Friday September 02 2016 08:00, you wrote to me:

 AI>> We are a little beyond logical explanations now, don't you think?

 DD> To go beyond something you have to have already reached it.

We have reached it, long ago.

 AI>> The questions and answers in this case are not hard and have been
 AI>> made. You (and a few others) have chosen to ignore them.

 DD> Not one person has presented a logical case as to why FN_SYSOP and
 DD> FIDO_SYSOP should be accessible today only by sysops.

Perhaps it is you who should present a logical case for why a change is needed?

 DD> Some have suggested that it is because it has always been so. Many
 DD> things have always been so, but as time moves on they are no more.

Those two echoes have always been sysop echoes where sysops discussed whatever
was on their minds.

 DD> Some have suggested that it is because "sysop" is in the tag. "United
 DD> States" is in the name of that country to your south, but I have yet
 DD> to see an affiliated collection of states any less united. The echo
 DD> tags are "just a name".

An echo tag is just an echo tag. It could be anything. Echo tags generally do
give you a pretty good idea of what is going on in an echo.

 DD> Some have suggested that it is because these echoes are for the
 DD> discussion of "renegade users". Both echoes are international in
 DD> coverage. No-one has mentioned an international renegade user in the
 DD> echoes in years - we do not have such in users (users are a rare breed
 DD> anywhere).

 We don't have the numbers we once did, users or sysops. Most of the users on
my BBS today are sysops although I do still get new users loging in once in a
while.

 DD> Not one person has presented a proposition as to what detriment there
 DD> is to Fidonet having non-sysops access these echoes. Fidonet is about
 DD> communication - the more participants the more communication.

I don't see any detriment but then we lose our sysop echo.

Why not chat in chat echoes and chat in sysop echoes with other sysops. We have
both and loseing the sysop echoes serves no purpose and there is nothing to
gain.

 DD> So far no convincing arguments as to why I (and others) should alter
 DD> the access settings at my (our) node(s).

I'm not trying to convince you of anything and you are free as we all are to
set our systems up as we see fit.

Those two echoes are sysop-only echoes where sysops chat between themselves. No
elitest snobery or secrets about it, it's just a place for sysops to hang out
and chat. There are plenty of places for everyone to chat in the echo of their
choice and that is what fidonet does best.

 Ttyl :-),
         Al

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20160322