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  • Armin HanischLinkshaender@bildung.social
    Oct 12, 2026, 9:02 PM

    @tomjennings That was such a great idea! Being a Fidonet node for the fun and meeting other people online I’ve never thought about all that stupid politics stuff (ham radio had less annoying people or I was too young back then). A decentralized nodelist assembled at point of use would have taken power out of the hands of hierarchists and others. I left FidoNet after the “tone war” and the big split of the German FidoNet in 1993 because people playing “Lord Keeper of the Fidonet Seal”.

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  • tom jenningstomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
    Oct 12, 2026, 9:28 PM

    @Linkshaender

    It was mostly great people but as always, minority of real jerks.

    It was my oversight to not realize the RC folk would not see themselves as "enclosing" nets, and that NCs would just fall into line. The RC (catchall for nodes not in a net)* should have been somewhere outside the physical area. Snd xalled the post "janitor" or something. And revolved the post monthly or something.

    * For the non FidoNet folk

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  • Armin HanischLinkshaender@bildung.social
    Oct 12, 2026, 9:58 PM

    @tomjennings Besides all that, I am glad that I was part of this, because, as you wrote, it was 90% nice people, 9% nerds/dorks and 1% real jerks. 😎 And I’ll be forever grateful you had the idea to this, because it made me learn so much (even writing my own mailer) about online communities. As for RC/NC roles, everybody has 20/20 hindsight. Maybe outside Germany, with another mentality, it would have worked. 😆 Still a great trip down memory lane!

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  • Dec [{(:no_ai:)}]dec23k@mastodon.ie
    Oct 12, 2026, 10:58 PM

    @Linkshaender @tomjennings
    FidoNet in Ireland (2:263) was mostly nice, with plenty of Star Trek fandom (we did have author Diane Duane running her own node, and being part of the online community).

    All nice people, apart from one commercial BBS whose sysop set it up to edit all Echomail messages, in an effort to convince all his users that other systems didn't exist, all so he could make more money from subscriptions.

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