You didn’t need to be a node to be on Fidonet.

Even if you were a "point" (an endpoint assigned to the node) you still had to set up the software and (in the mid-to-late 90s at least) set up a modem to call your node to upload/download. And sometimes you had to set up repeated dialing until you got through because the node could be busy (some nodes doubled as BBSs), or connection could be bad and it'd had to retry etc. Wasn't an easy task, so it served as a sort of a filter so that most people on there were geeks.

Later on of course some nodes started distributing over the Internet so setting up a node became much easier (and I think there was a way for the node to allow multiple users read/write without even setting up a node/point at all).

You didn’t even need to need a point to be on Fidonet.

Sysops did but BBS users didn't need to do that.