Echomail

FidoNet-style globally-distributed discussion areas. Like Usenet but
delivered over BinkP instead of NNTP, with each message tagged
to an echo area like BBS_SCENE or LINUX_HELP.

How it works

1. A user posts in echo area BBS_SCENE on this BBS.
2. The local BinkP poller bundles the new message with other
   outbound mail and sends it to your uplink at the next poll.
3. The uplink redistributes it to every node that subscribes to the
   BBS_SCENE area, including back to BBSes that link off the
   uplink.
4. Their users see the message on their own next poll cycle.

A round-trip is typically minutes to hours depending on each node's
poll schedule.

Reading

• Web: /echomail/
• Terminal: main menu E. Areas list paged 18 at a time; press Q
  to skip to the picker.

Composing

• Web: from any echo area page, click Compose.
• Terminal: main menu C. The compose flow asks for area → To: →
  Subject: → body editor.

Outbound messages queue with direction='outbound' and sent_at=NULL
until the next BinkP poll picks them up.

Areas

Each area is a topic-bound conversation. Sysop maintains the area
list under Echomail Admin. Common areas in the BBS scene:

• BBS_SCENE — talking about BBSes
• BBS_ADS — BBS advertisements
• SYNCHRONET — Synchronet-specific
• FIDONEWS — the FidoNet weekly newsletter
• LINUX_HELP, WIN10_HELP, … — distro-flavored support

Networks

You can be in multiple networks at once. The most common BBS-scene
networks today are:

• FidoNet (zone 1-6) — the original
• fsxNet — modern, friendly, smaller
• tqwNet, zer0net, …

Each network has its own uplink, addressing scheme (zone:net/node),
and area policies. See BinkP Setup to join one.

Pre-configured: ANotherNetwork

Every ANetBBS install ships pre-joined to ANotherNetwork (hub
bbs.a-net.fyi, zone 1200) — 26 message echo areas across
General, Technology, BBS Scene, Retro, Hobby, Trading, Data, SysOp,
and Test categories, seeded automatically on first run but inactive
and unsubscribed until a sysop turns on the ones they want. See
ANotherNetwork for the full area list and how to get your own
node number.

Encoding

Echomail bodies travel as raw bytes and can be in any codepage. ANetBBS
stores them as latin-1 mojibake (each byte 0xNN → codepoint U+00NN)
so the original CP437 bytes survive round-trips. The terminal
reader writes them back via latin-1.encode() so a CP437 client
renders ANSI art correctly.