Request for Good Stuff to Say About Grex

Aug 27 21:21 UTC 1996

We are currently trying to cut a deal with another organization that relates
to our upcoming move.  (We can't quite talk about details of this particular
deal in public yet.)  They'd like a written document from us telling a bit
about what Grex is and why Grex is such a wonderful thing that they'd like
to be associated with us.  I've volunteered to coordinate the generation of
this document in the next few days.

My goal here is to collect ideas for things to say about Grex that will give
people a warm, fuzzy feeling about supporting us.  Descriptions of Good Things
Grex does, personal stories about how your kid wouldn't be the Nobel Prize
winner he is today without Grex, testimonials, catchy ways of phrasing things,
etc.

I plan to post patches of generic boiler-plate here, stuff suitable for
jamming into various proposals to various conferences.  I'm hoping for
suggestions, ideas, improvements, additions.

The stuff peculiar to this particular proposal won't be discussed here, but
I'd like to gather as much input on the more generic parts of the proposal
as I can.  We will want to keep this one short, but we may well find other
uses for good stuff about Grex in our web pages and on future proposals.

response 2 of 53:

Aug 27 23:29 UTC 1996

Here's a first draft of a brief "What is Grex" introduction compiled largely
from things people said at the board meeting.

Idea is to try to state the philosophy of Grex first, and then let that lead
into what services grex does and does not offer, trying to show how they
fit into a coherent plan.
==============================================================================
For the last five years, Grex has provided a unique service to its users.
Though Grex aims to be as free as possible, it is not a freenet.  It is first
and foremost an open virtual community.  This means our priorities are
different than other superficially similar systems:

 - Grex is more interested in being a destination than in being a highway.
   Most freenets simply give users access to the internet.  We do not want to
   be simply a route to other systems.  We want to be a resource that our
   users will want to visit on a daily basis.

 - Grex is more interested in facilitating communication among its users than
   in distributing information to them.  Rather than creating or collecting
   static databases of information, we want to introduce our users to each
   other.  If they want to know something, they can ask the other users.  If
   they just want to socialize, that's fine too.  What is available on Grex?
   People.

 - Grex is more interested in being inclusive than in being selective.  We
   want our system to be accessible as possible to anyone who wants to use
   it.  We have users of all ages from all over the world, many of them
   relatively new to computing, and many of them unable to afford for-pay
   services.  We don't require users to pay.  We don't even require them to
   give their real names.

 - Grex is more interested in cooperation than leadership.  The system is
   owned and operated by its members, and user input is sought on nearly
   all decisions.  Censorship is almost unknown and we seek to rely on social
   rather than technological factors to keep interactions healthy and
   productive.

Grex currently has ## Ann Arbor dialin lines and a 28.8K internet link.  Any
one connecting to the system can fill out a form and immediately have an
account created for their use, without charge or validation.  This is a
full unix shell account which gives them access to the standard unix utilities
plus our conferences (covering ## subjects), email, a live-chat program called
"party", and the lynx web browser.  A modified version of the unix "write"
program serves as a live help-line to connects new users to volunteer
helpers.

A few services are restricted to members who pay $6 a month or $60 a year.
This is done primarily to prevent our scarce resources (currently net
bandwidth) from being consumed by people who are using Grex in ways that do
not contribute to Grex's on-line community.  Thus outgoing telnet, ftp, and
irc are restricted to members only.  Other services are offered only in a
restricted form.  Thus any user may create a webpage free of charge, but no
multimedia files may be used.  Mail is unrestricted, but we do not offer a
POP server, so users must log on and use pine or elm to read their mail.  We
discourage users from ftping large files or using Grex to host very busy
webpages, and we discourage all commercial use.  Given these restrictions we
still have some users who use Grex as a low-cost alternative to an ISP.  We
are pleased to be able to fill that niche and consider our role as a
poor-man's internet connection and important secondary goal of the system.
Many of the people using Grex in that capacity are young people who
eventually shift to real ISPs.
==============================================================================
I was tempted to add a bullet about Grex's non-aggressiveness about fund
raising, but I think that can be left out.

response 4 of 53:

Aug 28 00:29 UTC 1996

        No matter what is on my mind, i know that, here, on Grex, I can be
free to express it openly, and with no hesitation! 

response 6 of 53:

Aug 28 05:18 UTC 1996

I definitely would *Not* have the job I do today, if it were not for Grex.

response 8 of 53:

Aug 28 07:14 UTC 1996

Count me in as someone who got his current job because of
Grex, and the open access to the C compiler and various shells.

response 10 of 53:

Aug 28 15:08 UTC 1996

I think I'm going to want to do a "What Grex does for people" segment,
preferably fortified with examples.  Things in the list might be like

  - A confortable place to socialize for people otherwise isolated.
    (Not just computer nerds, but moms with small children, handicapped
    people, people who live on mountains in West Virgina, etc).

  - A place where thoughts can be openly expressed and opinions developed.

  - A place to learn valuable techical skills.  (various examples above)

  - A place to get answers to obscure questions.

  - A place young people can be treated as adults and gain experince
    acting as independent people in a forgiving society.

Are there are others that should be listed?  Good examples to mention?

response 12 of 53:

Aug 29 00:58 UTC 1996

I should have mentioned, in addition to what I said about having gotten
various job skills here, that I've also met a lot of really interesting people
on Grex who I would never have met otherwise.

response 14 of 53:

Aug 29 06:19 UTC 1996

   grex also allows people from different social classes or economic
strata to meet and interact with each other. they probably would never
have met otherwise because they move in completely different circles.

response 16 of 53:

Aug 29 13:59 UTC 1996

Nah, lots of administrator-type human beings like nice neat packaged
information dropped on their desk.  They hate collecting information
themselves.  They're poor things, but we aim to please them.

I could use some statistics on things like:

Number of accounts.
Number of logins per day.
Number of different users logged in per day, per week.
Number of users who log in more than N times a week.
Typical number of people logged on at a time.

Distribution of users between mail, party, bbs, etc.

Typical numbers of email messages sent per day (a) local to Grex,
   (b) from Grex to other sites, (c) to Grex from other sites.
[trying to get a feeling for how much email is part of the Grex Community as
opposed to Grex as ISP].

Percentage of local users.  Percentage of local users who come in over the
net.

Person hours in party/write.

Person hours in bbs, number of messages posted daily in bbs.

It doesn't have to be these particular numbers, and some numbers can be
informed guesses (though we should know where we got each number).  The
idea is that people will feel more comfortable making agreements with Grex
if they feel like they know what Grex is, and many people find numerical
portraits of what we are much more satisfying than verbal ones.  So ideally
we try to give both.

response 18 of 53:

Aug 29 20:29 UTC 1996

Also useful would be stuff on age distributions and nationality distributions,
to help give a sense of who is using Grex.  I expect age distributions are
different in different locales.  For example, I bet the Indian users are
mosthly college-aged, while local users have a much larger teenage segment.

response 20 of 53:

Aug 30 03:15 UTC 1996

I'm probably overkilling on the need for detail.  I'm hoping to come up with
a reusable document that we can show to anyone who wants to know what Grex
is.  I'm not sure exactly how much of this can be discussed in public.  If
the deal works out, then I'm pretty sure it will be discussed here before
Grex formally accepts it.  But I think I can say that we are looking at
several locations which might include access to cheaper internet connections.

response 22 of 53:

Aug 30 13:44 UTC 1996

        Tsty- the login screen? nonono.. not as it currently is, at least-
you want to scare them off? 

response 24 of 53:

Aug 30 16:36 UTC 1996

Well, I'm kind of hoping other people will dig up some of these numbers for
me, while I sling words around.  Marcus surveyed nationalities a while ago,
but I don't know off hand were that stuff is.  Surveying ages is harder, but
you could do a sampling technique, fingering people at random.  You get lots
of "unknowns".

I just reread the login screen.  It's addressed to a user of this conference.
It doesn't quite fit into what I'm doing which is addressed to a potential
supporter who most likely is not a user of Grex and may never be.  I will want
to make some of the same points about cooperative and democratic action.