| Grex > Coop6 > #103: Discussion on the party program and its clientele |
| Discussion on the party program and its clientele | 
Feb 11 10:13 UTC 1995 |
There was some discussion in item #9 about the party program and those who use it. This item is intended to continue that discussion.
| response 1 of 47: |
Feb 11 10:14 UTC 1995 |
From item #9:
,E
,R0000
,U13455,nephi
,AImade Itup
,D2f3b272f
,T
(Gee, I saw mine... )
(Also, I have heard people describe vehemently how poorly they were treated
while here on Grex. I'm pretty sure it was in party, and probably by some
of the thirteen year-olds that frequent the place, as they have tended to
come off rather unfriendly towards me, as well. To be sure, though, Grex
is acquiring a rather nasty reputation for being mean over on m-net, at
least by those that frequent party there.)
,E
,R0000
,U2660,carson
,AFluffy Green Thingy
,D2f3b5979
,T
I broke up a fight in party the other day...
,E
,R0000
,U112,popcorn
,AValerie Mates
,D2f3b74e9
,T
Addendum to 168: Carson, my comment (the one that bothered you) was
also intended to be funny, though I guess it didn't come out that way.
I apologize again. :(
Party sure makes a bad first impression on people who find it before
they find the conferences....
,E
,R0000
,U12030,sidhe
,AChrstopher Anton Cloyd
,D2f3b818f
,T
That's precisely what I was referring to; party. Most newbies like
party, because you can come and go as you please, and the comments get
the "instant
gratification" effect via immediate responses. Also, it's far less daunting
than PicoSpan is, for a newbie. Unfortunately, we have acquired a lot of
"gnats" Down there lately.. ,E ,R0000 ,U13455,nephi ,AImade Itup ,D2f3bc540 ,T
It seems really odd that PicoSpan comes off daunting. There are only really
about 5, or so commands that one has to remember to be able to use the thing,
and most of them are shown in the form of prompts!
(Then again, when I was a newuser here, I remember the conferences seeming
that way, as well.)
,E
,R0000
,U12030,sidhe
,AChrstopher Anton Cloyd
,D2f3bcbd5
,T
Precisely. Remeber back, and look through THOSE eyes..
I have yet to see every cf here.
,E
,R0000
,U1827,rcurl
,ARane Curl
,D2f3be46d
,T
I rather dislike Grex being judged by what is done in party. Grex is
a conferencing system, which runs party software also. If what occurs
there is sufficiently detrimental to Grex's reputation, there would be
a point in discussing discontinuing party. Perhaps a first step would be
to keep party goers aware of that possibility.
,E
,R0000
,U5106,ajax
,ARob Argy
,D2f3bf11b
,T
Who's to say it isn't a party system, which runs conference software also? :)
I hear ya though. But I'd worry that a threat to partiers might backfire.
,E
,R0000
,U107,mdw
,AMarcus D. Watts
,D2f3c20d3
,T
I have not noticed the problems people here are describing in party.
Curiously, I have noticed people in party here commenting about how
people on m-net can be mean in party towards newcomers. And
occasionally people do show up in party who are not entirely civilized,
but it's very much the exception rather than the rule.
,E
,R0000
,U110,steve
,ASTeve Andre'
,D2f3c2f9e
,T
There are alrady people who've judged Grex by party. Someone
from the Ann Arbor Observer was one of them. I got a letter from her
about Grex saying that we seemed friendly enough but that a lot of
the people she was chatting with seemed somewhat childish.
I fully share Rane's dislike of this.
,E
,R0000
,U1046,gerund
,AGerald E. Peck
,D2f3c7674
,T
# 175 bothers me, because while it's Rane's view of what Grex is it's not
everyone's view. If you don't like what you find in party then don't
go there. Most people can handle that.
As for people who have judged Grex by party that's like judging the
United States by a visit to New York City. It's not the
fault of partiers and those that enjoy party when someone judges Grex
by what they see in one particular area of Grex that they don't
happen to like.
Some of you seem to be worried about losing users users who are put
off by party. I think you have a bigger threat of losing users who
are put off by a confusing conferencing system. Picospan is
wonderful, and as much as I like it I know plenty of people
who have come to me complaining about how different it is from other
sites and how hard it is to become used to it. I would mention the
lag problem, but that seems to be pretty much under control
at least from my perspective.
Grex is going to be what the users make of it. No one rams party
down anyone's throat. If newusers aren't aware of the other
'attractions' of Grex outside of party then perhaps the individuals
who wish them to be made aware should do something about
it.
,E
,R0000
,U2660,carson
,AFluffy Green Thingy
,D2f3c8c62
,T
<not to piss on Gerund YET AGAIN, but...>
I agree with #175, including its call for possible *discussion*, but, as
remmers reminded us earlier, this *is* the "Conference Proposals" item,
and we *really* shouldn't be drifting here, so I'll do something, i.e.,
enter item for above discussion, rather than simply talk about it and
wonder why other people aren't acting.
,E
| response 2 of 47: |
Feb 11 10:42 UTC 1995 |
I think that #1, before I say anything I should make Carson aware that usually when I enter anything in the BBS it's to answer a question if I can or to state my opinion on a particular subject. I don't tend to 'act' unless I care about something enough to act on it. I'm sure Carson is probably quite aware of THAT. Usually I'd rather give my 2 cents on a subject and let others decide what to make of it or what to DO if anything. On the rare occasion that I care about something enough I will ACT on it. An example of this is when I entered the item asking for private party channels. Usually, however, I don't care to get involved in very many issues, because I dislike arguements and would rather save myself the trouble of being flamed regarding something I really don't give a care about. I'm beginning to think my attitude is going to change in that area, however. I hope the stress doesn't kill me. :) Now to get back on subject: I'd like to hear what Rane's particular concerns are, and anyone else's as well. I personally don't view Grex as solely a conferencing system or even primarily a conferencing system. Amoung other things I view it as a place where I can meet new and interesting people from around the world in a real-time format. It's a place where I can send and receive messages on a wide variety of subjects, both in the BBS and via mail. I can play an online game if I have the inclination to do so. Grex is diverse, and I'd really like to see it stay that way. I believe any steps towards eliminating party or anything else for that matter would detract from Grex as a whole.
| response 3 of 47: |
Feb 11 11:14 UTC 1995 |
I tend to agree with Gerald's last paragraph. Grex has a number of wonderful features and programs, all with the potential for great good and for great abuse, none of which are forced upon individual users. I don't think discontinuing PicoSpan, party, trn, mathom, mail, or any similar program would solve problems of abuse, but rather simply eliminate the problem along with the good. Sometimes this is necessary; I don't think we have those sorts of cases here, and I'd hate to ever witness the like. Users can be both courteous and disccourteous anywhere; the party's program's blessing and curse is that both are instantaneous. I think that removing the program because of a few discourteous users would be like, oh, shutting down PicoSpan because of WInter item #32: a bit premature, and very much overkill. I'm glad that we are able to discuss this problem without acting first. I think that certain users will see this item and either reconsider their behavior or maybe seek to encourage those who are being acrimonious to reconsider theirs. Discussion is good.
| response 4 of 47: |
Feb 11 14:50 UTC 1995 |
As far as good ol' item #32 goes, I don't believe I remember anyone suggesting that picospan be shut down. Oh, and Carson, sometimes people chnage their stance on issues. Just thought I'd mention that.
| response 5 of 47: |
Feb 11 17:45 UTC 1995 |
re #4: I hadn't meant to suggest that anyone had suggested
shutting down PicoSpan; I was drawing a comparison.
Sorry you were confused by that.
| response 6 of 47: |
Feb 11 22:19 UTC 1995 |
What about limiting use of party to users that have been here for some time? This would prevent newusers from too easily being influenced solely by party, and allow "discurteous" users to discover that they are not welcome here.
| response 7 of 47: |
Feb 12 02:37 UTC 1995 |
Why stop at limiting them from party? You seem to be proceeding on the assumption that party is going to turn people off from Grex. Strange, but some people come to Grex SOLEY for party and you'd be losing them if you took away their access to it. How do you define "discurteous"? And btw, I thought everyone was welcome on Grex while it was only certain BEHAVIOURS that weren't welcome.
| response 8 of 47: |
Feb 12 05:24 UTC 1995 |
Yeah, I haveta agree. This gets into the classic "What is Grex" discussion. If we shunted people away from party, solely because othe fact that 'new' folks can't get at it, we've just made digital forbidden fruit.
| response 9 of 47: |
Feb 12 07:09 UTC 1995 |
If the only complaint about party is it could scare away new users, here's an idea: when party is started, if the user's account is under a week old, display a message like "Party participants can sometimes be rude or immature. If you don't like it, the conferences are (usually!) more civil." And maybe add some directions to pico. I don't particularly like this idea, but mentione it in case someone else does :).
| response 10 of 47: |
Feb 12 07:42 UTC 1995 |
I dunno; I'd rather see that line with directions to chat help or something similar.
| response 11 of 47: |
Feb 12 08:52 UTC 1995 |
"Now that I have your attention..." ;-) First, my position with respect to party: I look sometimes but I do not participate because I think it has become largely puerile. puerile (adj.). Pertaining to or characteristic of childhood; juvenile; hence, immature; weak; silly; as a *puerile* suggestion. See synonyms under childish, youthful. That is not a criticism. Few of us were not "juvenile; hence, immature" at one time. I find nothing wrong with a place for puerile interactions on Grex. The first problem, though, is that everyone should understand it for what it is. Experienced bbsers know what to expect (I have not found party on any system that is not puerile), and need not participate without drawing conclusions about the whole system. Unfortunately, as noted, there are many more inexperienced bbsers than experienced, so many jump to conclusions, or are simply annoyed, or even horrified, by what they find in the much-vaunted party. I am not sure what kind of "warning" can be given to system users that, when they join party, they are stepping into a puerile environment. I think that if one is given, it should only be at the moment of entering party, and it should (obviously) not be worded to disparage party. Perhaps the message should be more along the lines of "Si gustibus non diputandum est." The *second* problem is more serious. This is that the level of civilized behavior and respect for others that is strongly encouraged on Grex, and which exists largely in Picospan (through some cultural development whose mechanisms is not entirely clear - not all conference systems are as civilized), apparently does not extend as fully to party - at least, if the alleged complaints are true (I have not experienced rudeness in party, but perhaps because I spend so little time there). *If* it is true that civility sometimes pales in party, then it is of concern to Grex. How could this be repaired? The best method that I can think of at the moment, is to extend the same mechanism that keeps Picospan moderately civilized to party: the frequent and experienced users set examples and even exercise some civilized correction to those that show disrespect to others.
| response 12 of 47: |
Feb 12 12:50 UTC 1995 |
I thought there were multiple channels involved and if you didn't like what was happening in one you could move (or create) another? Is there room on Grex for those who just want to play with less mature behaviors? Isn't respect a by-product of tolerance? Let it be.
| response 13 of 47: |
Feb 12 18:20 UTC 1995 |
Ideally, yes, it is.
The whole idea of shutting off party for newbies is *ludicrous*.
It was the original reason I came aboard, and, had it not been available,
I would've gone off to look at other systems <I had over 100 to choose from
on the metronet gopher, one of which was M-Net, who's party is *truly*
juvenile. I don't think calling our party that is quite fair, but to
each their opine..>.
In other words, yes there are rude people in party, occasionally,
and yes, they do occasionally scare off the newbies, BUT, I believe
restricting party in any way <such askeeping newbies out, or shutting it
down entirely> is the worst thing you could do.
| response 14 of 47: |
Feb 13 01:10 UTC 1995 |
Well, I agree with shutting party out from newbies COULD be a bad idea
in that, well to be honest, for sometimes, whenever I receive a help
message that I can't answer, I usually go looking for another helper.
There have been times when I couldn't get another helper, BUT there
were about 15 people in party. I usually tell the help-seeker to come to
party and ask the same question. Or if I have another window on grex open
I'll just ask it myself =). True, we do get the usual gang
of nit-wits (net-wits, possibly) who sit there cussing, racial slurs,
blab on about their homophobia, etc, etc. That's why there was a filter
option made.
I'm really interested (and have started on) in working on a shell
script that you can run, that starts off asking you who to filter.
And you could filter as many people as you choose, with a pipe.
Then that'll create a file name 'filt' in the users home dir,
and then the user will load :s filter="/u/user/filt".
Maybe I was wrong in entering a responce, after all,
my temper is probably one of the larger ones in Grex Party...e
(only used on the nitwits mentioned before, though)
| response 15 of 47: |
Feb 13 04:06 UTC 1995 |
oooh--lets not come up with a system that asks you who to ignore. We're doing things the wrong way if all we can do to work on party problems is come up with something to systematically ignore problem people.
| response 16 of 47: |
Feb 13 14:07 UTC 1995 |
I've been thinking it would make sense to stick a shell script around party that displays up to three messages. There'd be a "party motd" that shows up every time you run party (and is kept very short), a "party welcome message" that is shown only once, the first time you run party, and a "party news" file that is only displayed when its contents change.
| response 17 of 47: |
Feb 13 15:49 UTC 1995 |
I like that idea. Do you have suggestions for the contents of each?
| response 18 of 47: |
Feb 13 18:00 UTC 1995 |
I like it better than the filter..
| response 19 of 47: |
Feb 13 20:08 UTC 1995 |
FINE! Just turn down my ideas! :) j/k Anyway, come to think of it, I really DO like Valerie's idea better than mine... But what is to be said about the unpolite people who come into party and do nothing but flood (the term I use to mean push spacebar-return amillion times and say nothing intelligent. There are many people who don't have the slightest idea on how to use grep/egrep/fgrep. I'm not going to suggest that the whole source be edited by janc just to make it easier for users. Just a suggestion for a shell script. Looking at what I just typed, I seemed to forgot a close parenthesis.. ) -- there we go.
| response 20 of 47: |
Feb 14 00:05 UTC 1995 |
Although, to be absolutely honest, I sometimes enjoy having the ability to read files into party I would be willing to lose that option so that party users would not have to put up with inconsiderate people reading 'flood' files, binaries, and full length line files into party. If I want to show somebody a file I can just as easily tell them to type, say for example, !cat blahblahblah | more. I realize that this is only one of the problems people are having with party, and this may or may not be a workable solution to that problem. I do like Valerie's idea because I think it would help eliminate the biggest problem facing newusers, and that is ignorance about the many features (and possible pitfalls) of Grex.
| response 21 of 47: |
Feb 14 01:20 UTC 1995 |
Gerald, I think most people have "ASCII upload" or cut-and-paste options in their comm programs, so those intent on being annoying would be only moderately inconvenienced.
| response 22 of 47: |
Feb 14 03:06 UTC 1995 |
But you haven't seen the stuff they read into there! My LEAST favorite
is the "Belligerant-c;ass starship" that resembles the USS Enterprise
<next Gen>, except that the warp pods are distorted into a pair of
middle fingers! It takes up alot of screen space, and for little more
than flipping off everyone present!
I don't want to set myself up with noshowread, because I enjoy the
<real> poetry that sometimes people will import there..
| response 23 of 47: |
Feb 14 03:52 UTC 1995 |
re #14: if you can come up with an easy filter, LET ME KNOW. I wrecked
my .profile two days ago trying to use the one in the info .cf.
Methinks I was trying to twit too many people... ;)
| response 24 of 47: |
Feb 14 04:28 UTC 1995 |
Hm. Could you enter a response in the info conference to warn people off from whatever it was that caused problems for you? Thanks! Re 17: Ideas for contents of the files... party motd: This might often be empty. Sometimes it would run a message like "we have now upgraded to version 2.7l of party", or "private party channel names have now switched from _x to _z", or "co-op item 103 discusses some possible changes to party; if you care, please read it!", or "this is the new party motd; you will see it every time you run party". party news file: This is the file that would be displayed only when its contents changed. It would contain things like more information about _x and _z channels, or info about what is different in the latest version of party. party welcome message for new users: This message would be shown only once, for people who had never used party before. The message would contain some party use and etiquette tips, a carefully worded caveat about how some people find they don't like party but they do like conferencing, and maybe some info about how to write help. Unlike the other messages, this one would make you press Enter before putting you into party.