response 27 of 84:

Feb 4 03:51 UTC 2007

Why not a conf where articles from anywhere on the bbs, are linked in to it,
the conf itself being searchable. However, how do we control abuse? 
We might wind up porting our junk on to the WWW. It will have to be 
moderated in some form :(. I suggest allowing accounts with X points,
access to this facility and a limit of 1 post per month.

Perhaps this method can be used to control SPAM and abuse? Only people
willing to devote a substantial amt of time to using a account get uber
Grex facilities because they will have to build points (measure based 
on time spent logged in, cpu resources consumed, commands typed, posts 
posted, party lines, user feedback etc)? We could try to implement some 
sort of bot-checker using tel?

response 29 of 84:

Feb 4 13:46 UTC 2007

There was a "best of" conference once, when Grex first started; it's called the
"archive" conference. The last item in it is 2001.

response 31 of 84:

Feb 4 16:05 UTC 2007

Re #29: :) I can see why - some of them are pretty neat. No fights and on
topic.

response 33 of 84:

Feb 5 16:58 UTC 2007

Host? you just compile and run it. There will be some default rooms and
stuff. Of course ppl that are interested can update the room descriptions and
add new rooms but i think you need to know LPC for that..or some other MUD
language..

response 35 of 84:

Feb 5 20:24 UTC 2007

Yeah..it is multiplayer..It would be hosted on Grex via loopback..

response 37 of 84:

Feb 7 02:11 UTC 2007

What mud are we thinking of running ? I remember playing in one called
"Major Mud" on a small BBS in Austin and I believe my partner played in
several back in college. 

If there is stuff that needs doing (testing, documenting, etc), I can
probably pitch in a couple of hours a week, but probably not loads more
than that. 

response 39 of 84:

Feb 8 03:07 UTC 2007

Actually, there is a conference devoted to muds, called "mud".

response 41 of 84:

Feb 8 15:22 UTC 2007

I started an item there.  :)

response 43 of 84:

Feb 9 16:11 UTC 2007

We need/demand Gnuchess to help while away precious hours!

response 45 of 84:

Feb 14 06:43 UTC 2007

cross per usual has really great ideas that are shot down quickly, also
per-usual. :(

response 47 of 84:

Feb 21 14:29 UTC 2007

I saw that!  I'm on M-Net frequently; I just find that general has more going
on than I can keep up with.

response 49 of 84:

Feb 21 14:42 UTC 2007

Don't forget to check out the chess conference where our very own Nate
is getting his ass handed to him by tanis.

response 51 of 84:

Mar 5 17:34 UTC 2007

A few ideas have been rattling around in my brain.  I guess there are 
two issues:  (1) How to make Grex more visible, and (2) how to entice 
people to stick around, once they've taken a look at it.

One easy, low-cost way to address (1) is to put out information about 
Grex in public places.  In the pre-internet days of the early 1990s, the 
Grex publicity committee used to walk around Ann Arbor putting up fliers 
with Grex's phone number.

The hardcopy flier approach was pretty effective in its day.  Nowadays 
we can do the equivalent on the World Wide Web, on a global scale, by 
putting up electronic "fliers" on places where people can post things 
and which other people use as resources for finding things.

I'm thinking of social sites like Upcoming (http://upcoming.org) for 
announcing upcoming events, and Delicious (http://del.icio.us) for 
sharing bookmarks.  I've started putting up a few of these electronic 
"fliers" myself.

On Upcoming, I've started posting announcements, in the "Ann Arbor" 
metro section, of weekly Saturday walks and lunches.  At this writing, 
the URL for the March 10, 2007 walk is http://upcoming.org/event/158733/
(although it will disappear once the date has passed), and I'll be 
posting the lunch info on Upcoming as well, as soon as I know the 
location.  Anybody who keeps track of upcoming Ann Arbor events (URL: 
http://upcoming.org/metro/mi/aa) will see this announcement.  (I'm 
attaching a "grex" tag to each such event, so that 
http://upcoming.org/tag/grex gives you a complete list.  Google indexes 
upcoming.org - try a Google search on    "ann arbor" grex.

Another source of visibility is http://del.icio.us, a very popular 
social bookmarking site.  People can post URLs of websites and attach 
descriptive category labels called "tags".  The tags help me find 
websites I've bookmarked and, since they're public by default, help 
other people find websites relevant to their interests.  For example, 
somebody interested in the PHP programming language could open the URL 
http://del.icio.us/tag/php to see a list of all sites any user has 
tagged "php", or go to http://del.icio.us/popular/php to see sites that 
a LOT of people have tagged php.  Sort of like a search engine, but 
returning results based on human judgement of relevance rather than 
Google's algorithmic approach.

As an example of what can be done, I posted 
http://cyberspace.org to Delicious, attached a brief description of what 
Grex is about, and gave it the tags "annarbor", "forums", "unix", "ssh", 
"free", "501c3", "organization", "nonprofit", and "shellaccounts".  (And 
anybody else with a Delicious account can do the same, perhaps with a 
different tag set.)  Anybody tracking any of those topics on Delicious 
will see the listing.  (Go to http://del.icio.us/jremmers/grex to see my 
description.)  I don't know how much effect this will have in attracting 
new people to Grex, but Delicious has over a million users.

There are no doubt a lot of other places on the web where Grex can be 
publicized with little effort and no cost.  And anybody with the time 
and interest can do it - you don't have to be a board or staff member.

Issue #2 - how to make it more attractive for people to stick around 
once they're here - is more difficult.  I have some thoughts about how 
this might be approached for the "bbs" part of Grex, but this response 
has grown way long, so I think I'll save the ideas for later.