AA> Sounds very good!   Here's another approach.  How about steering people
 AA> into relevant echos that already exist when the subject matter matches

That would, I think, be at best a temporary fix. A particular discussion
could be relocated to an existing echo; after a week or so it would run its
course, then the echo would go long-term dormant again. There simply isn't
the critical mass of Fidonet users there once was to sustain most of those
echoes. Even usually hot-button issues like abortion and guns are generating
zero traffic.

Last week, as prelude to paring down my echoes, I did a rescan for the previous
250 messages from every echo. Most of the echoes returned nothing, meaning
they've lain absolutely unused since sometime before my upstream feed started
carrying them. And likely means there isn't even anyone linked to them.

I think the solution would be to enable folks to ad hoc create echoes on the
fly, so that if, for example, a Beatles thread evolves in FIDONEWS, one
could simply forward it to BEATLES and, if the echo tag doesn't exist,
it's created on-the-fly and propagated out.

Yes, there would be technical issues like what if a BEATLES echo already
exists, but my NC just doesn't happen to carry it?

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   *HúUúMúOúNúGúOúUúS*     BúBúS   nathanael : jenandcal.familyds.org:2323 
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