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Grex > Coop12 > #113: Cyberspace Communications finances for June 2002 |  |
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| 25 new of 271 responses total. |
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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polytarp
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response 231 of 271:
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Jul 10 09:56 UTC 2002 |
YOU PEOPLE TALK A LOT.
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spooked
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response 232 of 271:
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Jul 10 11:11 UTC 2002 |
Yes, our vocab spans more than "Shut up, <$1>!"
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cmcgee
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response 233 of 271:
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Jul 10 11:58 UTC 2002 |
I don't understand the utility of having (scarce) staff time used to develop
two systems, one of which we won't use. What am I missing here?
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gull
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response 234 of 271:
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Jul 10 12:37 UTC 2002 |
Re #233: Among other things, some people *like* setting up and trying out
new systems. If they want to do it, I don't think we should stop them.
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brighn
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response 235 of 271:
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Jul 10 13:32 UTC 2002 |
Shut up, spooked.
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jp2
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response 236 of 271:
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Jul 10 14:29 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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slynne
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response 237 of 271:
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Jul 10 16:07 UTC 2002 |
re#226 - I think that people on both systems need to stop disrespecting
people who are not officially members, especially in policy
discussions. Sure, non-members shouldnt be allowed to vote but that
doesnt mean that they dont have worthwhile things to say.
The Mnet "user of the month" thing was an attempt to do encourage new
people by giving them some recognition. I think encouraging people to
buy memberships for others might help. If I were to ever send money to
grex or mnet, it would be because I value the communities there. I dont
care as much about the hardware. I also value individual people. I
would buy md a membership if he would agree to be my online bitch.
re#227 Are there bills that arent being paid?
re#228 What I find most interesting about Grex are the people.
Honestly. There are people here who absolutely fascinate me. Most of
them are guests. If I ever were to contribute money to Grex it would be
because of those people. To me, the challenge is how to recruit more
people like that. I tell people about Mnet and Grex all the time but it
is only rarely that I can talk someone into logging on and even more
rare that they contribute significantly. I wish I knew of a way to
troll around for interesting people. I keep trying but generally fail.
If I ever do figure out a way to recruit newbies, I will be sure to
share it.
re#230 You are right about the conferencing community being composed of
a very small (and aging) group. It is a close knit group that really
does have a bit of an "in-crowd" thing going on. It is often subtle and
it is something that sometimes puts users off and can make them feel
unwelcome. I think some of us (and I am including myself) should try to
be aware of that and should take efforts to make newer people and
people who arent sending in cash feel as if they are part of the group.
Once people feel part of the group, they are more likely to contribute.
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cross
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response 238 of 271:
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Jul 10 18:21 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jared
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response 239 of 271:
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Jul 10 18:43 UTC 2002 |
re #236
heh
A few comments here based on my obversations:
1) I have this notion in my mind (it may be wrong) that both STeve and
Marcus have always had something against x86 hardware. I seem to
recall a BoD meeting/other conversations that went something like:
mdw/steve: x86 hardware is unproven and unless it's been beaten on
so much i can believe someone won't find a way to hack root via some
CPU/FPU bug i will never trust it. (or some basic argument of
that sort which prevents a significant amount of discussion). This
was my observation and i decided to stay out of it because "they were
staff" and didn't seem interested in listening.
2) marcus/slynne are also right that a lot of us here posting, taking
up disk space with our whining, bitching and moaning in this item, have
come from the same basic environments. via (m-net|kitenet|arbornet) and
similar environments. i got started by waking up one day and saying
"i should learn something about this unix thing" and searching for unix on
hal9k and found to my amazement *2* public-access unix systems that had
local dial-up numbers.
The problem today that grex is facing relates to the history of grex and
where people came from. There was all the Dave Parks FUD that made
people move m-net to a community based system, and eventually
merging to arbornet. there was the grex splinter and some people on grex
have never gone back to m-net, or people have migrated over time...
People that have left m-net because it's too radical/young for them tend
to take harbor in grex. "i remember the day" .. when grex had 90-100 items
per season and m-net was doing 100+/mo. It's not easy to keep up and
while jamie does periodically have interesting comments, i don't always
appreciate the number of items he enters here in agora.
People have also left m-net and come here to grex because it's more stable.
For quite a long time I was going day-by-day thinking that m-net was going
to go under. Yes, grex has always had it's cliques and these always
serve as a social deterrent. I don't think that can be solved/worked
around at all. We can't force people to change in a voluntary
environment such as grex.
Now, to address seldons concerns,
Grex should search out new members and people that find the system
useful/interesting. This means getting them hooked while they are
young ;-). Grex should probally think about things such as a
membership drive similar to what NPR stations do. Companies
that are willing to do matching funds for membership donations.
Setting up a booth at ArtFair or other events. Give out flyers
there and make grex more 'web friendly' for those people who are
willing to live with backtalk, but can't understand how
to telnet in to become a newuser. Writing a java client (ick) or
similar for Party that would allow people to use the system ala
backtalk but for those realtime chats.
I don't watch the phone line usage. Perhaps that should be part of
the staff or a report at the BoD meeting each time. Then they
can vote to remove a line or add a line as needs dictate. It should
be observed but not kept to a very strict system.
Colocation: This issue can not be addressed until the hardware
issue is addressed. For those of you that are wondering, Grex
(last i saw it) would fill a 6' 19" rack if everything were stacked
in there properly. This does not address possible ventilation
issues.
Obviously moving to a smaller footprint system would alleviate
some of these size issues.
OS/Software Choice: It sounds like that is driving things more than
hardware which is good. This way you can pick the software solution
then the hardware. Seeings as hardware prices are always dropping
(well to a certain final low price-level that is) delaying is
not always a bad thing. Anyone here that has bought any IDE
drive in the past 2 years who looks at prices a month later thinks they
wasted money.
hardware choice: this is waiting for software choice it sounds like.
SCSI disks are many-many times more expensive but not always the
best choice for the entire system.
Putting swap on SCSI is ideal, but you can-not beat IDE for price-per-gig
and /home (or similar partitions) tend to not be as heavily used as
/var/mail or /var/log
Internet: Grex is in a comfy location right now. it's reliable(enough)
and priced at a reasonable level. if something
happens, we can always go to a commercial privder and get isdn as an
interim solution.
That being said: Grex is financally stable currently, to maintain this level
there should be some publicity done.
Hand out flyers that say "Grex, Ann Arbors community-based conferencing/chat
fourm since 19xx".
just print the word "FREE" in large letters around there a few times
and we'll get a deluge of new-users. Get these people to go to the
local coffee shops and such that have a board for people
to post things on. Go litter (not literally) campus come september. help
more people drop out ;-)
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jared
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response 240 of 271:
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Jul 10 18:43 UTC 2002 |
while i was writing the book, 238 slipped in.
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cross
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response 241 of 271:
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Jul 10 19:36 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jared
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response 242 of 271:
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Jul 10 19:42 UTC 2002 |
(i've not been following thigs very close as of late)
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md
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response 243 of 271:
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Jul 10 22:11 UTC 2002 |
237: The only reason I ever contributed to M-Nnet was the patrons' dial-
in line. If you weren't a patron, you had to attack-dial the regular
number forever sometimes. These huge Michael McClary scandals would be
in progress and you'd be *dying* for the latest news and all you'd get
was a busy signal. So I paid my dues and got access to the patron
line. Patrons were also given more disk space and access to the patron
cf, and probably other whoop-de-fucken-do stuff as well, none of which
I ever once used.
For several months after that a very kind M-Netter renewed my
patronship anonymously. I only recently found out who it was and was
quite surprised. She neither expected me to be her bitch nor cared a
whit that she was paying for my posts, btw.
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mdw
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response 244 of 271:
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Jul 11 02:53 UTC 2002 |
"Test-driving" openbsd on ultrasparc & x86 isn't twice the effort. It's
probably 1.1x the effort. The 10% extra isn't really wasted even if we
go with intel -- we're going to have to make all our stuff work with 64
bits soon enough even with intel.
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jep
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response 245 of 271:
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Jul 11 03:25 UTC 2002 |
re #239: Grex came about as a departure from the Dave Parks days of M-
Net.
OAFS, and the merger with Arbornet, came because Dave Parks announced
he was getting out of the conferencing game and some of us figured
someone had to run M-Net. That happened after Grex opened it's modems.
Sorry (because this is irrelevant), but I hate to see historical
inaccuracy creeping into the records.
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mdw
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response 246 of 271:
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Jul 11 04:57 UTC 2002 |
Dave Parks wanted to turn m-net into a 100% for-pay system, much like
the well in California. He had bought m-net as a private for-profit
investment, and was not realizing the return he had hoped for when he
bought it. This is the background against which grex was founded.
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rcurl
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response 247 of 271:
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Jul 11 05:16 UTC 2002 |
Re #243: this tells me that md is more interested in obtaining services
for dollars than in the charitable principles of maintaining an open
computer based conferencing system. That is totally his privilege, of
course, and no aspersions should be cast because of this. Grex should look
elsewhere for those that have some sense of the inherent charitable nature
of Grex and who believe that this deserves support.
That md is valuable participant on Grex is not relevent to where Grex
should direct its support-raising efforts.
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md
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response 248 of 271:
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Jul 11 11:02 UTC 2002 |
Rane is actually right!
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cmcgee
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response 249 of 271:
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Jul 11 12:00 UTC 2002 |
re 244. thanks Marcus.
I assume that software is chosen, hardware testing is proceding at a
reasonable pace, and therefore, the current issue for Grexers is to, once
again, figure out where our new members are lurking and somehow 1) let them
know about Grex, 2) get them to try Grex, 3) facinate them with our wit and
charm, and 4) persuade them to join Grex.
Some likely pools of new Grexers: people who want to learn Unix and don't
have access anywhere else; people who want to participate in bbs
conversations; people who want to participate in real-time conversations by
typing, not audio.
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