domeet webmaster

In the early 1990s, when the Internet was not popular, CFido, which was connected via telephone lines, was once the gathering place for the first batch of Internet users in China. Together they created a story that the Chinese Internet is indelible, but it is rarely known to later generations.

1

Many Internet celebrities have been active in CFido, but they have been friends with each other more than 20 years ago, and they still don’t know how life will change.

At that time, Ding Lei ignored the leadership and opposed the departure of Ningbo Telecom Bureau, came to Guangzhou to prepare for a trip, Run Xun Ma Huateng, Jinshan Lei Jun are developing their own software. Many years later, Ma Huateng recalled: “When we were drinking beer together, we were just wage earners. We still don’t know the future.”

A group of young people in their 20s and 30s gathered together through a network of telephone lines. The network IDs they use are mostly real surnames or full names. The lines between the lines reveal the innocent network friendship between the first generation netizens, and they are all talk about on CFido. Ma Huateng once exchanged a message with netizens, “Heifers jump high – quite cattle B”; Lei Jun caused discussion through the promotion of CFido through the media; Qiu Bojun wrote a paragraph in computer terms…

When dial-up Internet access became a thing of the past, Windows replaced the DOS system, and the software that once run CFido also passed away. CFido is like an Internet monument separated by a high wall, making it harder for younger and younger netizens to reach. Not only a new generation of netizens, but even the old people of CFido want to go back and look at it, they have to install a virtual machine to simulate the DOS environment of the year, which is very inconvenient.

In 2016, CFido old netizens retrieved the data of the year and compiled a historical snapshot website for browsing. Liang Weijiang, who participated in it, felt:

It may be really old recently, and there is always a feeling of nostalgia. When chatting with old friends of the year, I suddenly wanted to see what we were talking about in the past, so I found the old stationmates of Xinyue Station to retrieve the mail data of the year and sort it into the website that everyone is seeing now. The oldest netizens of our group, after almost 20 years, revisited our remarks that year.

When the website was released, Liang Weijiang updated the version log three times in a row. Since then, the CFido historical snapshot website has been quietly standing in its own territory as it has been for more than two decades.

Three years later, in February 2019, the quiet CFido changed. Liang Weijiang updated the website log for the fourth time, but this time it has nothing to do with the version.

“No one believes when you say it. After more than 20 years, a group of people gathered in a WeChat group. Even the characters such as Ma Huateng, Lei Jun, and Qiu Bojun joined the group.” p>

After another six months, a small photo spread. Dozens of middle-aged men took a group photo, Ma Huateng stood in the middle of the crowd, and the electronic screen behind it showed the words “CFido 25th Anniversary”.

Whether searching for the keywords of this party on Baidu, Weibo or WeChat, almost no information can be found. The vast Internet, only Wikipedia’s China Huiduo.com (CFido’s Chinese name) has a short introduction:

The third CFido party was held on August 18, 2019 (Pony’s proposal and invitation) on the 48th floor of Shenzhen Tencent Binhai Building. A group of CFido stationmasters and old netizens gathered in Shenzhen.

After many years, even though everyone has become elites in all walks of life, they still choose the form of private gatherings. As in 1996, the principle that was unanimously adopted by CFido’s first stationmaster conference:

Not too much to disturb others, not easily disturbed by others.

2

The CFido, which became popular in the 1990s, dates back to earlier.

In 1984, American Tom Jennings developed FidoNet, which can exchange information based on the existing electronic bulletin board system (BBS). FidoNet can be seen as a non-profit network that everyone uses to build together in their spare time. Everyone is a provider of information and a person who shares information.

At first FidoNet only dialed between two stations, dialing through the public telephone network, and experimentally receiving and sending information. However, in just a few months, this novel communication method attracted more than 30 people to join the new platform. By 1991, FidoNet was spread all over the world, and more than 12,000 stations were dialed on the computer to chat.

China’s CFido is a branch of FidoNet. In 1991, Roy set up the mainland China in Beijing.A platform – the Great Wall. In 1992, Beijing Great Wall Platform and Shantou Hand-in-Hand Platform formed the earliest BBS exchange system in China, and the prototype of CFido was born. But at the beginning, Roy’s platform was connected with at least a dozen people every day, and most of them were from international students who made long distance calls overseas.

CFido gradually entered the development period in the next two or three years. With the increase in the number and influence of domestic platforms, many people with computers began to look for related magazines and newspapers to learn how to connect CFido to Tiannanhai. North netizen chat.

One computer, one modem (also known as “cat”), and a telephone line form the hardware devices needed to connect CFido. It is not enough to have these devices. The “cat” connected by telephone line needs to dial a platform to send and receive information through a special software called “Telix” on the computer.

Because the cost of connecting CFido is based on the length of time, in order to save money, you also need a client that can be edited offline – Blue Wave Express. CFido netizen once introduced in the Moonlight blog, “With this software, you don’t need to be online to go to CFido BBS. After dialing with Telix, download the compressed envelope of the Blue Wave Express format and upload your reply envelope. Can save a lot of phone bills.”

3

It is more difficult to connect to the site than ordinary users. This kind of difficulty is not only reflected in the technical level, but also requires the webmaster to invest a lot of money without compensation.

The station at the timeToo few lines also reduce the amount of time users spend on the station, and a new user has only a few minutes of networking time.

4

Limiting the time of the Internet according to the user level, so that others have the opportunity to connect in, is the power of each webmaster. Each station will also establish different mechanisms according to its own situation, and there is a larger network structure in the entire FidoNet.

In order to maintain FidoNet’s intercontinental, non-enterprise nature, the pioneers adopted a hierarchical hierarchical network structure. From the site to the city, from the country to the continent, each upstream has a corresponding person in charge, and the station number of each station is also divided accordingly.

In China, CFido has also subdivided a set of institutional systems. In addition to the stationmaster responsible for their respective stations, a network of multiple adjacent stations will select a network coordinator, and there will be the highest level of CFido coordinator.

Although there is a clear upstream and downstream relationship in management, it was clearly stated in the CFido National Webmaster Congress that “all users in CFido are equal”. This is also the reason, regardless of the first general coordinator Roy, or the second general coordinator Qiu Bojun, more to participate in CFido daily communication as a netizen.

Some letters sent by users of each station will be filtered and delivered to the corresponding letter area, and all netizens can view and reply. In the heyday of CFido, the letter area was varied.

Users can discuss “the shortcomings of the domestic RPG system” in the game area, and can also communicate with the people in the hardware area “ASUS motherboard TX97E authenticity identification method”, even in the sports section, you can also see from 1Beijing Guoan Football Team, “forever the first” in 996.

5

When Ma Huateng became the stationmaster in 1995, there were fewer than ten stations in the country, and in the second year, the number of stations nationwide soared to 50. At that time, the management of CFido’s “Program Life” section, and Lei Jun, general manager of Jinshan, said in an interview with “Electronic Enthusiasts”: “Compared with the development of the Internet, domestic development of BBS has advantages.”

BBS is indeed the vent of the time. Whether it is the BBS of the organization such as the school or the government, the commercial BBS that cooperates with the telecommunications department, or the BBS that CFido has established spontaneously by netizens, it has begun to be seen in media reports. In such an environment, CFido has ushered in a wave of user surges. But the sudden users, the original small, stable CFido caused an impact until the decline.

CFido has regarded “patriotism, nobleness, courage, loyalty, progress, friendship, and keeping a point, long live the amateur spirit!” as a value. The rich technical discussion atmosphere and the online experience of helping each other make the original netizens call CFido the last spiritual pure land in the world of materialistic desire.

But with the expansion of the number of users, the influx of newcomers broke through the original order. Witness Shi Yuyu, who witnessed the development of CFido, commented on this matter: “There is nothing to say, but the inexhaustible style has contributed to the dependence of some low-quality stationmates, even rogue behavior. They think that the amateur BBS platform is a free service. Then they put forward any unreasonable demands that must be met by the webmaster. Any persuasion and restraint on their extraordinary behavior is accused of deviating from the amateur BBS spirit.”

In fact, the questions that CFido’s old stationmates had raised were not much better than the late station friends. But the problem is that the station friends with lower initial skill levels are moreThere is a spirit of research, and most of the questions raised are made after some pondering, and later station friends are sent to the letter area without thinking. This is quite similar to today’s Q&A community. Some of the answers that are readily available through access to information often lead to “how to treat” users.

6

In 1998, influenced by the changing atmosphere of the community and the increasing popularity of the Internet, the old stationmates who were active gradually disappeared into CFido. It is difficult for new stationers who are affected by the media to generate valuable content, which has accelerated the decline of CFido.

CFido’s netizens collected posts on the station (then called letters) and integrated the high-quality “Long Yin” e-magazine. However, the thirteenth issue of “Long Yin”, which should have been released in July 1998, has become a stop-and-sentence testimony – “The Lost Pure Land”.

The editorial department of Longyin, which uses the spare time to collect high-quality content from the station, said in this suspension:

From the first issue, “Long Yin” has established itself based on the letters of CFidoNet, but as time goes by, the stability of this foothold has become a threat to the existence of “Dragon Sound”. And the big problem of development, but also because the letters on CFidoNet are becoming more and more boring, as we edited by “Long Yin”, we are less and less appearing on CFidoNet.

Compared with “increasing boring”, CFido used to be like a hundred schools of thought.

This year, the operating system around Huawei has caused many people to realize the importance of the operating system. As early as 1997, CFido had already discussed “whether it is necessary for China to develop its own OS.”

Qi Bojun thought that “it is absolutely necessary” in the discussion at the time. His reasons are three:

1. If we abandon the OS now, we will never have the opportunity to get involved in the OS field anymore, because from the technical update, the distance is getting farther and farther, and after a few years, China must rely entirely on Microsoft. OS. If one day, the war broke out, the OS of all Chinese computers would “strike” and the consequences would be disastrous.

2. Even though we have a lot of OS BUGs at this stage, we can’t even use them at all.However, I believe that we must continue to study. The main purpose is to maintain technical research in the OS field and to minimize the distance from Microsoft. Just as our fighter jets are very backward, we can’t rely on imported Su-27 to live. We must take the route of import-assembly-independent development.

3. With the Lekai film, the price of Fuji and Kodak has not been able to rise. Similarly, if we have our own OS to choose from, it is also a constraint for Microsoft.

Qi Bojun also sent some easy paragraphs on CFido, such as the following sentence you may have seen. It is actually selected from the “Longue” magazine “Girlfriend V6.0 and Wife V1.0” in 1997. 》.

A friend of mine last year upgraded GirlFriend version 6.0 to Wife version 1.0 and found that it took a lot of memory and left almost no system resources for other applications. Now he also notices that Wife 1.0 is gestating Child-Processes, which will consume more valuable resources.

The “Long Yin” e-magazine is like a miniature version of CFido history. From the beginning of the cyber worms, “game life”, “Shenzhou industry”, “historical situation”, “space Taoyuan” and other columns, there is nothing to say “tired” when it is suspended, and finally thousands of years ago. CFido came to an end.

And for those who now have silver silk on their heads, CFido has finally returned to the Pure Land in another way, always becoming their memories of the young time.