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Grex > Coop12 > #113: Cyberspace Communications finances for June 2002 |  |
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cross
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response 206 of 271:
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Jul 8 21:56 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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cross
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response 207 of 271:
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Jul 8 22:00 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 208 of 271:
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Jul 8 22:45 UTC 2002 |
The problem is that x86 vs. SPARC is essentially a religious argument and so
can never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction.
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cross
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response 209 of 271:
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Jul 8 23:05 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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mdw
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response 210 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:04 UTC 2002 |
This is all technical crap! Enough! This is the *wrong* conference to
go through all that stuff! In point of fact, staff is not unanimous
about sparc over x86. You can rest assured there will will be a lively
debate in due course. Unless you all are betting people, or think staff
is basically incompetent and not fit to make technical decisions,
hashing all that stuff out here is just another form of
necroequinoflagellation.
The sense people seem to be communicating here is that for their level
of interest in grex, grex's level and quantity of donation is fine, and
grex should be thinking instead purely in terms of reducing costs. I
don't think grex staff would feel comfortable turning one of their own
into the next "trex", but I guess we can make that another agenda item
to pursue at our next staff meeting, should any survivors be left over
from the x86/sparc discussion. Nobody here seems interested in pursuing
new members, so I take it people here would prefer to see a contracting
pool of members, perhaps down to a 2 dozen or so in a few years?
Somebody above proposed a sliding scale of memberships; I suppose we'd
need that if we wanted to survive with many fewer members. Any
volunteers for the position of "seldon"--the One person who will cover
any and all short-falls? At least half the people responding here are
from m-net. Do people on the grex side of things feel comfortable with
the ideas and solutions proposed by the m-net crowd?
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jmsaul
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response 211 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:12 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jp2
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response 212 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:14 UTC 2002 |
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jmsaul
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response 213 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:16 UTC 2002 |
Apparently Marcus isn't an adherent of the philosophy that anyone who's a
regular participant on Grex is a Grexer.
I appreciate the kind words about my support of M-Net, but I'm certainly not
the only person who's stepped in with large donations to keep it running in
the past. Draven and jerryr have both given at least as much as I have, and
there are plenty of others as well. M-Net has more broad-based support than
you might think, and it looks like we're currently running in the black. Just
for the record. (I was surprised, too.)
But we're talking about Grex here, and I guess the best way to increase
membership is to yell at people and rag on M-Net, so keep up the good work.
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jmsaul
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response 214 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:17 UTC 2002 |
(Scribbled 211 to rephrase it for coherence and add some comments.)
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cross
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response 215 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:18 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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mdw
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response 216 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:35 UTC 2002 |
Hey, I'm just going by the fact that several of you started dragging out
unrelated m-net administrivia. For all I know, you actually consider
yourselves to be closet Cthulhans, in which case I'd rather not know
what you keep in your closets. (And no, Dan, I wasn't counting you as
an m-netter.)
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jmsaul
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response 217 of 271:
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Jul 9 03:37 UTC 2002 |
Jamie drags out whatever seems most likely to wind people up. I'm not sure
what your point is supposed to be, or why this discussion is better than the
one about "the next Grex," but since you apparently do, I'll go with the flow.
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cross
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response 218 of 271:
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Jul 9 04:09 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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mdw
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response 219 of 271:
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Jul 9 06:56 UTC 2002 |
All of us (except perhaps Jamie) have multiple affiliations and
loyalties. Those loyalties change with age. The challenge that faces
m-net, grex, and indeed any organization that hopes to have any sort of
persistance, is how to recruit new people. For grex, that includes
members, users at large, staff, and other positions of responsibility.
The reason to be concerned about the shrinking membership is not just a
financial issue, indeed, perhaps that's the least of it. The other
reason to be concerned is that historically at least, the membership
pool is the pool of interested people from which board and staff people
materialize. A shrinking pool leaves us with fewer recruits, fewer
people who understand what it really takes to keep grex running, and if
it shrinks enough, it won't matter how effectively we're fulfilling our
501(c)3 mission, there won't be enough qualified people who care to keep
things going.
This is certainly an area where grex really differs from m-net. I think
m-net inherited some bad traditions from the past. Early on, the
tradition that staff & administrations were separate & disjoint got
started; eventually this lead to a situation in which an enormous
bureaucracy evolved to deal with staff at arm's length, as a consequence
of which many good technical people left or never got involved. From
arbornet, m-net learned 2 further things: it started to forget how to
recruit and keep new users, and it learned to separate "m-net the bbs"
from "arbornet the corporation", which lead to a schism and mutual
distrust between the users paying for the system, and the board who was
evidently busy spending the money.
So, that's the mold we're trying to break here on grex. We don't want a
"us vs. them" attitude for the board; we want our users, and our members
in particular, to think of the board as "some of us" who have been
entrusted with the responsibility to run the system for the good of all
of us. We don't want staff & board to be disjoint. We want staff to be
just more members, and we want some overlap between the board & staff,
because that gets rid of so much friction and opportunity for
misunderstands and mistakes to happen. The most important group in
*all* of this is the membership, because they are the ones that are
ultimately responsible for the success of this system, for all our
users. We also want our membership to be as representative of our users
at large as possible; not just "the old guard". While we value our
traditions, they're no good if they don't truely reflect the interests
and beliefs of as many people as possible on grex.
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md
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response 220 of 271:
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Jul 9 11:10 UTC 2002 |
What are the Grex traditions?
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cmcgee
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response 221 of 271:
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Jul 9 11:21 UTC 2002 |
[pulls on her waders, and wades in]
I don't want to see the Garage discussion here. I do want to see a
summarized, plain-English version of the two sides' position so that I
can understand why we're not moving swiftly to next-Grex.
If, as someone stated above, this is stalled because two "tribes", or
"sects" or whatever cannot reach agreement, then the better the rest of
us understand the basic problems, the sooner the non-technical Grexers
can add their input. Perhaps there is a consensus outside of "staff"
that would move us ahead.
Consensus decision making is not meant to be used to bring an
organization to a standstill. Staff, on Grex, is not meant to bring the
organization to a standstill. It seems like it may be time for those of
us who normally "leave it to staff" to get involved.
In order to do that, I need to understand the basic dilemma. Not the
vaporware possibilities of next year, but the off-the-shelf possibilities
of this year. If the only question is "Should we wait for the
nearly-ready vaporware" versus "Should we adapt the nearly-ready
shelfware" then, by dragging their feet, the vaporware proponents are
making a decision by fiat.
I want Grex members to make that decision, not a split staff. Most of us
go "yeah, yeah" if staff reaches consensus. This decision has been
flaring up for months. Looks to me like it's time for members to
understand the problem, not just leave it to staff.
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jmsaul
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response 222 of 271:
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Jul 9 13:12 UTC 2002 |
Re #219: If that's really what you want, then you should be more open to
ideas from outside the old guard. As it stands, you're alienating
users outside the old guard who want to get involved in decisions
and discussion about how Grex should be run, rather than sitting
back and trusting the Grex political cadre. Those are exactly
the people you should want to keep, because they're more likely
to be motivated to pitch in in the long run than passive people.
Look at your own responses, Marcus, where you yell at people for
daring to discuss a technical issue in Agora, and basically tell
us we should shut up and leave it to the Grex staff to sort out.
You've got an "us versus them" situation going here, whether you
are willing to acknowledge it or not. It's pretty bad -- and
before you deny that by reflex, remember that your membership is
dropping, and a number of us in this item are regular Grex users
who aren't (yet) members.
Re #221: I'd like to hear that too. Jan? STeve?
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jp2
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response 223 of 271:
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Jul 9 13:29 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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slynne
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response 224 of 271:
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Jul 9 22:03 UTC 2002 |
I have decided not to become a member of either Mnet or Grex because I
dont think either system does a good enough job appreciating the people
who make the most important contributions to the systems. That would be
just the average person who comes into party or bbs and adds to the
conversation. Neither grex nor mnet will ever have to really worry
about "going out of business" as long as there is still an interesting
conversation going on. The system is dead when most of the users have
gone and there are only a few old guard paying members left. Isnt the
real value here what people post?
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cross
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response 225 of 271:
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Jul 9 22:34 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jmsaul
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response 226 of 271:
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Jul 9 22:45 UTC 2002 |
Re #224: How could either place show appreciation to the people who post?
Or do you just mean they should stop disrespecting people who post
but aren't paid members? I'd honestly like to know how to do that
better.
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rcurl
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response 227 of 271:
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Jul 10 02:16 UTC 2002 |
Re #s 224, 225: you are 100% correct, although we know that being correct
does not necessarily pay the bills.....
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other
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response 228 of 271:
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Jul 10 03:15 UTC 2002 |
Staff has determined that off-the-shelf software solutions will not meet
the needs identified by the users, members, board and staff.
There is no schism between parties pushing SPARC or x86 hardware, it was
simply determined that the best course was to try to develop both and see
which results better served the needs.
The reason for the long time-frame is primarily that staff time is
donated on an as-available basis, and there is not a lot of it available
from those staff who are appropriately qualified to build the systems we
are looking at. The qualifications are substantial because of the nature
and extent of the customization Grex has undergone to provide a secure
and stable system resistant to exploits and attacks on both Grex and the
rest of the internet even from acount-holding users. We were set back
some by substantial medical difficulties for some staff, so we appreciate
your patience.
Now, as for new members, there is not a whole lot that we have ever done
to drum up new membership (that I know of), and yet new members have come
and gone throughout. As I said earlier, I suspect that the current low
is merely reflective of the environment in both the economy and the
political confidence of the usership. The US government is engaged in
extensive rhetoric and some substantive activity which makes using a US-
based system less attractive to potential users both within and without
the US. In addition, the tech sector is still nursing wounds from the
dot bomb, and many otherwise flush potential members are now conserving
resources.
I believe that discussion is good, and if any really outstanding ideas
come up in such discussion, then all the better. I also believe that
even though our current operational expenses outweigh our current
revenues, we should not jump to cut costs if doing so could substantively
alter our service level or operational processes. That leaves us with
the obvious choice of attempting to increase revenues by recruiting new
members. There are a lot of challenges in that. We are more of a
curiosity than anything more marketable locally, and our only practical
option for promotion elsewhere is online, and we all know the internet is
flooded with promotion already, so what could possibly make us stand out
from all the chatter? Our membership seems to come mostly from people
who stumble onto us, check us out, and decide we're interesting. So what
makes us interesting? Controversy? Unique opinions? Loads of political
drivel?
If we can identify the core elements of using Grex that make it uniquely
interesting, then we can better figure out how and to whom to promote it.
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scg
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response 229 of 271:
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Jul 10 06:43 UTC 2002 |
I don't think there's ever been much agreement among the staff about the
unworthyness of off the shelf software solutions.
A lot of these issues are the sort of thing which in the "real world" would
be subjected to a limited amount of debate among the staff, and then if there
wasn't agreement settled with a decision by a manager. This process works
in that it keeps the debate from getting drawn out forever without a
conclusion, and gets something done. It often fails to work well because
there are a lot of bad managers out there, and because even the best managers
don't always get everything right. Still, in many cases having the manager
decide something is better than nothing at all getting decided. In this case,
Colleen seems to be attempting to play the role of the manager, or to push
the Grex membership into that role. In a sense, this may be needed. On the
other hand, a lot of the volunteer Grex staffers spend too much of their time
dealing with managers and probably wouldn't be willing to deal with a manager
in the course of their recreation, so I would expect an attempt at managing
the Grex staff to fail badly.
I suppose I should note that I'm mostly an ex-staff person at this point, and
am certainly not speaking for any of the active staff.
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mdw
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response 230 of 271:
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Jul 10 06:55 UTC 2002 |
The author of #78 apparently belongs to some sort of closed society,
which apparently has some sort of secret initiation with a high fatality
rate. Those who survive have short hair and only emit small quantities
of copyrighted material, all of which they sell for profit to swiss
lawyers who think they are purchasing the truth. Members of the society
go into battle armed to the teeth, take no prisoners, and their motto is
"unconditional surrender, or else!"
None of this seems particularly relevant to the basic problem of how to
attract new members to grex. The whole theoretical framework of the
Berne convention makes no sense here - no one on grex represents the
countries of any union, and most of the original material presented on
grex has no intrinsic value outside of its context or to any 3rd party.
This is unfortunate because if it did, we might be able to take the
"interesting conversations" identified in #224 to the bank and use them
to pay our bills. Any interesting community is going to have some
process of self-selection and filtering. I think most people on grex
are content to either let this evolve "naturally", or believe that their
personal participation in the system, together with word of mouth
advertising, is sufficient mechanism. The author of #78 apparently
believes a more formal and hostile internal selection process, coupled
with external aggression against perceived competition, is a more
appropriate mechanism. I find the expressed bias in #78 against people
whose loginids start with "r" to be particularly confusing. Does he
believe we should not accept cold cash from Prof. J. Remmers of the
computer science faculty of Eastern Michigan University, and Prof. R.
Curl of the chemical engineering department of the University of
Michigan, because of their impaired reasoning ability?
In any event, the whole notion of #78 seems to be that what is needed is
a fundamental revolution: all those hoary old traditions on grex should
be thrown out, and a complete new set of traditions should be copied
wholesale from m-net. Frankly, I don't see the point; at *best* the
result would be two systems competing for the same niche, with no real
diversity or difference between the two. At worst, well you know what
Darwin says.
Regarding hardware, I think one thing to keep in mind is that our old
hardware, while it *is* old, has not failed, is not overloaded, and is
serving our present needs quite well. What we're looking at with it is
not some sudden cliff edge where it will suddenly cease to function, but
rather a long and gradual process where it has and will continue to
become steadily less convenient and useful to us. I think everyone on
staff wants the transition onto new hardware to be as transparent and
uneventful as possible. A hurried transition onto new hardware and
software is unlikely to be either transparent or uneventful.
Regarding "old guard" and "outsiders" -- uh, like it or not, the whole
A^2 computer conferencing community is remarkably incestuous. I think
nearly everyone in this discussion (ok, except you, Dan Cross) have been
involved since forever, and many of us have some variation of a history
that goes "Confer II, m-net, grex", with some slight variations for
arbornet, etc. Windowing back, I think I've met at least half the
participants in person. I suspect even the author of #220, if arrested
by Islamic fundamentalists and held at machine gun point, could write
down a reasonably convincing list of "grex traditions" with which some
of the rest of us might even agree.
In #228, Eric is asking that we come up with a list of what makes us
"interesting" as well as perhaps "unique". I think a lot of that list
is going to overlap what some of us could describe as a list of "grex
traditions". So, to start that process, I'll toss out:
grex walks
open newuser - "no vetting"
online conferencing - little or no censorship - people from all over
the world convenient access to unix for education or personal utility
public discussion of major policy decisions
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