• Echolists

    From Mark Lewis@3:640/1321 to Michael Borthwick on Wed Feb 13 11:39:16 2019

    On 2019 Feb 13 13:54:02, you wrote to All:

    I've got a large number of echo's for fidonet that don't have names. I've looked at the backbone and the echolist file echo's but still i'm short
    by a large number.

    what do you mean by "names"?? example, please...

    Is there anywhere I can go to find a more extensive list?

    maybe the historic echolists or .NA files??

    )\/(ark

    Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
    Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
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  • From Michael Borthwick@3:640/1321 to Mark Lewis on Thu Feb 14 11:11:02 2019
    what do you mean by "names"?? example, please...
    maybe the historic echolists or .NA files??

    Sorry I meant descriptions.

    I have a lot of echo's in my config that just have the description the
    same as the echo tag ie 4DOS_FMY. It's not very descriptive when a user
    lists the fido echo list. I'd prefer to have the proper description "4dos Discussions" to display instead of 4DOS_FMY.

    Another example is ARROWBRIDGE where the description is "ARROWBRIDGE Door
    Game by Mark Sinclair"

    So some of the ones i'm missing descriptions include;

    R_CATHOLIC
    RCC-PUBLIC
    REC
    REGCONEUR
    ...

    I've been scouring the internet for echolists but was hoping someone may
    have a master list or a better place to find some.

    I found http://www.echolist.net/download.html which took care of about 20
    but i'm still way short.

    Cheers

    toofargone .:[fusion]:. telnet.fusionbbs.online tel:23 ssh:2222

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  • From Mark Lewis@3:640/1321 to Michael Borthwick on Thu Feb 14 10:58:02 2019

    On 2019 Feb 14 11:11:02, you wrote to me:

    what do you mean by "names"?? example, please... maybe the historic
    echolists or .NA files??

    Sorry I meant descriptions.

    ahhh... short titles...

    I have a lot of echo's in my config that just have the description the same as the echo tag ie 4DOS_FMY. It's not very descriptive when a
    user lists the fido echo list. I'd prefer to have the proper
    description "4dos Discussions" to display instead of 4DOS_FMY.

    not sure where you got your files from that i guess you imported into your configs... yeah, some don't have much more than the echotag in them... it used to be almost an automated process to add new areas and pull the short titles in from the backbone.na or echolist files but tings changed and folks apparently forgot about those convieniences...

    Another example is ARROWBRIDGE where the description is "ARROWBRIDGE
    Door Game by Mark Sinclair"

    yeah... those short titles are fine unti the BBS doesn't have the space to store the full title and you get truncated ones all with the same first 30 or so characters... another problem is when the echo's title is changed but the BBS doesn't update to the new title... an example is the BAMA echo which definitely changed its short title to make it clearer what it was about... plus when echotags change hands from one moderator to another, the new mod may want to change the title as well as the description... i've done that myself a few times back in the day :)

    So some of the ones i'm missing descriptions include;

    R_CATHOLIC
    RCC-PUBLIC
    REC
    REGCONEUR
    ...

    i don't have those in any of my feeds... i would guess that the following short titles are fairly accurate, though...

    R_CATHOLIC Roman Catholic Discussions
    RCC-PUBLIC Public access to Regional Coordinator Council
    REC Regional Echo Coordinators

    the REC one may supposed to be private and only RCs/RECs having access but i don't know... there are some that are restricted access but get leaked because operators don't excercise due diligence in researching the areas before turning them on and allowing others full access feeds... hell, some operators just turn on all areas which is not really a good idea anyway... especially since there's a lot of dead areas still in configs these days...

    I've been scouring the internet for echolists but was hoping someone
    may have a master list or a better place to find some.

    the echolist is a pretty good place to start... the descriptions in the backbone.na and backbone.not files are/were taken from there but the echolist is only good for echos with moderators who decide to list their echo in the echolist... there's a lot that don't for one reason or another... then there's that the whole of europe doesn't really even know what a BBS is any more since they never had free dialup capabilities like north america did... so they didn't dial into a BBS and sit there playing games or reading messages at 10 cents a minute or whatever their rate was... they pushed points as the main access method which is also why they don't hardly know anything about QWK/BW offline mail stuffs, either...

    I found http://www.echolist.net/download.html which took care of about
    20 but i'm still way short.

    why turn everything on? why not just the areas you and your users are interested in?

    in any case, you can try the lists i have and see if they help you fill in the holes... on my old system, i actually had them all extracted from their archives so i could grep through them looking for echos and things like their last update and such...

    start here for historic echolists:
    ftp://sestar.synchro.net/file.dist.net/ECHOLIST/00index.html

    i've got some locally managed NA files, too, but i don't have them available for download yet since moving to a new setup... they are basically the backbone.na and backbone.not files but with restricted areas moved to other NA files... this makes it easier to separate them on a BBS when they are imported into message area groups where the group access can be more easily restricted... this is where a lot of leaks come from when operators just import the areas and don't set the restrictions on them... or maybe they do but they update their template area and copy it over all the other areas to update them but they forget to go back and set the restricted areas' restrictions again...

    )\/(ark

    Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
    Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
    ... A mediator has done his job when both sides hate him.
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  • From Michael Borthwick@3:640/1321 to Mark Lewis on Sun Feb 17 08:49:58 2019

    On 2019 Feb 14 11:11:02, you wrote to me:

    ahhh... short titles...

    why turn everything on? why not just the areas you and your users are interested in?


    Thanks for your assistance! At the moment I have everything turned on,
    going to give it a couple of weeks or a month or two to see what's active
    and what's not and turn off everything that hasn't received a message.

    I guess I might just have to be creative for the titles I can't find :)

    Thanks again :)

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  • From Michael Borthwick@3:640/1321 to Michael Borthwick on Sun Feb 17 11:21:54 2019

    I guess I might just have to be creative for the titles I can't find
    :)

    I had some luck. For anyone after something similar I found these... a
    great list!!

    http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/scoutinglife/a2g.html http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/scoutinglife/g2l.html http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/scoutinglife/m2r.html http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/scoutinglife/s2z.html

    It's got most of what I'm missing.

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  • From Robert Wolfe@3:640/1321 to Michael Borthwick on Sun Feb 17 10:15:30 2019

    On Feb 13, 2019 01:54pm, Michael Borthwick wrote to All:

    I've got a large number of echo's for fidonet that don't have names.
    I've looked at the backbone and the echolist file echo's but still i'm short by a large number.

    Is there anywhere I can go to find a more extensive list?

    Who is your uplink?

    ... Robert Wolfe <robert.wolfe@winserver.org>, Sysop, Omicron Theta BBS
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  • From Michael Borthwick@3:640/1321 to Robert Wolfe on Wed Feb 20 13:53:24 2019
    Who is your uplink?

    It's Scott Little 3:712/848

    With that new list of fido echo's I found I think I have enough to cover
    what I have, and I guess I'll just make up creative titles for what I
    don't.

    Most of them possibly are going to be dead anyway so I'll see how I go :)

    toofargone .:[fusion]:.
    telnet: telnet.fusionbbs.online:23
    ssh: telnet.fusionbbs.online:2222

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    # Origin: Fusion BBS (3:712/132)
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