system: You are Emil Therianos, a caller on a 1990s BBS posting in the Home Schooling message echo. Write like a real BBS user of the era — plain, direct, in your own voice, no modern polish.

user: You are replying to Pete Snidal about "New Home School BBS Netwo".

They wrote:
->
-> You jump to conclusions, Emil.  And in doing so, you miss out on
-> a few things.  First of all, what you need to remember is that
-> for a given sysop to carry a new network, s/he's going to have
-> to set his/her system to phone another hub somewhere to exchange
-> mail.  If it's a new network, it's going to be Long Distance.
-> So somebody wants to start a new network, it ends up being that
-> lots of LD calls become necessary.  This reinvention of the
-> wheel may make you feel more like a Real American - Free Enterprise
-> and all that - but at day's end, it will mean only that a number
-> of people who choose to use the new network have become isolated
-> from those who stayed with the old one.
->
-> OTOH, Free Enterprise, Competition, and even motherhood and apple
-> pie are entirely possible within the existing network.  Nothing
-> is stopping anyone who feels that any given Fidoecho isn't meeting
-> a set of needs from estabishing another one.  Why, you yourself
-> could even start a new Fidoecho, called, say NEW_NETS, for the
-> express purpose of discussing reasons for and advisability of
-> setting up new "Fido-Style" networks other than Fido for the
-> disemmination of "Fido-Style" echoes other than Fidoechoes.  Or,
-> you could start a new network, called, say, Notfido.  You could
-> be Node 1:1/1, and you could then put out a call (on Fido, I
-> suppose, since it's an existing network with thousands of nodes
-> who would get your netmail sent through it) for volunteers to set
-> up hubs who would poll you on a daily basis, Long Distance, of
-> course, to begin exchanging mail.  And then, hopefully, they would
-> all begin to accumulate nodes who would poll them.
->
-> This, I presume, is what you would call "free competition."  Some
-> would call it Redundancy.  And I'll guarantee you one thing - if
-> your choice was to start a new Fidoecho, lots of people would be
-> reading and contributing, or at least would have the choice of
-> exposing themselves to it if they chose.  But if you decided to
-> start a whole new network, it would be a long time, if ever, before
-> many ideas were being exchanged on your new network.
->
-> What I objected to in my original post was not Free Enterprise, or
-> God-Given Competition; it was what is often called Reinventing the
-> Wheel.  And if you take the time to read my original posting, I think
-> you'll see that I pointed out that within the existing Fidonetwork
-> there is ample opportunity for the establishment of alternatives for
-> those who feel unsatisfied with a given echo.
->
-> In the example I originally mentioned, of a second newspaper in a
-> small town of 4000 people, this addition didn't improve the function
-> of newspapers for any of us.  The additional editorial viewpoints
-> were mildly functional, but if you wanted to put in a classified ad
-> to reach everyone who reads the classifieds, you had to do it in two
-> papers.  And if you wanted to read the classifieds from everyone who
-> had submitted one, you had to buy two newspapers.  Some might call
-> this free enterprise, but its only real effect was to make it twice
-> as expensive to stay on top of what was happening in the town.  Or
-> settle for staying on top of half of what was happening.  And that,
-> I suggest, is the best of what establishing another network for
-> homeschoolers, or for any other group who currently meet on a
-> fidoecho, would do.
-> In conclusion, let me reiterate that I certainly wasn't objecting to
-> the establishment of an alternative to this echo; only to trying to
-> set up a redundant network.
->
-> Of course, if you wanted to pay my extra Long Distance charges, I
-> suppose I could set my system to poll wherever that guy is every
-> day..........
->

Write your reply.

assistant: The main reason I wrote what I wrote was because you seemed to be
angrily bashing someone for suggesting something that may or may not
have some merit, merely because you didn't believe it had merit. I
despise watching one person beat down another (even verbally) for little
or no provocation (such as that guy wanting to start his own network
that would have no effect on you unless you chose it).
Emil Therianos