Membership privileges and telnet lethargy

May 17 06:44 UTC 1996

******** This is a correspondence I had recently with a person who is a
******** member of Grex.  I have edited slightly for anonymity and
******** brevity.


Hello again Mark!  I was recently thinking about having to renew my Grex
membership next month and was also having mixed feelings about Grex.  I'm
sort of frustrated about this.  I suppose maybe there is some appropriate
place on the bbs to post about this but frankly I haven't ever been too
attracted to public discussion sort of things.  I guess I'm a "emailer" 
at heart.  I tried to write you from my grex account but grex was so slow
I couldn't really use it.  It's 7:45 am.  Used to be I could at least use
Grex in the early morning and have it be OK.  Now sometimes I can't even
get on.  And when I do...it's too frustrating to use it because it's so
slow.  The new computer helped some, for a while, but now things are 
getting back to where they used to be 6 months ago.

I really love Grex.  I like the people, the freedom to use Unix, no time
limit, I've even been trying to get comfortable with PicoSpan and
participate in some of the conferences.  But frankly it's starting to get
me a little pissed when the system is so clogged up with Indians and
multiple logins (sometimes multiple logins by Indians "talk"ing to one
another) that I, as a paying member, can't even use it.  I know the
concept of "free" use for all is a great idea and you folks want to
attract a large diverse user base and all that.  It's just that I'm having
a hard time with spending the money to be a member and having to put up
with all the slowness caused by non-paying users.  Maybe I'm a little
disposed to prejudice or something, but I'm starting to really have some
bad feelings about Indians.  I guess it's just part of a larger gripe I 
have about foreigners in general coming over here and taking advantage of 
our freedoms, technology, standard of living and all that.  Mexicans in 
California taking advantage of the public schools, Asians and Indians
taking up all the spots in our med schools.  (Stop me please).  And now 
I'm getting crowded out of my favorite computer by hoards of non-paying 
Indians who just seem to use Grex to "call home" for free.

OK, I'll stop.  That's my bitch.  I would really like to continue my
membership but it's getting harder and harder to justify it.  I might even
be willing to pay a teensy bit more per month if it would guarantee me
that I could USE the system when I wanted to.  I suppose that this may
just be a problem for us who come in through the internet connection.

Well, sorry to bother you Mark with this diatribe but I wanted to let 
someone there, on the staff, know how I was feeling.  Maybe there are 
others like me.  And I really didn't want to post something like this in 
a public discussion group.

Take care!


******* My reply:


Well, I don't know what to tell you, beyond the following:

1) I agree that telnetting in is slow (dialing in is not, by the way).  I 
telnet in from work during the day, and it often takes a long time for 
things to appear on my screen.

2) We are hoping to move Grex to a faster net connection, but it's
dependent on us raising enough money to do it.

3) Grex was founded on a principle of free access.  That's not going to 
ever change, I don't think.  (If it did, a lot of the founders would 
leave in bitterness, I predict.)  There is, however, an ongoing debate as 
to how many people to allow to telnet in at one time.  Some people say 
bump it up as high as we can go, that's what we're here for; others say 
keep it at a level which makes the speed of the connection reasonable for 
everyone.  The staff is divided over this question.

4) The best way to think of Grex membership, I believe, is that you are 
paying to support the system so that *lots* of people can use it.  Less 
than 1% of Grex users are members; that means one person's contributions 
are supporting more than 100 other people.  If you can derive 
satisfaction out of that, great; if it evokes resentment in you, well, I 
understand that, I guess.
   Personally, I think of Grex like a church.  I contribute to it because
I want to see the community survive.  I know everybody who benefits from
the community doesn't contribute money, but I can afford to, and the
community is an important part of my life, so I do.  I *don't* think of
Grex as a commodity that I buy.  I certainly demand results from things I
buy.  That's partly because I figure people who sell me things are making
a profit, and therefore have a financial interest in my being satisfied
with them.  Grex has no such financial position; no one makes a profit and
all the staff are volunteers (who give an unbelievable amount of time to
the system.  I'm not on the staff mailing list, but I know it gets upwards
of several hundred messages a day, clogged full of people asking questions
and needing maintenance on their accounts.  This makes for a lot of grunt
work that staff people end up doing, very uncerimoniously.)

Tell you what, the place gripes like yours usually get discussed is 
in the coop conference.  How about if I enter an item there, which 
includes the gist of your message to me.  I will keep your name out of 
it, and you can choose to reveal that it's about you or not, as you see 
fit.  If you think I should, I'll quote your mail verbatim.  Then you can 
see what other board and staff people have to say in response, and you 
may find there are other people who agree with you.  What do you think?


******* The response:


        Thanks Mark for taking the time to respond so thoroughly.  I can
see both sides of the problem a little better now.  And I appreciate your
offer to make an item in the coop conference.  I would like you to do that
if you have time.
 
        I reread my previous mail.  Perhaps I was a little heavy on the 
paying vs. non-paying concept.  Personally I don't have a gripe about my 
membership dues being sort of a "church donation".  It's just that if I 
donated to a church and then found I couldn't get into the service on 
Sunday because the church was full (and 90% of the people filling up the 
church did nothing to support it)...well you see what I mean.  I know, 
it's a COMPLICATED issue.  When I gave to the United Way at work I didn't 
expect any sort of benefit whatsoever in return except for the 
satisfaction of giving to a charity.  Paying for membership in Grex seems 
different somehow, and I can't quite seem to put my finger on it 
exactally right now.  There's a class "users" which I agree should be 
allowed to use Grex for free.  And there's a sub-class of "members" who 
indeed support all the users but they do have some substantial benefits 
(ie. an internet connection) from their membership over and above the 
satisfaction of helping to support Grex.  That works for local dial-in 
users.  I'm suggesting (I think :-)  )  that if Grex wants to raise money 
through membership dues, they need to consider the class "non-local 
members", those who need to telnet IN, as compared to "local members" who 
need to telnet OUT.  Under the present situation one benefits the other 
dosen't.

response 2 of 113:

May 17 13:49 UTC 1996

A month or so ago, I mentioned to Rob Henderson that I had been on the
verge of forwarding my own membership dues (finally) and becoming a
paying member when this telnetd thing suddenly kicked in, making it
even harder to log on then before (no more assualt connections meant
fewer multiple logins, but it also meant more hassle getting the first
login).  Yes, the implication was rather extortionist of me:  you guys
get the Geld when something's done about the wait.  I was assured that 
MDW had finished the code or whatever on a queue system, and it was just
a matter of time (and beta-testing).  Well, fine, queue system, or going back
to the old way, either way, but it's been sooooo long since anything's
been done about the situation that I'm not interesteed in getting a Grex
membership anymore.  Staff responsiveness on the access issue has been,
quite frankly, abyssmal, volunteer or no.  I realize none of you guys are paid,
but the telnetd thing reminds me of half a dozen other changes (remember
the party changes of q>:q, etc.?) where some half-baked changed is
installed, everybody and their brother complains, and whoever installed
the change is too stubborn to uninstall it, or otherwise correct it.

response 4 of 113:

May 17 16:23 UTC 1996

I was told that Marcus had written the queue and that it was awaiting
beta testing and installation by others.  This was a montha go.
Mayhap my sources were wrong.  

Andu p until now, I haven't been noisy about this.  to my knowledge, 
the only baffer I've complained to about it is Rob.  I might've 
complained once in Co-op already.  I resent the depiction of myself
as a "noisy user" was an "Agenda".  This sort of rudeness is what
I've come to expect from certain baffers, though, which is why I
personally have withheld membership dues.  I am pleased to see that I
was accurate in my trepidation, as the rudeness seems to be getting
worse.

response 6 of 113:

May 17 18:48 UTC 1996

Interesting thing about #0's complaint of the netlag.  Obviously it is quite
severe at times, and a couple of times (when it had gotten *really* bad), I
started telnetting so as to take up all the free pty's, and oddly enough, it
had absolutely no effect on the netlag -- at all.  I had, in effect reduced
our number of pty's from 56 (That is the currect current number, right?) to
something like 40, and the lag remained in the 15 to 20 second range.  

It turns out that although noninterative uses of the link are discriminated
against (such as mail, ftp, http, etc), we get such a high volume of those
things that they are completely clogging our link.  Recently, Marcus slowed
sendmail down some more, to help keep it form completely clogging our link,
but that made it deliver mail slower than it was recieving it, and we ended
up with a cache with almost a thousand messages in it.  However, during that
time, I'm sure that everyone noticed that the link was quite speedy.  <sigh>

What we really, really need is a faster Internet connection.  We've sent mail
to all of the ISP's that we can think of asking for special rates due to our
special circumstances and our slight ability to advertise our ISP, but even
the lowest bids are about $100 per month than we can afford.  If we get more
members, we will be able to afford that extra $100 per month and (finally!)
get rid of that (!@#%$%!) netlag.  

This still won't help the "out of ports" problem, though.  Personally, running
into that message drives me up the wall, but I know why we have it and have
seen the effects of having more and of having fewer ports.  However, when we
ever get the money to upgrade our link, the computer will be the bottleneck
again, since we are near the limits of what the computer can handle.  Probably
when the link gets upgraded, the number of people who can be online
simultaneously will only go up a little bit.  However, since Grex will be such
a joy to use, Grex will become even more popular, and anyone trying to log in 
will have a harder time than ever finding a free pty.  

It is inevitable that we will have to get some sort of "waiting room" software
for Grex.  Out of the kindness of his heart, Marcus has been in the process
of programming one lately, and hopefully, we'll be able to install it soon,
because I am really sick of getting that "out of ports" message too.  In fact,
half of staff logs into Grex from over the net, either all the time, or part
of the time, and I'm sure that they are just as sick of it as you and I are.
Marcus has been extremely busy with his own life lately, though, so we may
have to wait a bit longer to get the program.  Oh well, I'm just glad that
we have someone as talented as him writing it, and am willing to wait since
I can't write it myself.  What is the old saying?  "Beggars can't be
choosers"?  I think that applies.

response 8 of 113:

May 17 19:39 UTC 1996

Right now the weirdnesses of international banking seem to make it very hard
for Grex to accept donations from our Indian users.  We do have people who
ask, but we are never able to come up with any very satisfactory ways for them
to send us money.

response 10 of 113:

May 17 21:39 UTC 1996

Kerouac, no offence, but you have a penis, you don't understand the
problem with the Indians.  I have heard too many complaints from obvious
feamles (i.e., people with feminine-sounding handles)... when I talk to 
the Indians myself, they're perfectly reasonable.  Something happens when they 
talk to women.  =}  I'm not being racist, I'd say the sexual harassment
problem from American hacker teens is as bad, except they tend to hang
,out in party, so they're easier to avoid.
And yes, at least one Australian was a *Very* naughty lad with some
of the McKers...
All the same, Grex doesn't have a cohesive policy on this issue,
and hence has no right interceding until it does.  =}

response 12 of 113:

May 18 11:02 UTC 1996

re 10:
        Brighn, I really don't think you can make that statement about all
Indians.  Some, certainly, but I've known some pretty obnoxious Americans as
well.

response 14 of 113:

May 18 15:21 UTC 1996

(It would really be nice to have some Indians in on this conversation -- and
some women, too.  Hmm.)

response 16 of 113:

May 18 18:19 UTC 1996

I know an Indian woman. she's one of my favorite people on Grex. She's in
Minnesota, though. =)

response 18 of 113:

May 18 19:43 UTC 1996

Alright.
        I'm one of the women who has to face the attack of never ending
ntalk requests from sajaheeb or somesuch EVERY time I log in at night!
And, no, it's not just ONE of them. I get a new one, a login I don't know,
once out of every two times I'm here. AND they start in on you within
two minutes of login.. it is bad.

response 20 of 113:

May 19 01:12 UTC 1996

I think if ftp were to limit transfers to 250 cps instead of nearly 1000
people would be much less inclined to use it.  I'm afraid that would require
adding stuff to ftpd to make it reject some packets or something.  That
wouldn't initially reduce link traffic, but I think it would scare people
away.

response 22 of 113:

May 19 07:30 UTC 1996

I also would like to see the queuing stuff up and running, but I am not
convinced that reducing the number of users from current levels will help
much. Neither am i convinced we should go much higher.

response 24 of 113:

May 19 18:49 UTC 1996

Perhaps you could auction off some priority connections?