Fido ... (was Ten Year Rule)

On Nov 28, 2009, at 9:30 AM, Gene Buckle wrote: In my experience, into the back pockets of the person running the local Network and/or particular well-connected Nodes. My experience with FidoNet left me with the impression that while the IFNA was very well run, individual Networks were often rife with corruption and politics. And while IFNA may not have been "officially" aware of some of this, they chose to take a blind eye to most of it. FidoNet was the "good ol' boys" network of the BBS era, an attitude that pervaded every aspect of its operation and made it hostile to outsiders trying to get in. A case study could be made exclusively around WWIV boards trying to get access to FidoNet once it was figured out how to get it to work (on the WWIV side). I personally know of multiple Networks that made it much harder on WWIV-based boards solely because.. they were WWIV-based boards. Part of the explosion of WWIVnet and WWIVlink in the late 80's and early 90's is directly attributable to this: if FidoNet wasn't hostile to WWIV sysops, it's likely that WWIVnet would have ever achieved the level of traction that it did.