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cross
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Attracting new users....
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Jan 27 20:57 UTC 2007 |
How can we get more users on grex? Brainstorm ideas here.
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| 84 responses total. |
cross
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response 1 of 84:
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Jan 27 21:06 UTC 2007 |
One thing that occurs to me is that grex is really pretty bad at advertising
itself. Consider that if one does a google search for, "public access
unix", grex doesn't show up until the 3rd page (SDF is the first link,
incidentally). If one doesn't quote the search string, it is much much
further down in the list (I stopped looking after the 7th page of hits).
How about some kind of advertising campaign? Maybe a slashdot story?
Perhaps a focus shift is useful, as well. In particular, moving away from
the BBS as the primary focus of the effort to drum up new users and toward
the public access Unix side (e.g., ``Come check out our service and see how
a Unix machine is supposed to be run!'').
Ideas?
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mcnally
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response 2 of 84:
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Jan 27 21:06 UTC 2007 |
How about an indiscriminately-targetted mass e-mail campaign?
Or maybe we could convince the younger generation that it's a
very highly stylized MMORPG. We'd need to add some sort of
concept of "levelling-up" and establish a real-world exchange
rate for gribblies, but it could work..
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mcnally
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response 3 of 84:
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Jan 27 21:07 UTC 2007 |
On a more serious note, and re #1, I don't think we can credibly
hold ourselves out as a model of how a public access Unix machine
*should* be run.
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cross
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response 4 of 84:
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Jan 27 21:19 UTC 2007 |
True, but that could be fixed. Imagine we could; then what could we do?
What about reaching out to emerging technology locations and offering up grex
as a place to learn, e.g., Unix and C programming.
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mynxcat
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response 5 of 84:
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Jan 27 22:11 UTC 2007 |
I like the idea of a story in slashdot - the world's oldest surviving public
access unix server. Of course we nuke mnet first - but mnet won't be missed
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cyklone
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response 6 of 84:
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Jan 27 22:14 UTC 2007 |
Actually, it would. More than you think. I'm surprised at the old names that
pop up from time to time.
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cross
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response 7 of 84:
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Jan 27 23:44 UTC 2007 |
Well, anything to get grex on the map would be a good idea.
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cross
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response 8 of 84:
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Jan 28 00:47 UTC 2007 |
(I'm going to ask that this item be linked into the current agora....)
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maus
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response 9 of 84:
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Jan 28 04:50 UTC 2007 |
Wow! the newuser programme is back! Huzzah!
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krj
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response 10 of 84:
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Jan 28 08:05 UTC 2007 |
jp2 wrote an M-net story and got it covered on Slashdot some years
back.
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krj
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response 11 of 84:
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Jan 28 08:12 UTC 2007 |
There's the bumper sticker idea from some years ago that foundered
on my lack of graphic software skills. The idea was for a simple
sticker, maybe with the Grex logo, and large letters
www.cyberspace.org
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cross
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response 12 of 84:
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Jan 28 09:14 UTC 2007 |
Speaking of things like that, whatever happened with the rewrite of the main
web page?
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cmcgee
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response 13 of 84:
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Jan 28 15:41 UTC 2007 |
Is there a way to create one item that is the Grex blog item, and have it be
published as a blog?
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cross
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response 14 of 84:
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Jan 28 16:27 UTC 2007 |
I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Colleen?
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cmcgee
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response 15 of 84:
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Jan 29 00:09 UTC 2007 |
I'm thinking that Grex needs presence in the blogsphere. One way of getting
that kind of publicity is for Grex to create an Agora Item called "Grex
Blogs".
That item would appear as a blog on the web. Two or three items a week would
be promoted to the blog page. Grexer comments would automatically appear, but
other people would be invited to come to Grex to comment.
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scholar
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response 16 of 84:
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Jan 29 00:53 UTC 2007 |
Wouldn't work even if you could get Steve off his ass to implement it.
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cross
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response 17 of 84:
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Jan 29 02:47 UTC 2007 |
I think the best way forward in this dimension is to get Jan to implement
blogs on top of backtalk....
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mary
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response 18 of 84:
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Jan 29 12:47 UTC 2007 |
Colleen, would the presence you're looking for through a Grex Blog item
require that item to be indexed and visible to search engines? If so,
that would be new for Grex. Something worth discussing, for sure, but
new. Our conferences aren't visible to search engines - this policy
was a result of a long discussion among the users many years ago.
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krj
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response 19 of 84:
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Jan 29 16:38 UTC 2007 |
Blogs and BBS-style conferencing are different ways of organizing
discussions. Or, perhaps more importantly, they are different
ways of controlling discussions. The author of a blog has MUCH
more control than Grex has ever tolerated in BBS.
My view is that the cost vs. benefit ratio of trying to provide
"blog access" and "BBS-style access" to the same text database
is low -- it'll be a lot of work for not much benefit.
If Colleen or somebody wants to start a Best of Agora highlights
blog, a group-written blog, by getting permission from the original
authors and manually editing things, that'd work. I think a lot of
context would be lost, but it can't hurt to try. That could be
done today using Google's "blogger/blogspot" service or Typepad or
any of the commonly available blog-publishing services.
Another point I keep pounding on, re: Grex and blogs, is: if the
project involves developing custom blog software for Grex, it will
not get done in finite time. Just get some open source blog package
(I'm assuming there is such a thing) and slam it into production.
We're losing valuable time here.
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remmers
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response 20 of 84:
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Jan 29 17:42 UTC 2007 |
Yes, there are open source blog packages (e.g. Wordpress) that could be
made available here, but when you can go to a place like blogger.com and
set up your own blog for free, I don't see what adding a facility to Grex
that's just like facilities that are already available would do for Grex.
Frankly, I don't see what adding a blogging facility to Grex would gain
Grex unless we *do* provide a meaningful integration of blog-style access
and bbs-style access.
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cmcgee
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response 21 of 84:
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Jan 29 18:58 UTC 2007 |
Actually, I was thinking more in terms of a conference on Grex that WOULD be
indexed by search engines. In joining the conference, you would explicitly
agree that not only would your words be web-readable, but they would be web
searched. No need for an editor, permissions, etc.
Some software solution would exist that automatically made those posts visible
on the web, through search engines, linkable to other blogs, etc, etc.
The idea is that conference would be blog like. Each item would be a "blog
entry" and each comment would be visible like a comment on a blog entry. If
you wanted, you could subscribe to an RSS feed for that conference.
I'm brainstorming here. I have no idea whether software is available, is easy
to write, would be an add on to front talk, or what.
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kingjon
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response 22 of 84:
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Jan 29 20:26 UTC 2007 |
IIRC, that exact functionality (minus the "search-engine-indexable", which is a
separate issue) was proposed (at least as a brainstorming-session idea, if not
with more weight) by janc as a flavor of Backtalk and as a set of conferences
(separate from the others, and one per user).
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twenex
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response 23 of 84:
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Feb 4 00:39 UTC 2007 |
Well, now htat newuser is back up, that should help!
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vivekm1234
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response 24 of 84:
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Feb 4 01:52 UTC 2007 |
Re #2: hehe, hey why don't we run a MUD :) We could all work off some steam
about other ppl's ideas by slaughtering them on the MUD. Plus daemon9, trig
and other like minded individuals can form a PK guild and go around trying
to kill ppl. We could junk party and use the MUD interface instead.<g>
Plus we have kids logging in (bipolar, thewolf and now the quebeq-ers so..)
The blogosphere idea is a great idea, but we'd better warn ppl about Agora
and it's fractious nature and warn them that we are a little short of users
(we don't want to raise their hopes only to be disappointed) and i hope
cmcgee or someone selectively paste's stuff after checking with people.
I don't want my stuff to appear on google though Vivek is a pretty common
name. Actually why have a best of Agora? Why not a best of BBS blog?
#21's a super idea and solves all the above problems!
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