Problems with the state of conferencing on Grex

Jul 18 05:13 UTC 1997

A long time member of Grex recently told me that s/he had decided not to renew
his/her membership.  When I asked if there were problems with Grex that 
influenced the decision, the member sent me this:

--------------------

The thing that bothers me the most is the quality of the dialog in the
conferences.  I would really enjoy conferences if they were entertaining
or informative.  It seems the things that bother me the most lately are:

1.  Little or no activity in the conferences other than Agora.  Some of 
    these conferences could be great if we had a critical mass of
    interested people.  
2.  A large number of people who are active in conferences do not want
    information sharing.  This majority seems to want to dominate, not 
    interact.   
3.  Some seem to want to pontificate or correct everyone else.  I know 
    this is natural in a group, but after a while it is predictable and
    boring.
4.  There are some really interesting people whose style is to encourage
    open dialog, but these are too few.
5.  I am older than most on Grex, and perhaps there is too much generation
    gap.  

----------------------

I asked the member if it was OK to post these reasons in an item in Coop
so that they may be discussed in public, and s/he agreed.

response 2 of 58:

Jul 18 11:12 UTC 1997

How about dropping bbs users into a conference menu instead of a conference?
Once they are done with their selected conference, put them back into the
conference menu to select the next conference.  One of the menu items could
be to go through a .cflist.
 
To attain critical mass, perhaps conferences need to broaden their view and
others removed so there are fewer of them.  Divide and conquer, as they say.
 
I find the controlling people item to be of interest.  I can't say I've
noticed that but that could be because I'm one of them?  Something to think
about.

response 6 of 58:

Jul 18 18:20 UTC 1997

I agree that Intro should be ditched.
        As to the lack of participation in the "specialty" conferences,
I have asked for some systematic data before about how many people
are participating.  Nobody has been able to show that there has
been either an increase or a decline in specialty conference partici-
pation.  Lots of people have said, though, that their *perception*
is that there is less activity.
        One of the things M-Net has done to increase participation
in these conferences is to post a two-line "ad" for a conference
in the Message of the Day.  The ad stays there for two or three
weeks.  M-Net's experience is that typically 20-50 people are
attracted into a conference while its ad is running.

response 8 of 58:

Jul 18 22:32 UTC 1997

I don't want to attract casual users, I want to attract people who want to
join our community.

We need more conferencers, so we can get more members, before we can make
Grex faster.

response 10 of 58:

Jul 19 03:37 UTC 1997

I'm frustrated with the speed too.  It's not a financial issue or a number
of users issue at this point, really.  It's a staff time issue.  We, me
included, really need to put some time into getting the 670 going.  The next
step should be a faster Net connection, but that seems to be falling into
place.

response 14 of 58:

Jul 20 13:24 UTC 1997

On the speed issue, the terminal server may be reasonably stable now.  If
that's true, and Marcus can modify the queuing logic in telnetd, then we
could put more lines on that, and let people make ppp connections to Grex
(though not to the rest of the internet).  This would give local Ann
Arborites a reasonably fast backtalk connection.  That's a pretty easibly
reachable technological improvement that we may be able to capitalize on
to publicize our conferences locally more.

I think we should probably turn intro off for a while, and see if we are
more successful getting new people into the conferences.  Since we started
that, we've been less successful, but there are so many other factors that
it is hard to be sure that intro is the cause.

Currently when you join a new new conference, Picospan makes the first and
last items "new" while the rest are "unseen".  Backtalk makes all items new.
Backtalk's approach stinks.  In many conference you will start by seeing many
items that have been dead for years before you seen any activity.  Picospan's
approach is a lot better.  The first time in the conference, you see only two
items.  If you come back, you see only items that are active, that have been
responded to since you last were there.  This does a much better job of making
a conference with a large backlog of old items look more lively.  But what
if people don't come back a second time?  This approach kind of misses the
first chance to grab their attention, in hopes of getting them the second time
around.  What I think I'd like to have Backtalk do is, when people first join
a conference, mark the first item and all other items that have had activity
in the last week as "new" and mark the others as "unseen".  The time period
of a week might be resettable for fairwitnesses, since different values are
reasonable for different conferences.

response 16 of 58:

Jul 20 23:51 UTC 1997

yeah, me too. 

response 18 of 58:

Jul 21 16:10 UTC 1997

The entire conferencing setup needs to be better organized by cfadmin.
There are too many dead, dormant or forgotten conferences hanging around.
There are confs that have fw's who were reaped years ago.  Regardless of
whether grex has enough disk space for unlimited confs, it doesnt help
grex in *selling* its current confs to have them so disorganized.  Cfadmin
can get down to a smaller, concise conference listing that can be
presented to new users, but it needs to encourage some confs to merge with
others with like topics and it needs to ill confs that arent showing
activity.  For instance, the Safety conf hasnt had a new item since 1994.
It doesnt look good for new users to see that conf lying ar ound.  Nuke
it.  

Cfadmin should have a minimum standard for confs to stay alive.  Two fw's
at least one of which is active.  At least one new item a month.  

New users who look around and see dead confs or inactive confs are going
to leave.  I'd like to see newusers kicked into a mnenu listing of confs,
where they can see all that is availavble and choose where to go.  But not
until everything is cleaned up.




What I suggest is that Cfadmin designate a 60 day period in which
or during which it asks for an fw to submit a renewal request for each
conference.  Simply an email stating thte name of the conf, who the fw's
are and description of conf would do.  State that for renewal, each
conf must have at least two fw's.  CFadmin at the end of the 
60 day period can then kill any conf that has not been re-applied
for and can also then suggest mergers that would allow for the elimination
of confs that are dead or have repetitive subject matter.

It is better to have fewer confs that are solid and
active than to have dozens of confs that are just wasted disk space.

I have seen other places do such renewal programs every so often.
It is needed here.

response 20 of 58:

Jul 21 22:19 UTC 1997

I agree with Catriona.  Some of those "dead" conferences contain some 
very useful information.  I seldom notice the dates on responses until 
about the 20th page of responses to one item.  ("Hmmm, this musta been 
going on a while.  Yup, 1992."

I'm also one of those who keeps several very quiet conferences on my .cf 
list and try always to respond to anything posted there in the hopes of 
waking the conference up again.  I'd be very sad to see some of my quiet 
favorites go.

response 22 of 58:

Jul 22 00:47 UTC 1997

Re 21: Me too.