The "original" FidoNet was very simple and friendly;
you told me at Fido #1 that you had a FidoNet node ready, I
put you in the list, with your phone number, and people
called up and downloaded the list; done!

Well ... at first, "everyone knew each other"; we
were in more or less constant contact. However, when the
node numbers got into the twenties, there were people
bringing up FidoNodes who none of us knew. This was good,
but it meant we were not in close contact anymore.

The Net started to deteriorate; every single week
without fail there was at least one wrong number, usually
two. To impress on you the seriousness of wrong numbers in
the node list, imagine you are a poor old lady, who every
single night is getting phone calls EVERY TWO MINUTES AT
4:00AM, no one says anything, then hangs up. This actually
happened; I would sit up and watch when there was mail that
didn't go out for a week or two, and I'd pick up the phone
after dialing, and was left in the embarrasing position of
having to explain bulletin boards to an extremely tired,
extremely annoyed person.