response 201 of 264:

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.

response 203 of 264:

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.

response 205 of 264:

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.

response 207 of 264:

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.

response 209 of 264:

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?

response 211 of 264:

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.

response 213 of 264:

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".

response 215 of 264:

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. ;-)

response 217 of 264:

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.

response 219 of 264:

Jan 9 19:48 UTC 1999

One can also think of the e-mail users as the background population from
which come members. Individuals from that population become members for a
variety of reasons, such as that given by cmcgee, but perhaps more would
join if they were reminded that there are other things on Grex besides
e-mail, or even why and how to become a member. Grex does too little, in
my opinion, in 'promoting' users to become members - and to join into
conferencing. [If this sounds familiar, it is because others have also
been saying this, but nothing seems to be done about it.  Perhaps someone
should be assigned the task of making it happen, rather than just leaving
it as an idea that everyone seems to approve of but for which no one wants
to take independent responsibility.]

response 221 of 264:

Jan 10 11:42 UTC 1999

I tend to think of conferencing in broader terms than Rane.  It's online
discussion, whether that be in time-delayed public conversation (Agora,
cooking), between two or more people in private conversation (mail),
people in private real-time conversation (chat), or in public real-time
party. I would sure hope our mission is wider than simply Agora, cooking
and ing.  

response 223 of 264:

Jan 10 22:27 UTC 1999

I've been to coop once or twice. ;-)