I think part of the civility was because people knew they could get banned from the various BBS's that were their access to fidonet in the first place. When you

I think part of the civility was because people knew they could get banned from the various BBS's that were their access to fidonet in the first place. When you were limited to local access points, due to the costs of long distance calls, there was more incentive to not piss off your hosts.