A lot of these details only pertain to Zer0net node SysOps, however a huge part of this announcement is extremely relevant to any perspective new nodes, and none of it is anything in any way sensitive, so I’m posting this for all to read.
It will be no surprise to many of you to read that I’ve been tossing around a lot of ideas about how to overhaul or otherwise update Zer0net for a couple of years now. We’ve had some interesting ideas, like shifting to a highly moderated structure and even focusing on new/different themes. In the end, I feel that Zer0net should stay true to, and in fact embrace, its identity as a network that values free speech even if that means taking the bad along with the good when it comes to open conversation, and staying true to our underground BBS scene aligned roots, and instead of changing the conversation, focus on having more of it. With that in mind, here’s what is changing with Zer0net in 2024, which, by the way, marks the network’s 25th birthday!
- Paulie420 of 2o fOr beeRS will be joining me as the co-admin of Zer0net. I’ve greatly always appreciated help from others, and while Zer0net isn’t exactly a democracy, more often than not I poll our node operators for feedback on changes and other concerns about the network, and even work with some of them quite closely. While that won’t be changing, I believe that having another person, especially one with a different background, different values, and a different personality than me helping officially steer things can only be a good thing for the network’s future.
Paulie will be highly involved with recruiting new nodes, reviewing applications, and otherwise working with prospective new members. He already does a lot of work helping and mentoring other SysOps, and generally trying to be involved in the whole BBS scene community, so this is a natural fit for him, and it’s especially important given a change detailed in a couple more paragraphs. The apply AT zer0net.org address we currently have in our documentation is still the best way to apply for the moment, and it will forward to him as well as me now.
Also because he doesn’t pimp it nearly enough, and it’s pertinent to the interests of the readers of this blog, here’s his YouTube channel!
- Esc AKA Ryan of Monterey and maintainer of the Daydream BBS software will also be officially joining the network’s staff. Of those Zer0net node operators I mentioned above, I’ve probably leaned most heavily on my friend Esc for many years now. He’s also joined me as one of the members of the relaunched Demonic Productions in 2022. Overall, he’s been one of the network’s most steadfast contributors for quite some time, and I wanted to recognize that. Speaking of both things, he runs Demonic’s small, private Discord server, and we have a Zer0net channel if any SysOps or frequent posters would like to join – just ask!
- Zer0net has been opened up, and acceptance criteria has been loosened considerably. Ultimately, most of us are members of echo mail networks in order to be able to participate in more active conversations with a wider variety of people than just what is happening in our local message bases with our local users, even those of us lucky enough to have very active local message areas. Having an “elite” membership when (more times than not) we have very little active conversation, seems a bit self-defeating.
Additionally, we’ve rejected quite a few boards that haven’t met our criteria over the years, but since one of the possible acceptance criteria is a lot of message activity, if those boards are relatively new, or the SysOp themselves is one of the most active posters, as is often the case, they never really get a chance to prove themselves before being rejected. While it has regrettably sometimes been taken this way, our mission here has never been to snub or otherwise discourage new SysOps, so this change should also help to address this issue.
That said, we still want serious SysOps who are going to be around more than a month or two, and we still want nodes who will actually add something to the network rather than membership just being one more thing they can list on their advertisements. And uh, yeah, we’re still going to be pretty damn judgemental of totally stock boards. Sorry, we can’t help ourselves on that one! 🙂
In the spirit of the old system, Zer0net will have two classes of member nodes:
- Elite status nodes are boards that meet our original criteria: great artwork and/or modifications, with an underground feel, notable affiliations and/or staff, a lot of activity in form of posts and/or other contributions, etc. All current and legacy nodes will be grandfathered in as elite status boards. Elite status boards do not need to meet any sort of minimal activity level, and can come and go as they wish, just as today.
- Normal status nodes are boards that do not necessarily meet the old, more strict criteria but we’ve decided to accept regardless. They must maintain a minimal level of activity (that is, we want to see new posts originating from the node!) We’ll do a quarterly or bi-yearly review of activity and any normal board who has not been active will be put into probationary status. The SysOp will be notified and if that status hasn’t changed by the next review, they’ll be removed.
Normal status boards can be promoted to elite status. If they’ve proven themselves to have been highly active or otherwise grown to meet our original criteria. SysOps can ask for us to review their nodes for this, but more often than not we’ll proactively reach out to them if we feel they’ve earned a change in status.
I’m not exactly expecting the floodgates to open, as it were, but then we have rejected a lot of nodes over the years, and I’ve told quite a few to hold off on their applications until these changes are finally implemented in the last year or so, so who knows!?
- Echo housekeeping! In with the old and out with the slightly less old?
It’s been quite a while since we’ve done this, so as a quick reminder of the point of this type of thing, like a fine dining restaurant with a small, focused menu, I strongly believe that less is more when it comes to message areas. That is, I’d rather have a small list of echos with broader topics, each with at least some activity, than have dozens upon dozens of echos dedicated to more specific topics, the majority of them entirely dead.
- This one is a long time coming. We’ll be removing the 0N-INFO and 0N-NEWS echos which have been around since the very beginning. Both echos have grown to feel redundant to me over the years, as most posts about the network’s administration will go into 0N-SYSOP anyway, and anything else more often than not winds up in our general discussion echo, 0N-CHAT.
- Similarly, we’ll be merging 0N-ANARC, 0N-HACKN, and 0N-PHRKN into the all encompassing new echo 0N-HPCAV. On paper, these echos have always been some of my favorites since the network started, but in reality these are seldom used as there simply isn’t as much crossover between the retro BBS scene and this stuff as I imagined. That was even true in the late 90s, as multiple BBS related underground disciplines had long been diverging into their own distinct scenes. Even when we do have users who want to go in depth on some of these topics, I’d imagine many of them don’t feel that an FTN network is the most secure place to do so. Still, Zer0net will always be aligned with the underground, and that’s not changing. At the very least, news related to security events always make for fun discussion.
- We’ll be adding a new echo, 0N-RETRO related to all things retro-computing. This one might ALSO feel redundant, but while BBSing in 2024 is undeniably “retro”, what most of us have been doing in the BBS scene is just an extension of what we were doing back in the dial-up days. The huge boom in retro-computing in the last 5+ years feels entirely distinct, with a lot more people, both in the scene and outside of the scene, taking an interest in vintage hardware and software, including jumping into the world of BBSing. A great number of us here are into retro computing and/or gaming to some degree, including myself, Paulie, and Esc, so I’m confident that this can be a place for some good conversations. As with our other echos, the actual intention of this echo will be a bit broader than that, with any conversations about vintage OR retro-targeted hardware, alternative OSes, software, games, emulation, etc. all being appropriate.
- With the aforementioned low-key rebirth of Demonic Productions back in 2022, we had previously added two new echos, 0N-DPUB and 0N-DPRI. 0N-DPUB is for public discussions and release announcements regarding Demonic Productions releases and related topics, while 0N-DPRI is, as the name might suggest, a private echo for Demonic members only, and because it requires special permissions, is not included in the echo list. Still, I’d love for anyone who hasn’t added it to make sure 0N-DPUB has been added to their boards.
- File Fun!
First, for those of you who care way too much about this sort of thing, I will endeavor to start doing a better job updating our nodelist file and infopack more or less in real-time as we add and remove nodes. I’ve already automated this process somewhat, including publishing them to Zer0net’s website for those of you who’d like to automate updates via wget (or whatever.) The biggest component of this, however, is that we’ll finally be adding a small number of file echos to the network:
- 0N-NODEL – This will contain the latest Zer0net uncompressed nodelist file auto-hatched using the same filename every time, which should make it very easy for individual nodes to automate consuming them.
- 0N-INFOP – This will contain the latest, most up to date version of the Zer0net infopack, again, using the same filename, always available to reference, distribute, etc. As with the last revision in 2020, this includes a variety of documentation regarding the network, some information and useful files for its setup, and some awesome artwork that you can use to give your system look as cool as it surely is if it’s a member of Zer0net.
- 0N-DMNIC – New Demonic Productions releases will be hatched in this echo as they’re released. Speaking of which, we’ll have a new batch of releases very soon!
Initially, no one will be linked to these new file echos by default, as previously our nodes were not configured with TIC passwords or other configuration needed to support file tossing. While I have made these changes on the hub side I don’t want to make any assumptions about your configurations, nor do I want to spam you with .TIC files and junk files you don’t want. Please use FileFix via a netmail to 911:1423/0 to add any desired echos when/if you’re ready to start receiving file hatches. Initially, your TIC password will be the same as those used for PKTs, AreaFix, or if you had nothing but defaults for those, BinkP.
There’s a lot of changes here, and given that some of our legacy nodes are more or less on autopilot, I won’t be nuking any of these old echos immediately. Instead, you’ll have until August 1st, 2024 to make any of the appropriate changes. A whole month! That said, these new message echos and file echos will be available immediately. Given all of these changes, there is a new major revision of our infopack (including an updated nodelist) coming… now! Yep, it’s released as of the posting of this announcement. Go grab it!
TL;DR version: Expect to see much more Paulie420 around. We have a Discord server! Expect to see a lot more new nodes and hopefully more posts, but this should not impact existing nodes. A new infopack is out! Please remove 0N-INFO, 0N-NEWS, 0N-ANARC, 0N-HACKN, and 0N-PHRKN from your configurations and add 0N-HPCAV and 0N-RETRO (and 0N-DPUB if you haven’t already done so.) Oh, and please fix that shit by August! If you’d like to receive file hatches of network nodelists, infopacks, and/or Demonic Productions releases, please configure your system to support TIC processing, add the new file echos 0N-NODEL, 0N-INFOP, and/or 0N-DMNIC, and link them via FileFix. Later!