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Grex > Coop11 > #47: Banning a site from Grex; a discussion of when to do this | |
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| 25 new of 264 responses total. |
steve
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response 194 of 264:
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Jan 2 18:18 UTC 1999 |
Well, we are talking of some 900 users.
However, the current mail situation may not be as IIT specific
as I first thought. I've taken some few IIT mailboxes and have
compressed them and found a place to store them for the time being.
Unforunately, the size of mailboxes has grown in general.
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janc
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response 195 of 264:
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Jan 2 19:28 UTC 1999 |
We should have some more disks within a few days. We can solve the
space shortage on the mail partition by adding more disk.
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davel
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response 196 of 264:
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Jan 2 19:52 UTC 1999 |
Temporarily ...
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steve
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response 197 of 264:
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Jan 2 21:23 UTC 1999 |
Actaully, we've been hovering around 25,000 users for more than a
month now. What isn't clear to me is why email storage has gone up,
but one good possibility as I've thought about it is that a lot of
people haven't been checking their email lately, becuase of the
holidays.
And, we're talking about a small amount of disk thats been used:
about 80M. Normally we've been around 80M of free space on the mail
spool partition. As Jan says, in a bit we'll have some new disks to
play with. Our current mail parition is 699M. I'd like to devote a
2G disk to this purpose and be done with it for a while.
We've gone through these growing pains before. Back on the Sun-2
we had about 65M for mail, when we jumped to the Sun-3 we had something
around 190M, moving to the Sun-4 we had about 300M and hoping onto the
current Sun-4/670 we made it about 700M. As Grex has grown, so has the
need for a larger mail parition. This only makes sense.
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steve
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response 198 of 264:
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Jan 3 16:44 UTC 1999 |
It's looking like our peak of mail was due to the holidays. About
another 3M of space has been freed up. Still, we need to make a much
bigger mail spool area.
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steve
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response 199 of 264:
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Jan 4 06:49 UTC 1999 |
In the 14 hours since I wrote that last response, another 5M
on the mail partition has become available. It's definitely looking
like this surge in mail was due to people being gone over the holidays.
Maybe, this has happened before, but we were never with 1068K of the
brink like we were a few days ago.
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senna
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response 200 of 264:
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Jan 4 17:17 UTC 1999 |
I'm becoming uncomfortable with the idea of grex as a mail server simply for
people who want a little more speed in their mail. (How ironic, using grex
for speed?) I don't know how we could discourage this, and I use it as my
email address, but if people already have addresses, what's the point? It
strikes me that this is the sort of place a lot of people would use to
subscribe to things like mailing lists so they wouldn't have to burden their
own mail boxes.
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steve
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response 201 of 264:
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Jan 4 17:49 UTC 1999 |
Grex is a machine and a user community that offers a certain set of
things to people. With the net, we can offer what we have to an
incredibly larger set of users than during the pre-net days, and thus
for a far far wider set of reasons than before.
I think Grex is starting to become known for its overall reliability
and security, and anti-spamming efforts. If this is even partially
true, we've succeeded in attracting people here in ways that we never
thought of.
This all gets back to the "What is Grex?" philosophical debate.
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keesan
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response 202 of 264:
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Jan 4 18:16 UTC 1999 |
Wasn't there some idea about a separate computer for the email?
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steve
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response 203 of 264:
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Jan 4 19:48 UTC 1999 |
There is the idea of having another computer take the mail, yes.
That will happen. That will offload the actual details of handling
the mail from this computer, and will help.
But senna's more philosophical question of our handling mail in
general isn't affected by that.
I guess I'm not as uneasy about it as some.
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mary
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response 204 of 264:
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Jan 5 11:15 UTC 1999 |
I have never thought of Grex as only for conferencing but rather as a
community resource offering access to Unix, mail, conferencing, etc. To
say we are only about online conferencing, and folks are only welcome if
they are in the conferences, is somewhat self-serving and clubish. The
next logical step would be to suggest users not only have to be reading
the conferences but participating in the discussion. Otherwise what good
are you doing for Grex? (Yuck).
Mail is an important part of what we offer.
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dpc
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response 205 of 264:
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Jan 8 15:50 UTC 1999 |
I'm with senna on this. People who use us *only* for our free e-mail
aren't part of any discernible community; certainly not the Grex
community.
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scott
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response 206 of 264:
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Jan 8 16:49 UTC 1999 |
But does that mean they shouldn't be allowed to use Grex?
I don't think so.
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steve
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response 207 of 264:
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Jan 8 18:20 UTC 1999 |
Grex is many things.
To impose a tyrany of conferencing would be wrong.
Would the users of Grex who primarily use party not be considered
part of the Grex community? Are we saying that one must use bbs to
fit in? I hope not.
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rcurl
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response 208 of 264:
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Jan 8 19:06 UTC 1999 |
From the Articles of Incorporation:
"The Corporation is organized for such charitable and educational purposes
as may qualify it for exemption from the federal income tax under Section
501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (or the
corresponding provisions of any future United States internal revenue
law.) More specifically, such purposes include, but are not limited to,
the advancement of public education and scientific endeavor through
interaction with computers, and humans via computers, using computer
conferencing. Further purposes include the exchange of scientific and
technical information about the various aspects of computer science, such
as operating systems, computer networks, and computer programming."
Note that "....using computer conferencing." Grex was not founded with a
purpose of providing free e-mail to the masses. There is no way to
interpret the Articles to support that idea, except for the phrase "but
are not limited to". The additional purpose of exchanging "scientific and
technical information" is also not a license to provide e-mail. It would
appear that e-mail is a function that is provided *in support of* the
purposes stated in the Articles.
It would be entirely proper to limit e-mail use to conference
participants, in light of the Articles.
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robh
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response 209 of 264:
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Jan 8 19:39 UTC 1999 |
Does anyone else remember the days of the post-to-download ratio
BBS's, where you had to post a certain number of messages in
the conference areas before you could download any files from the
download area?
Does anyone else remember how intelligent and thought-provoking
those message were? "Hi!" "How are you?" "OK!" "Where are you from?"
"Michigan!" "Cool!"
Do we really want to turn Grex's conferences into that same kind of crap?
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steve
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response 210 of 264:
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Jan 8 23:53 UTC 1999 |
Well, I don't deny that conferencing is at the heart of Grex,
because it is.
But as everything has a centerpoint, it also has a body and form.
I think all the other services we offer are that form.
Look at it this way: what if we were to actively promote ourselves
and conferencing, and get 15,000 more conferencing users? Would we
then be hand wringing worrying about all these users consuming
resources? I don't think so. Or if we did, we might more quickly
face the real root of the "problem", which is that the net distorts
real world geography--all points are equidistant on the net. That
is both a boon and problem.
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scg
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response 211 of 264:
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Jan 9 00:44 UTC 1999 |
I've always assumed that we were providing e-mail accounts as part of our
"exchange of ideas" mission.
Certainly, when Grex started and Internet e-mail accounts were either very
expensive or hard to get, providing free e-mail was a really valuable
community service. Grex was my first e-mail account, and that's how I became
a Grexer, and I imagine many others of our users started using Grex for the
same reasons. At this point, with e-mail accounts being so cheap, I don't
think free e-mail is anywhere near the huge public service it was a few years
ago. Then, nobody would have suggested that Grex should be providing free
phone service for anybody in the Ann Arbor area, because that was something
that could be gotten from the phone company easily. E-mail accounts now are
significantly cheaper than basic phone service wa then, so from the public
service standpoint I no longer think e-mail is an important part of Grex's
mission. However, as something that can draw in people who may then become
more active users of the system, I think it still has a lot of value for us.
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jiffer
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response 212 of 264:
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Jan 9 00:51 UTC 1999 |
E-mail is just as vital as BBS and Party communities. Think about it, a
person first uses the email survice that grex provides,then eventually, over
time, that person can discover more things about grex... thus becoming ever
more involved in our little grex community.... hmmm.... I guess we ain't
little anymo.
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steve
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response 213 of 264:
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Jan 9 04:32 UTC 1999 |
Thats for sure. As of right now on a Friday night there are 74 users
on. We definitely have progressed beyond "little".
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rcurl
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response 214 of 264:
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Jan 9 06:39 UTC 1999 |
Re #212: but it doesn't happen this way. We have - how many? - 20,000
e-mail users that do NOT discover more things about grex? One might say
that, for all practical purposes, we are known worldwide as just a free
e-mail (and upload/download) site, by what - 95% of users?
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steve
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response 215 of 264:
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Jan 9 08:09 UTC 1999 |
I'm thinking that we have closer to 13,000 mailboxes at any one
time, so I think that not everyone uses Grex for mail.
Really, Grex is seen by the world as a free shell place. This
turns out not to be true for a number of reasons (like people can't
telnet out from here).
I'd probably agree that mail is the single most commonly used
thing here, but its also the least common demoninator type of thing.
Just because mail is used by more accounts than any other single
thing doesn't mean that other things aren't used. I really don't
think its easy to say just what the world thinkgs Grex is for.
Sometime, if no one else beats me to it I'll be willing to take
a days process accounting file apart (which holds a record of every
command typed in) and see if I can't come up with a list of what
commands are used the most, etc. If someone else wants to tackle
this, step forward. ;-)
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jshafer
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response 216 of 264:
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Jan 9 09:47 UTC 1999 |
The primary reason I came to grex, in March, '94, was to get "free
email." While I have not been very active lately, I have been involved
in the conferences on and off, have at various points been a member,
(and probably will be again soon,) and have been up to A^2 at least
twice for grexwalks and the like.
While I'm sure I am the exception and not the rule, I would hope that
we can continue to provide email in support of its other functions, and
that more of the folks who use grex as a maildrop begin to become more
a part of our community.
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cmcgee
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response 217 of 264:
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Jan 9 18:04 UTC 1999 |
I came to grex for the email. I was intrigued by the conferencing and the
coop governance. I stay because staff continues to support low-tech, heritage
users like me who don't have the money for new equipment. Shell access,
believe it or not, is actually important to me because it means Grex is a
place I can continue to learn, even though what I've learned looks pretty
minimal from the staff point of view ;-) I'm a member because I want the
telnet access, and because I want to keep this community going.
From this anecdotal evidence, I'd say that email is pretty important as a
marketing tool. More critical though, is the reason I am an active Grexer.
Grex is still my only email access, and I don't think I'd be here if I had to
get my email somewhere else. Conferencing, shell access, and community are
far less critical to me in 1999 than *having email* and participating fully
in the technical society around me. Having email enables me to be a _have_,
instead of a _have_not_.
If I had to answer the constant question "What's your email address?" with
"Oh, I don't have email", I would feel, and probably be perceived as, rather
backward, clearly poverty stricken, and marginal in society. Without Grex, I
would _be_ marginal and unable to participate as easily in professional
activities. So, for me, free email very important for attracting and
*retaining* members of Grex.
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steve
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response 218 of 264:
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Jan 9 18:24 UTC 1999 |
I hadn't thought of it that way, but I'll bet you are right. Certainly
having an alternate address here makes sense for a lot of people, too.
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