|
Grex > Oldcoop > #360: Member initative: Allow members to host images | |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 182 responses total. |
cmcgee
|
|
response 100 of 182:
| 
Sep 20 14:00 UTC 2006 |
I suspect that a lot of members who read Coop are not even commenting on this
thread. If a member wants this to die a natural death, the best way to do
it is 1) not endorse the proposal; and 2) not contribute to the arguments on
either side.
|
trig
|
|
response 101 of 182:
|
Sep 20 21:01 UTC 2006 |
why can you make it so that users have to put a warning to images, ie: you
can't have them on your homepage and any links that will lead to an image must
have a warning that sex is on them? If a user fails to do so then his account
is locked until the issue can be resolved -- IE: the agree to the rules or
all images are taken down?
|
tod
|
|
response 102 of 182:
|
Sep 20 21:07 UTC 2006 |
Mentioning how M-Net gets things done around here is like telling Kirk how
Klingons get things done. You're not going to make friends nor impress
anyone. Pity.
|
steve
|
|
response 103 of 182:
|
Sep 20 21:08 UTC 2006 |
Well, one problem is that so far in the history of Grex being on
the net, people a) don't read anything that newuser says, b) often
ignore notice files put in their home dirs telling them to stop
importing eggdrop or whatever, and frequently ignore FTP sessions
that get killed and start doing whatever all over again. Given
this, I think we'd be in for a lot of work.
|
cross
|
|
response 104 of 182:
|
Sep 20 22:34 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #98; I too am not a lawyer, but I think Nate is right: it'd be up
to the individual user. You just need to say, "don't do anything illegal."
Regarding #100; I think it's a shame if a member does that. I suspect a lot
of it is that they saw that Polytarp did the initial post, said, "eh, he's
a pain in the ass...." and forgot the item. If they read coop at all.
Regarding #102; Right.
Regarding #103; (did you notice I skipped every other post in my replies up
until this one?) Still, putting it in newuser and having a positive
acknowledgement of system policies as part of the account registration process
is a legal butt-covereing measure. After stating a policy, you just wash your
hands of the matter. Like Pilate.
|
steve
|
|
response 105 of 182:
|
Sep 20 23:36 UTC 2006 |
Hmmm. Except that we then have to deal with stuff, meaning that the
disk starts to get more full and someone has to deal with it.
|
cross
|
|
response 106 of 182:
|
Sep 20 23:46 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #105; Is there any evidence that this is going to happen? On grex
under OpenBSD, we have disk quotas that keep one user from filling up the
filesystem. By your own statements, there may not even be that much of a
demand.
I thought Nate's suggestion was good: let's try it for a month and see what
happens. Leave a disclaimer that the plug can be pulled if it becomes a
problem.
I'd rather see some experiments that yield some data off of which we could
make a decision rather than just go on people's guts.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 107 of 182:
|
Sep 21 01:21 UTC 2006 |
(On the question of members reading coop: I suspect most people find coop
before they decide to pony up the bucks for membership.)
|
cross
|
|
response 108 of 182:
|
Sep 21 01:49 UTC 2006 |
I don't know; do they then follow it regularly, like, say, agora? Do we have
numbers on who reads what?
|
aruba
|
|
response 109 of 182:
|
Sep 21 03:49 UTC 2006 |
I think that if images become a problem they might easily take more than a
month to be so. It could be 6 months or a year before we have issues, and
by then people with images on their websites would have installed a lot of
links that would break if we turned images off. They would be
understandibly pissed. So I don't think it's realistic to think we could
back away from this policy once we open the door.
Or, to put it another way, once we start allowing images, it will take
something truly heinous before we'll have a good reason for stopping.
|
scholar
|
|
response 110 of 182:
|
Sep 21 05:55 UTC 2006 |
By the way: People should keep in mind that the official proposal I entered
allows only MEMBERS of Cyberspace Communications Inc. to host imaged.
Not many people, not much policing needed.
|
nharmon
|
|
response 111 of 182:
|
Sep 21 12:08 UTC 2006 |
Yeah, I think if you allow members outbound net access, then allowing
them to host images should be a no-brainer.
|
glenda
|
|
response 112 of 182:
|
Sep 21 14:37 UTC 2006 |
And what happens if a member has a bunch of images and links to said images
and then lets the membership lapse? Does the keeper of the membership rolls
have to be root staff such that he/she can delete the images of said lapsed
member or does staff get a list of member lapses each month and have to delete
the images? What if a membership lapses and the images are deleted and a
two or three weeks later the membership is renewed? How do we keep it from
becoming an administrative nightmare and timesink?
|
steve
|
|
response 113 of 182:
|
Sep 21 14:51 UTC 2006 |
I'd forgotten that aspect of the proposal so thanks for the reminder in
#110.
Still, Glenda's comments are valid, and the larger issue of not wanting to
offer more special things for members remains.
|
nharmon
|
|
response 114 of 182:
|
Sep 21 15:44 UTC 2006 |
> Does the keeper of the membership rolls have to be root staff such
> that he/she can delete the images of said lapsed member or does staff
> get a list of member lapses each month and have to delete the images?
I'm not sure you understand how images are presently restricted, Glenda.
You see Apache, our web server software, is configured to redirect HTTP
requests for files with certain extentions. Here is the relevant part of
/var/www/conf/apache.conf:
<Directory /[abcdefghijklmn]/?/?/*/www>
RedirectMatch \.gif$ /white.gif
RedirectMatch \.jpg$ /white.gif
RedirectMatch \.jpeg$ /white.gif
RedirectMatch \.png$ /white.gif
</Directory>
Thus, what we would need to do is find a way to disable this redirect
for users who are members of the 'members' group. I'm not exactly sure
how to do this as yet, but it shouldn't prove to be difficult.
In other words, chances are; No, the person maintaining membership rolls
will not have to delete images.
> the larger issue of not wanting to offer more special things for
> members remains.
How is this an issue? And who doesn't "want to offer more special things
for members"? You? Are you a member? Because it seems to me that the
membership of Cyberspace Communications should be the ones who decided
whether or not more special things are offered to members. And this is
exactly what is going on in this item: A member is proposing for a
membership vote on offering more special things for members.
|
nharmon
|
|
response 115 of 182:
|
Sep 21 15:50 UTC 2006 |
By the way, the notion of a "larger issue of not wanting to offer more
special things for members" sounds like the "resistance to change" stuff
that Dan was talking about in #81.
|
krj
|
|
response 116 of 182:
|
Sep 21 16:20 UTC 2006 |
Not wanting to offer more special things for members is one of
the core founding principles of Grex. It was adopted as a position
in explicit contrast to The Other System.
Repeating myself: outbound telnet for members is a historic quirk,
not a model we should follow again.
In 2006, Grex should not become a fee-for-services organization,
in part because it doesn't have the resources to provide reliable
service to people paying money, and in part because those services
are easily available elsewhere for little to no cost.
|
steve
|
|
response 117 of 182:
|
Sep 21 16:33 UTC 2006 |
Something that perhaps isn't well understood is that once the
word gets out that Grex "allows" graphical images, people will
plop them over here and give out passwords to others to share
them. This is *already* happening, it's been going on for a
long time. To me allowing graphical images means more than
just Apache giving them out.
Just like the number of people who bring over psybnc, bnc,
eggdrop, mech stuff, irc, etc.
|
nharmon
|
|
response 118 of 182:
|
Sep 21 17:36 UTC 2006 |
> Not wanting to offer more special things for members is one of the core
> founding principles of Grex.
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=core+founding+principles&as_sitesearch=cy
bersp
ace.org
Guess how many results?
Where exactly can we find these core founding principles? Or are we
talking in the abstract about how Ken feels in regarding to special
member priviledges?
So far, the reasons for not allowing members to post images have not
been compelling. John Remmers once told me that users on Grex should be
as free as possible without allowing them to infringe on other people's
usage. This was part of the justification for removing the idle limits.
I feel that at this point Grex has the resources and common-carrier
status to allow all users to post images. And I really think that making
us "different" from "The Other System" is not enough of a reason to open
this freedom to users.
|
steve
|
|
response 119 of 182:
|
Sep 21 18:27 UTC 2006 |
You are completely ignoring the fact that we have a limit on the
amount of bandwidth we can use for our $100/month charge. Allowing
graphical items for all users is going to ramp up our usage, and if
we get 'successful', we'll wind up paying more, to host web stuff.
I believe we get 50G per month right now, and we're somewhere
around 30% of that. I know that as grex has gotten more stable
usage has climbed up. Now, this is a policy question, that of how
much we're willing to pay for more bandwidth, used largely because
of graphical files. Will we hit the limit that causes us to pay
more for bandwidth? I'm not sure, but we need to think about
that. The next increment of bandwidth would be another $50/month
I believe, or $600/year.
|
nharmon
|
|
response 120 of 182:
|
Sep 21 19:01 UTC 2006 |
Well, if this is what the membership wants then, who are me or you to
say otherwise?
|
steve
|
|
response 121 of 182:
|
Sep 21 19:57 UTC 2006 |
I agree, the membership will determine this.
|
scholar
|
|
response 122 of 182:
|
Sep 22 04:29 UTC 2006 |
re. 119: I've already said this a couple times, but again, please realize
that the official proposal would only allow *members* to host images.
|
cross
|
|
response 123 of 182:
|
Sep 22 19:30 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #117; I don't think there's any evidence of that. Maybe five or
six years ago that would have been true, but not necessarily now. And surely
no one is *denied* graphical images on grex now, there's just not much that
they can do with them.
Regarding #119; You said we're using about 30% of our bandwidth. Where do
you get that number from? I'd like to see the numbers....
|
cross
|
|
response 124 of 182:
|
Sep 22 19:32 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #112; Then the apache daemon notices that they're no longer in the
members group and doesn't show their images. No one deletes anything. If
they rejoin, then apache notices that they're in members again and shows their
images. That's that.
|