response 23 of 157:

Sep 7 13:48 UTC 2000

I agree with richard that a wrecked agora is the road to the loss of
community for Grex.  I don't know if this idea will work, though, even if we
could implement it.  I don't like talking about restrictions on posting, but
I think the time has come to talk about it.

response 25 of 157:

Sep 7 14:19 UTC 2000

(By the way, less than 30% of the items in Agora are mine.  I think
 you people just need thicker skin.)

response 27 of 157:

Sep 7 15:01 UTC 2000

Or maybe I'm just bored.  What better reason to log onto Grex?

response 29 of 157:

Sep 7 15:48 UTC 2000

I log into Grex because I'm interested in being part of a community.

response 31 of 157:

Sep 7 18:02 UTC 2000

Out of curiosity, do you like everybody in your community?  I know that in
my apartment complex there is at least a few people who play the radio tooo
loud, at midnight, and the guy with the clunker that beeps his horn all the
time in front of the building.  They may irritate me, but I'm not yelling at
the apartment complex because I don't like it.  I realize that they live here
too, and that, you know, I'm sorta used to it now.

I cannot believe that the idea of limiting posts is actually coming up.  I'm
truely apalled, because that really goes against everything Grex has stood
for.  We are considered an open community, here for everybody's enjoyment.
Different people have different enjoyments.  Okay, so maybe Willard's is to
put in a bunch of different posts, possibly designed to irritate some people.
Do I like it?  Nope.  But this is his community too.  I'll be the first to
admit that my fingers type "forget" the moment I see his name (and a few
others) come up at the top of a header.  But that doesn't mean that I (or
anybody else) has the right to limit postings, just to discourage him and a
few others.

Or is this "community" only supposed to be made up of the people you approve
of?  If so, I want out.

response 33 of 157:

Sep 7 18:58 UTC 2000

Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody has endangerd anybody.  And I don't think
that at this point I would think of these people as somebody fromt he next
complex over.  They live here now.  Mabe have double residence, but so what?

response 35 of 157:

Sep 7 19:41 UTC 2000

ah but if those neighbors are so disruly and disrespectful that it
causes other people to move out, the landlords are within their rights to
discuss ways to prevent or discourage the questionable behaviour.  

Again I was only suggesting this for Agora, not for any other 
conference.  It is extremely important that Agora be readable, 
because those who dont read agora wont know what grex is all about and
wont likely choose to remain part of it for very long.  

many of the mass postings in agora were done with the forethought to
ruin the conf-- the people posting there were mnet regulars who were
hanging out there while mnet was down.  There are people on mnet who
flat dont like grex, and see hurting grex to be in mnet's best interest.
Their attitude is "screw agora and screw everyone who reads it"  

We know how easily conferences can be ruined, it is in grex's vested
interest to see that agora is protected.

response 37 of 157:

Sep 7 20:08 UTC 2000

Maybe the solution here would be, rather than restrictions on Agora, 
placing more text in conspicious locations that newusers can see very 
easily.  Stuff like "Did you know that you can set a 'twit' filter on 
posters you don't like?  Just do this ...."  Or "If you don't like 
seeing so many items on the item list, you can forget items.  Forgetting 
it causes it to not appear on the item list, but you can still read it 
if you want to.  ALl you have to do is ..."  (I'd fill in the how to do 
this, but I'm on backtalk and there's a nice convinient "forget" button)

response 39 of 157:

Sep 7 20:54 UTC 2000

No, I'd rather not have Agora become the Willard Conf.  *BUT* Like Mary, I
really think the whining about him is worse than the items he puts in.  part
of it might be because I'm losing a lot of respect for a lot of people that
I used to think were adults.

response 41 of 157:

Sep 8 00:01 UTC 2000

#40: Suck my balls.

response 43 of 157:

Sep 8 01:42 UTC 2000

Hmm... I'm still puzzled by the idea that agora is normally easy to figure
out and accessible to newusers.  Generally, by this point in the season (2
weeks or so before restart), agora has something like 200 items.  Yes, I
realize that 200 is less than 540, or whatever we are up to these days,
but 200 is still too many for *me* to sift my way through, and I've been
familiar with conferencing and with Grex for a long time.

I find myself agreeing with eeyore in #31 and #39 and mary in #36.  The
people who are whining about willard are irritating me a lot more than
willard is.  I mentioned this several months back, when richard was the
one people had decided to whine about.  Dealing with someone who you find
irritating and immature by being irritating and immature back is not only
ineffective but hypocritical.

I don't know about newusers, but here's what *I've* learned from agora
recently:

1) Real Grexers do not like m-netters.  M-netters are bad and
juvenile and disruptive.  'Sides, m-netters have the gall to admit, on
occasion, their dislike of Real Grexers, and we won't stand for that here.
Both Real Grexers and m-netters can demonstrate an amazing display of "our
bbs is cooler than your bbs, nyah nyah nyah!" sort of behavior.

2) Real Grexers do not like iggy.  She finds humorous things which other
people find important or serious.  She also can make fun of people and/or
be insensitive -- things which Real Grexers never do.  This is seen as the
worst sort of betrayal since iggy used to be cool around here -- was once
seen as a Real Grexer herself but has now gone over to the side of the bad,
immature people who We Don't Like Around Here.

3) Real Grexers will, upon reflection, concede that *some* m-netters are
okay, especially now that they've had the good taste to go back where they
came from.  But Real Grexers do not like willard.  No, willard is bad and
juvenile and egotistical.  He is unwilling to listen to others and is a
Bad Influence on our little wholesome community here.

4) New users -- those bright, impressionable minds which we hope to form
into Real Grexers one day -- need to be protected from the behavior
described in 1-3 at all costs.

I've been involved with Grex off and on for over six years now.  I'm more
silent in conferences than most -- I read a lot of items but, online as in
real life, tend to listen more than I talk, I guess -- but I've donated
both money and time to it because I *care* about Grex.  Because I love
what Grex is, what it has been.  I admire Grex's unwillingness to
compromise on free speech issues (and yes, I do regard the idea of
limiting postings as an unprecedented breach of this policy).  I loved
that, when I first joined Grex as a high school junior, I found people
here of all ages and backgrounds who were eager to discuss everything from
current events to philosophical abstractions with me, who took me
seriously, who took the time to explain how things worked to a clueless
computer-illiterate, who listened to my ideas and didn't just dismiss me
as some dumb kid.  I love the diversity among Grexers, the different
voices that different people bring to the discussions here.

But lately I see a lot of what I love about Grex eroding, and I think that
the bulk of the damage is coming from within rather than without: from
longtime Grexers who are beginning to see freedom of speech as not worth
fighting for if it means that we have to put up with unpopular or
unpleasant ideas; who see ignorant young newbies as those annoying people
who enter items saying "help quit quit :q" rather than as potentially
interesting individuals with ideas of their own; who find diversity
annoying and uncomfortable and seem only interested in talking with
people who, if they have the gall to disagree with the acceptable way of
thinking and of communicating, at least do so in a quiet,
non-objectionable manner.

I think Grex still has the potential to be the welcoming, friendly, quirky
community I remember from 1994.  But I'm not sure that people are as
willing to be a part of that community as they are willing to bitch and
nag and nitpick.  (If, as richard alleges, willard is "allowed" to take
over agora... are we allowing him by not forcibly restricting him, or are
we allowing him because the rest of us are more interested in whining than
in entering thought-provoking items of our own, and trying to steer
discussions in a meaningful direction?)

What *I'm*  most concerned with new users knowing is that people who make
statements like, "well, we don't like (fill in the blank with behavior of
your choice here) around here" do not speak for everyone here.  Me, I'm
not terribly interested in being a Real Grexer.  So I guess you'll have to
count me in among the nonconformist, wrong-thinking people that are
corrupting Grex As We Know It.  If only Real Grexers are welcome
around here, then I guess I'd better start packing my bags, hmm?

response 45 of 157:

Sep 8 01:43 UTC 2000

(#43 slipped in ahead of mine - not that it matters that much...)

response 47 of 157:

Sep 8 02:17 UTC 2000

I love you guys.  *passes around a bowl of granola*