Text 754, 95 rader
Skriven 2007-03-24 10:24:15 av Mithgol the Webmaster (2:5063/88)
    Kommentar till text 749 av Peter Knapper (3:772/1.10)
Ärende: The hypertext Fidonet and the envisioned fidosphere
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And about 09:41 24 Mar 07 it was written from Peter Knapper to Mithgol the
Webmaster:

 PK> Unfortunately I think your vision is very small, it competely misses what
 PK> Fidonet is about AND it also misses the affects of your intended
 PK> "expansion" will have on Fidonet. I see your REAL problem as not the
 PK> visibility affect of the current content, but what it drags back into
 PK> Fidonet from the Intenet.

 PK> Fidonet uses the internet for the transport of its material, however to
 PK> actually get INTO Fidonet content a user has to have some "additional"
 PK> capability which either does not exist in most "general" internet users
 PK> users, or is not interesting enough for them to attempt to "get into
 PK> fidonet". It is that gap that defines what Fidonet is, and nothing else.
 PK> The momemt you remove that gap, then yes, you may very well flood our
 PK> rivers with the masses, but they will bring all their rubbish along with
 PK> what little good they might have, and then Fidonet will well and truly be
 PK> finished.

This gap is responcible for the fact that while R50 has lost about 20 nodes in
this week, only half a dozen or even less new nodes appeared. This gap is what
effectively kills Fidonet. And it also contaticts to the spirit of the Fidonet
Policy Document. To obtain a node number, one needs to conform to FPD 2.2 only;
and reading Fidonet should be as free as in the age of public BBS.

Also, even 400% growth of the current Fidonet should not become a feared flood;
think of it as of a restoration of the numbers of the Golden Age.

Encourage new people to join Fidonet; teach them to continue our traditions;
moderate them when it's needed. But first of all Fidonet should be made really
comfortable, and colourful, and illustrated, and not requiring a lot of manual
daily labour instead of simple mouse clicks; that's why we need hypertext.

 PK> It must be obvious to anyone that the internet transport environment has
 PK> MANY levels of players out there. Fidonet does not need nor want ALL the
 PK> layers, just the layers that have something useful to contribute TO
 PK> FIDONET.

Implementing URLs means a change on the presentation and the application layer.
It just brings more comfort. I hope Fidonet is not the net full of masochists
ready to deny such a contribution.

 PK> I really think that fidonet has "done its bit" in helping people
 PK> communications, and anything that is left for it to do is fairly trivial,
 PK> but blasting fidonet out onto the web is not the way to do that (IMHO).

I am just going to blast out a new course for the stream. And get the Fidonet
out of the mire of slow death.

 PK> Your ideas a not new, they have all been tried before, however most people
 PK> eventually realise what the purpose behind all this really is.

 PK> Now.. just what was it you were trying to do/achieve?

I've already answered. I am tired of being a part of a net that uses a lot of
monochrome text and keeps loosing dozen of nodes weekly. I envision optimistic
nodediffs in 3D over a database of colourful satellite images in Google Earth,
I wish I had some KML file at address like area://R50.Sysop.Info/nodediff.kml
ready to throw it to a helper application from my Fidonet browser with a single
mouse click on a link and enjoy the spectacular effects. I want to be able to
read HTML embedded in RSS embedded in FidoML posted in echomail daily. I want
lots of brand new Fidonet software designed in a way that not only masochists
are willing to use it. That's what I am trying to achieve. A net better that
Internet. Without the need to be always online. Without the need to view ads or
to read spam. And free, and moderated, and non-anonymous, and deliverable even
to the points in remote villages over the plain old telephone system. But still
illustrated, automated, colourful, pleasant to eyes, easy to use.

I also envision the thing I call 'fidosphere' ÄÄ the place like the blogosphere
of the modern Web, but better. Fidonet is much better place to blog in than the
Web. In the Web a blogger needs an online hosting and an engine. And those who
cannot afford it have to start blogging on a web site belonging to some jewish
company that doesn't even provide an export tool for blog entries ÄÄ like LJ.
Fidonet seems to be a much better medium to blog in, because a blogger needs
just his own computer (converted to a point or a node system in Fidonet), a new
echo moderated by him, and a Fidonet browser. Millions of bloggers could become
members of Fidonet if only the hypertext were introduced, and could form some
special hierarchy of blog echoes. See area://Ru.Blog.Mithgol/ for example (use
the web gate at http://fghi.pp.ru/?area://Ru.Blog.Mithgol/ because you, most
likely, don't have a FGHI-capable Fidonet browser). My blog is in Russian, and
its blog entries are also not hypertext yet (mainly because I haven't finished
inventing FidoML and there are no software implementations of it) ÄÄ therefore
the example is here just to demonstrate a proof of the concept. What you'll see
there is two dozen entries by the same author. That's a typical blog, it was
just started two weeks ago.

Watashi wa sekai-wo kaeru!


With best Fidonet 2.0 regards,
Mithgol the Webmaster.                 [Real nodelisted name: Sergey Sokoloff]

... 99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.
--- Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.  (Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, IV)
 * Origin: I have a strange feeling, as if I already had a deja vu (2:5063/88)