Technology

Yes. And that requires the participants to self-regulate and be educated, at least beyond a certain number of participants (and this number is more in the 100's than 1000's of devices in a city size area).

In case anyone is interested, in meshtastic, for a regular handheld device, set it to client if in a less populated area, client_mute in densely populated areas. router/repeater only for really well positioned nodes (think top of a mountain, NOT top of a tall building), router_late for ok positioned nodes where there's other, better router nodes around, but they can cover some dead zone that the better router ones don't cover. And then there's other like client_base for e.g. a rooftop node to help handheld devices inside the house reach outside. And follow the guidelines of your local area group/forum/whatever on number of hops, band to use etc.

None of that is really complicated, but a lot of users will just buy a device, turn it on excitedly with default settings, see that messaging works and not dig deeper, and then worsen then network for everyone.

With meshcore, there's a repeater firmware and a client firmware, it's not just a setting that can be selected in the app. Default is client, and switching to repeater mean reflashing the firmware. And more clients don't really matter for the network, since they don't repeat. So much less risk of an unwitting user worsening the network.

And if anyone wants to play with this, all the devices should support both meshtastic and meshcore firmware, so you can play with both and see which you prefer.

And if you're curious why I prefer meshcore, these are all the nodes I was able to hear on meshtastic and meshcore, respectively, in the same location, with meshcore I can reach twice as far in each direction