Here is a "FidoNet Onboarding" extremely analogous to fedi onboarding.
https://wiki.preterhuman.net/FidoNet_New-Sysop_Orientation_Information
There's more than a little revisionism etc going on here...
There were a lot of really awful people back then. The RC system ("Regional Coordinator") was a nothing volunteer post turned into coordinated power-trip-centers by 1) my naivete defining the RC function and 2) people who will fuck up anything if it gets them power.
(ZCs (Zone coordinators -- inter-continental generally) were also politically fraught, but that post and function was actually somewhat complicated (recall the Berlin wall was still in place) and getting packets into Poland and Hungary, then Bosnia, etc, earlier South Africa under apartheid (one anti-apartheid university connected to FidoNet via a party line (US telephony)!) were actually dangerous for some people.)
As an onboarding doc, at this late date, it's a good description of how it worked/was supposed to work.
For the record John Madill from Baltimore, Fido #2, dew the ASCII Fido dog and was always acknowledged as the author and maybe it's possible he donated it to IFNA, but I suspect not.
