response 131 of 236:

Dec 27 21:42 UTC 2006

I agree with slynne.  I don't get where people make the conceptual jump
from, ``there are problems'' to ``change for the sake of change.''  Clearly,
there are some things that need to be changed.  Among them:

1) Stagnation and apathy within the community.  I think this is hard to
guage for people *in* the community, but consider that the membership level
has nearly halved in the past few years.  It needs to be asked, ``why is
that?'' Do people perceive that as a problem?  If so, is it worth fixing?
If not, why not?  If peole are content with the community as it is, why
bother turning on newuser?  Is grex supposed to be about an *actively
growing* community, or the same group of people who have always been here?

2) The spam problem and email in general.  Grex email, when it works, has
some serious problems.  Come on, grex can do better than that.

3) The newuser thing and abuse.  Once again, grex can do better than that.

4) The various staff issues.  Points (2) and (3) can only be addressed with
the assistance of staff, but there aren't staff resources available to
address them in any real way.  I've outlined several ways in which I think
that at least the spam problem can be (partially) addressed (including:
making email opt-in, doing automated verification via paypal and
`sponsorship' of users by members to allow off-site email, putting in spam
and virus filtering), but there's no one on staff with the necessary
combination of time *and* experience to make any of those things happen.  Is
this something grex should try and correct?  If so, how?

Clearly some long-time users and contributers are disillusioned and
unsatisfied with the direction the system is taking.  Instead of just saying
that they're insulting and writing them off, perhaps a better course of
action is to ask *why* they're so frustrated and dissatisfied, and work from
there.