In instituting the changes discussed here recently, I am following 
Josh Gordon's advice and killing the MAGICK echo area name.  If you 
do not follow these instructions, you will have problems, so please 
pay attention and ask questions - via crash netmail, as time is 
short - if you don't understand any thing that follows.

   STEP ONE - MARCH 1ST
   "STOP MAKING SENSE"

As soon as feasible after midnight on March 1st, every sysop on the 
Magick echo should change this echo to read-only, if not completely 
remove it from his or her list of available areas.

There's currently about six-day lag time from the far end of the 
net, which is either in net 107 (NY MetroNet) or 106 (Houston).  
This will allow the last of the messages in the combined echo, 
MAGICK, to reach me by the morning of March 7th.

   STEP TWO - MARCH 1ST TO 7TH
   "ENTROPY REQUIRES NO MAINTENANCE"

Once you have passed up the last packet for the nodes below you, 
there is no sense in polling anyone just to get the MAGICK echo - 
as there will be no more packets passed down.

While you are waiting, make sure that you have read and understood 
the file MAG-POL.ARC, the contents of which were also posted to 
this echo. (Version 1.0 has only cosmetic changes, but is now 
available from 1:100/523 except during the netmail hour and a 
half-hour or so either side of it.)

Personally, I before I transfer ANY system that polls me (other 
than the two hubs) to enter a netmail message to me, from its 
sysop: "I have read and will comply with MAG-POL.TXT, version 1.0." 
 At that time, I will transfer them to the appropriate line in my 
AREAS.BBS file.  I cannot recommend this too strongly to all 
systems which will carry the new echo, because you will (in event 
of a worst-case nightmare) be held responsible for the behavior of 
nodes downstream of you.

   STEP THREE - MARCH 7TH AND 8TH
   "LIKE A PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES ..."

I will spend almost all of the day on March 7th performing two tasks.

First of all, I will manually sort the most recent 600 messages in 
MAGICK.  The best 30 or so (no fixed number, that's just my gut 
feeling for how it will work out) will be moved to METAPHYSICAL.  
Then, all message threads directly related to the topics of this 
echo will be moved to MAGICKNET.  The remaining message area will 
be renamed MUNDANE.

Then, to insure that we all start from a common point, the seen-by 
lines will be removed from all of these messages.  That done, I 
will perform the first ConfMail Export run on the newly born 
MagickNet Echos.  By 11pm or so Central Time, I will have crashed 
the first packets to AT LEAST the other two hubs, and we will all 
be distributing it, touch wood, no later than National Mail Hour on 
the morning of March 8th.  If you have stopped POLLing your links 
in the interim, resume the morning of March 8th (if you are an 
unreasonable distance down the topology, you may as well wait until 
the 9th or 10th).

And so, no later than March 8th you will need to have removed the 
MAGICK echo from your system, and modified your echo control files 
to accomodate the new, improved Neopaganism, Witchcraft, and Magick 
conference.

   - Brad Hicks, 1:100/523
     MagickNet Coordinator

--- Sirius 0.50

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