycled.

Hopefully Allen will quickly tire of raising the dead and either let the
listings lapse or simply keep them as place holders.

One could also state that if we don't like folks relisiting echoes, all we
need to do is relist them ourselves...and either make the echoes active, or
preserve the name as place-holders....If we don't do that, then why
complain about something we have so little interest in we can't be bothered
to participate?


 JS>     From the Echolist I see that 191 echos are controled by 8
 JS> people and 112 echos are controled by just 2 people. This grabbing
 JS> of echos has been done by others in the past. 

Relisting an expired echo tag is simply relisting something....why use a
negative term like grabbing?

 JS> We all can remember
 JS> their names and the effect that it had on our hobby. 

Exactly what effects did it have, not only in the short run, but in the long run?

 JS> One of the
 JS> things that I have liked about this network is it's diversity. With
 JS> ideas, opinions, and thoughts coming in from many differant
 JS> directions. A hobby where control is not at the direction of a
 JS> smaller and smaller group of people. 


But Fidonet is shrinking...so there are less and less people in the universe.

Criticise the folks not taking action....but you'll find a large number of
them simply don't care.

cya,
thom
http://www.tlchost.net/echolist/ 
--- GEcho 1.20/Pro