-=> David Drummond wrote to Dan Clough <=-

 DD>> Is change for the sake of change any more advantage than sticking
 DD>> to tradition because "that's how we've always done it"?

 DC> No, it isn't.  But the question at hand here is not as simple as
 DC> you phrased it right there.

 DD> Then what is the advantage to Fidonet as a whole to redo our
 DD> addressing system?

That's a difficult question to answer because of each person's 
differing idea of what the definition of "advantage" is...  I'll 
try to answer using *MY* definition and reasoning:

It would amount to what we call here in the US a "spring 
cleaning".  A chance to get rid of the old cruft and useless junk 
that clutters up our houses, and our nodelists.  Everybody gets a 
Zone 1 (or 2, or 3, whatever) address, and by carefully going 
through that during the re-assigning process, most (all?) of the 
dead/useless entries in there go away.  Now, does that help the 
flow of mail work any better?  Maybe not.  But it's still a good 
thing.  It would simplify the process of nodelist updates and 
distribution.  

If every member of Fidonet was in the same Zone, wouldn't that put 
a stop to the so-called "Zone Wars"?  Yes, a few *C's might lose 
their titles and that would probably piss them off, but perhaps 
they could get over it in time.

Now, I want to make one thing clear.  I have spoken out in favor 
of consolidating the Zones, yes.  But that isn't really the 
central issue here to me.  I can live with keeping the zones the 
way they are.  The original focus of this whole discussion was (I 
think) the topic of how hard it is for potential new Fido sysops 
to get useful information on how to join, and the pathetic shape 
that the web site(s) are in.  Let's not lose sight of that.  As 
far as I'm concerned we can forget about the Zone thing and try to 
reach some consensus on what can be done to improve the public 
"face" of FidoNet.  That's all I'm really after.

Cheers.


... To err is human, to forgive is against SysOp policy.
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