Volume 6, Number 20 15 May 1989 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | /|oo \ | | - FidoNews - (_| /_) | | _`@/_ \ _ | | International | | \ \\ | | FidoNet Association | (*) | \ )) | | Newsletter ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor in Chief: Vince Perriello Editors Emeritii: Dale Lovell Thom Henderson Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings Contributing Editors: Al Arango FidoNews is published weekly by the International FidoNet Association as its official newsletter. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission standards are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1:1/1. 1:1/1 is a Continuous Mail system, available for network mail 24 hours a day. Copyright 1989 by the International FidoNet Association. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact IFNA at (314) 576-4067. IFNA may also be contacted at PO Box 41143, St. Louis, MO 63141. Fido and FidoNet are registered trademarks of Tom Jennings of Fido Software, 164 Shipley Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94107 and are used with permission. We don't necessarily agree with the contents of every article published here. Most of these materials are unsolicited. No article will be rejected which is properly attributed and legally acceptable. We will publish every responsible submission received. Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ................................................ 1 2. ARTICLES ................................................. 2 FidoNews Editorial Policy ................................ 2 Palindrome Archives -- A Product review .................. 7 FidoNet and Policy4 ...................................... 14 No-Code Packet Radio? (reprint) .......................... 23 What DOES a "reasonable sysop" do? ....................... 26 Wilderness Echo .......................................... 31 3. COLUMNS .................................................. 32 The Veterinarian's Corner: Feline Skin Diseases .......... 32 And more! FidoNews 6-20 Page 1 15 May 1989 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= This is turning into a narcotic. Now that I have written something up here and people are sending me mail and responses, I am really getting INTO it. Last week you might have noticed that I was concerned about whether the *C's were going to take any concrete actions to deal with their perceived FidoNews problem. Since writing that editorial I have received sufficient information to believe that they ARE going to take action: they are going to help me increase the "signal" content of FidoNews. In fact, Steve Bonine was kind enough to compose and submit a response to my editorial, which I am printing this week (along with one other). Since much of the controversy seems to have centered on a particular column, it probably would be worthwhile at this point for me to state my intentions towards this column. I intend to run the remaining submissions. Unless I then receive some very strong indication that this column has enjoyed wide readership and interest, I will print no further submissions for this column. So it's up to YOU to determine if you want to read ANIMED excerpts in FidoNews, or if you'd rather just subscribe to the Echomail conference from which all this data was extracted. In future weeks I expect to have assembled a series on FidoNet history, using materials I've solicited from Ken Kaplan and a few others. In many cases, some of you "old-timers" might have seen the material I'll be printing, but you're vastly outnumbered by those members of FidoNet who have not had this opportunity. As always, this is YOUR newsletter. It's only as good as YOU make it. Let's make it GREAT. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 6-20 Page 2 15 May 1989 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= Steve Bonine 115/777 My Opinion on FidoNews Editorial Policy I feel compelled to respond to Vince's recent editorial on FidoNews editorial policy, since I was (and still am) one of the RC's who raised questions concerning the content of FidoNews. Why do I care? There are two reasons. First, I spend my own money to distribute FidoNews to NC's in region 11. Second, I feel that FidoNet needs a means of distributing information to the sysops throughout the network, and that FidoNews has pretty much lost its effectiveness as that vehicle because of a lack of a reasonable editorial policy. (I'm not criticizing Vince; his hands are tied.) Vince left the impression in his editorial that the RC's are trying to restrict free speech. I'm a firm believer in free speech, but I'm not particularly eager to spend my own money shipping data around that no one is going to read. What is Fido- News, anyway? Is it an important forum -- the last bastion of available distribution mechanisms for opinion? No. FidoNews is the newsletter of the FidoNet BBS network. It's actually the newsletter of an organization called the IFNA, but that organization seldom graces its pages with any IFNA-related information, and rumor has it that IFNA is trying its best to divorce itself from FidoNet. The print-anything policy is an idea whose time is past. There are probably a hundred echomail conferences which have higher readership than FidoNews. If I want to find out about fleas, I am perfectly capable of getting the ANIMED conference myself. Why should the RC's and NC's have to spend their money distributing articles on fleas to an audience which contains only a miniscule number of people who want to read that information? If I want to exercise my freedom of speech, I'll do it where someone might read what I write -- in a forum of people with similar interests. It's not like we are short of echomail conferences! The fact that there are probably a hundred echomail conferences with higher readership than FidoNews is an indication of how bad the problem is. Before echomail, most sysops read FidoNews because that's all there was. Now it has competition, and it's not doing well against that competition. All of which brings us to the question of what to do now. Actually, I agree with much of what Vince says in his editorial. He points out that there is a low signal-to-noise ratio, and that we need more good articles. That's true. But there are two ways FidoNews 6-20 Page 3 15 May 1989 to improve the signal-to-noise ratio: increase the signal, or reduce the noise. I feel that FidoNews needs both. Not only do we need more good articles, but we need a responsible editorial policy to reduce the extraneous junk. I would rather have a FidoNews with one good article, and that's all, than have the same article plus five fillers. It's less for me to distribute, and it's more likely that the sysops of FidoNet will read it. If FidoNews were judged on bulk, then we would have no problem. I think that FidoNews could be improved by the simple application of a common-sense editorial policy to restrict the content to FidoNet-related material. No one is going to have their freedom of speech abridged -- I bet the ANIMED conference will survive just fine without a weekly column in FidoNews. Readership would improve, and subsequently more articles would be submitted. But I recognize that I'm in the minority, so I will content myself with living with the situation, and hoping that eventually the problem improves. In the meantime, I've done my part. Where's YOUR FidoNews article? ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 6-20 Page 4 15 May 1989 Freedom of the Press: An opposing viewpoint Jack Decker 1:154/8 Freedom of the Press: An opposing viewpoint In FidoNews Volume 6, Number 19, our esteemed Editor in Chief (Vince Perriello) editoralized on Freedom of the Press. I am not being sarcastic when I use the word "esteemed" in reference to Vince, since he has probably done more to help Fidonet than at least 95% of the people in the net. Vince has made some major contributions to our hobby, and I value his opinions highly, even if I don't always agree. Vince basically espoused the viewpoint that FidoNews should remain "a free and open public forum in which any of us can share anything we consider important with anyone else." As Vince points out, the present content of FidoNews "often has little or nothing to do with the day-in, day-out nonsense involved in being a member of Fidonet." Let's take a moment to consider what "Freedom of the Press" really means. If we can, let's take a look at the real world, outside of Fidonet. If I submit an article on raising African Violets to the editor of Radio-Electronics magazine, is he under any obligation to print it? Of course not! All right, let's suppose I send the editor of that publication an article that IS somehow related to Radio or Electronics? Is he then under any obligation to print it? The answer is still NO! As a matter of fact, "Freedom of the Press" does not require ANY publication to print ANY article they receive (even if they print a correction or retraction to a previous story, it's not because of "Freedom of the Press", it's because they don't want to be sued for things like libel or slander!). Similarly, FidoNews is under no legal obligation to print everything received. That's an editorial decision. What "freedom of the Press" really means is that if you don't like the way a particular publication is doing things, you have the freedom to start your own, competing publication. In theory, the government is not allowed to shut you down because they don't happen to agree with the contents of your publication. In fact, the scope of "Freedom of the Press" is pretty much limited to government interference with private publications (some of you may recall when the old Bell System was able to legally suppress nearly the entire distribution of one issue of "Ramparts" magazine back in the 60's, because Bell objected to an article in that issue detailing how to build a "black box." The comment was made that had Ramparts similarly figured out through their own efforts how a top secret Navy submarine works, the government would have been quite powerless to stop them from publishing those details, unless they could somehow prove that the information had been stolen from government files). FidoNews 6-20 Page 5 15 May 1989 The problem with a "print everything received" policy is that it leaves the door wide open for any particular group to usurp FidoNews as their soapbox. Now, I happen to feel that such a policy is very valuable when the article has something to do with Fidonet, computers, or communications. But there are lots of other subjects that folks might write on, and that sysops (even at the *C level) might object to. A few examples, just to get you thinking: * An article extolling the benefits of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan (if you were a black sysop, would you really want to carry that?) * An article soliciting members for a worldwide neo-Nazi party, and promoting a private echo called "NAZI" for the dissemination of information on that movement (if you were Jewish, would you feel comfortable with this?) * An article describing the joys of sex with animals in the most graphic terms possible (with extremely foul language), and inviting everyone to try it (If you have kids and/or pets, would you be comfortable with such an article? Would you want your children to read it on your BBS?). * Articles promoting various religions (not yours) promising anything from bad luck to eternal damnation to those who do not follow the tenets of that religion (an interesting side note to this: After the Tom Jennings article that started much of the present controversy, I suggested to previous FidoNews editor Dale Lovell that now someone might write a "hell fire and brimstone" article giving the Biblical injunctions against homosexuality (yes, there are some verses that condemn the practice). Dale replied that an article like that would probably NOT be published in FidoNews. This makes me wonder if the "print everything" policy really translates to "print everything that the FidoNews editor doesn't find repugnant." The problem there is that if the FidoNews editor can censor articles that he personally finds objectionable, why can't the *C's that are forced to distribute FidoNews do the same? Either we have a true "print everything received" policy or we don't... and if we don't, we should stop pretending we do, and get on with defining just where the limits are!). The major problem I see with a "print everything" policy is that *C's are forced by Policy to distribute FidoNews to the nodes underneath them. This would make sense IF FidoNews was primarily a technical journal dealing with things relating to Fidonet. The problem occurs when we force sysops to distribute material that is objectionable to their standard of ethics or sense of decency. Even newstand owners have the right to not carry magazines that they personally find objectionable (how many religious magazines do you find in adult bookstores, or vise versa?). But, in effect, Policy states that "we don't care if there's an article in FidoNews from a grou