Text 3484, 85 rader
Skriven 2012-09-06 01:51:36 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
   Kommentar till text 3470 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Qwk
===========
HI Mark,

On Wed 2012-Sep-05 20:10, mark lewis (1:3634/12) wrote to Dale Shipp:

ml> those users could just as easily have been offline mail users,
ml> too... QWK and BW were very popular all over the world at that
ml> time... that those users went to using points, which is just another
ml> form of offline mail, is one of those sysops suggesting such and
ml> possibly providing easy to install packages for such... even with
ml> easy to install packages, most users i know of here in Z1 stayed
ml> with QWK and BW offline mail because that was what they were used to
ml> using and we, here in Z1, did not want to loose them by forcing them
ml> to use unfamiliar software... 

This is true.  My sysop got me into pointing because I
wanted to get my mail via a script.  I tried procomm
scripts, telix scripts, but then he'd add another log on
bulletin or something else, break my automation, no qwk mail to read with my
morning coffee, and an office to run all day <waaah>  And, to be blunt, he got
tired of me pissing and
moaning about his changes breaking my scripts, so he
suggested pointing.  MOst of his users were happy with qwk,
they'd download their mail, dry their nails or eat their
lunch while the mail packet downloaded, read their messages. I wanted my 4:00
a.m. automation, reliably, without fail and my mail fix with my morning coffee.
 he turned me on to
pointing, and I enver looekd back.

But, I encouraged both on my board.  YOu got download credit and time bonuses
for using a reader, either qwk, which my
maximus supported, or becoming a point.  POints didn't have
to worry, they could leech anything they wanted via freq
from me, even other folks' points.  I wasn't particular, but i tried to give my
users an incentive to download slmr,
Harvey's offline or Bluewave from me, and make use of one.
i think I had silver xpress available too, just because
somebody out there liked it.  I've used both sx and bw. Sx
had a few different bells & whistles.

When on the road, about once a week I'd download a qwk of
messages from areas I carried that I didn't carry in my
point base, just to make sure my users wern't misbehaving
there, because that's the one job my co-sysop didn't do
well.  HE didn't monitor message areas well he had no
interest in.

<snip>
ml> hate to say it, i see a movement afoot... a movement that is not
ml> conducive to fidonet's base tenet of communications... this base
ml> tenet is one of the reasons why fidonet embraced the offline QWK and
ml> BW world to start with... the future that i'm seeing that is based
ml> on these arguments is not a pretty one and could easily cost the
ml> network the few users that it does still cater to... users that post
ml> as much or more traffic than we mere sysops and enablers :( 

That's over here though Mark.  Again, this might not be true in z2, and I don't
know about down under.  HEre in z1 we
still have a few boards who have their active user
communities.  Consider Nancy, she board hops grabbing
packets from various boards to make sure she doesn't miss
anything.  Bob Breed, he's been around since the heyday.  As long as it's
available from Doc's and he's at all interested he'll participate.  HE won't go
board hoppping though, when
Doc folds up the tent that's Bob gone.  Bob Klahn, like him
or not, he moderates echoes, watches over those echoes, and
has a couple backup boards he'll use if dOcs isn't playing,
including fidotel.  James Bradley who posts from Gypsy, etc.

Then there's tom Walker, Ed Vance and a couple other qwk
users that help keep some z1 echoes alive as well, I know
I'm missing some, but without these folks some of our echoes would be dead. 
SOme echoes it's probably even between the
FIdonet via nntp and the qwk users, other echoes though ...

NOt to be a contrarian, but what we see here mightn't
reflect the reality as they see it on other parts of the
globe.  But, you're right, when we lose sight of that
"interoperability" of messages, the common layer being the
FIdonet pkt then we've lost something vital to our future.


Regards,
           Richard
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 * Origin:  (1:116/901)