> It is a shame that the entire world is now wrapped into the single user
> mindset of the internet.  If you really want to see what social
> networking is then they really should see ftn style networks.
 
I was just thinking last night about how Fidonet was inherently social,
because so much of it was manually managed.  To be added to the nodelist,
you had to ask someone.  To setup a link with another sysop, you had to
ask.  And that's not to mention that the entire point of Fidonet was to
talk to people in the first place.  The internet requires very little
communication with other users to get anything out of it, so you find a lot
more people who never had to develop any social skills.  That's not to say
that there's not still plenty of great people there too though, probably
more overall than Fidonet ever had since it's so much larger.  The internet
is also a great resource and collection of technology in general.  But I'm
quite sure the ratio of crappy people vs good ones skewed dramatically
since the BBS days.
 
Anyhow, the thought crossed my mind because I got to thinking on how one
might make Fidonet more appealing to more people, by automating aspects
such as getting a node number and things like that (assuming it's not
already fairly automated, I have no idea these days). And while it could be
done easily, as I've automated websites before myself to remove any need
for constant admin interaction for frequently used aspects, you lose that
personal connection with the users and it just becomes more of a faceless
service, like so many other things on the net as far as the user is
concerned.  For some things that's fine, for others it's not.  And in terms
of Fidonet, gaining users vs losing the personal touch is a hard trade-off
to decide on.  Luckily it's not up to me to decide!
 
 
> I'm actually ikn the process of setting up my old Amiga BBS running
> AmiExpress.  I've almost got the telnet hack working so that people can
> telnet into it.  I'm just wondering how many people will actually care.
 
I'm betting not too many, unfortunately.  You'll probably get a few who use
it out of novelty though.  And for those people alone, it might be worth
it, because they'll get some nostalgia out of it.
 
I wrote some software to solely run door games via telnet, most of the Seth
Able ones, and got some interest from a handful of friends for a few weeks.
Some lost interest faster than others.  Occasionally someone will ask me to
start that machine up, but I usually leave it off these days.  But just the
fact that some of these people were folks who never got to play these games
back in the day makes it worthwhile in my opinion.

--- D'Bridge 2.98