response 40 of 163:

Sep 25 05:57 UTC 2000

I don't see any benefit to putting a long list of do's, don'ts, or
consequences into newuser.  It's most all common sense, and in fact most
people can figure it out.  Even for the few that might benefit, putting
it in newuser is moderately pointless.  It certainly would not have
helped in the least with this particular case.  There's no question but
that this person had much experience with this kind of environment, so
to the extent he was constitutionally capable, he would already have
understood what was not acceptable behavior, and what the likely
consequences were.  From the arguments presented by this person, it
seems extremely likely he was "testing the limits".  A more explicit set
of rules is not likely to have helped at all in this situation, because
it would have only solidified the notion in his head that he could rely
on external governance of his behavior, and externalize any blame for
the consequences of his behavior.  This is of course a very popular
solution in small to medium sized social groups where the power figures
have more actual power and greater discretionary ability to administer
corporal punishment as needed to the posterior of any offenders.  It's
not such a useful solution on grex, where there are significant
statuatory limitations on the power and authority of "those in charge",
and in many cases, a numbers and distance problem as well.

response 42 of 163:

Sep 25 11:57 UTC 2000

You people are being awfully inconsiderate of willard.  Try and have a 
little empathy.  Imagine you are in willard's place, and ask yourself 
how he must feel suddenly learning that he is regarded merely as the 
latest in a long series of anonymous vandals/twits.  Nothing special.  
A familiar and commonplace annoyance.  A small face in a big crowd, 
treated no differently than any of the others.  Add any minor self-
esteem issues willard might have, and the unpleasantness of your 
treatment of him begins to seem cruelly deliberate.  Shame on you.

response 44 of 163:

Sep 25 16:12 UTC 2000

I'm sorry, I thought Grex was different than the computer where you
work.  My mistake.  I apologize.  :-P

response 46 of 163:

Sep 25 17:05 UTC 2000

To be technically precise, the document quoted above is not Grex's privacy
policy.  A policy would have have to be enacted by the board or by the
membership.  The document quoted above is an ad hoc description by staff of
their normal policies and procedures.  It's written half for internal use,
to try to give staff members a sense of what other staff members think is
sensible, and half to inform users of what our thinking on things is.

In saying that, I don't mean to suggest that we don't want to live up to
what is there.  I do mean to suggest that lawyerly nitpicks over the exact
wording of the document won't necessarily get you anywhere.  If you say
"what staff did doesn't exactly fit what the document says" then we have
two possible responses: change our behavior or change the document.  This
will remain true until an actual policy is passed.  Actually writing a
document that does say precisely the right thing would be so hard that I
suspect it will never happen.  The staff notes on privacy serves a useful
function in the abscense of a formal policy.

To address the particular points:

  - If staff found willard's postings in Agora so annoying that they decided
    to go fishing through his directory looking for nasty stuff, then that
    would be extremely inappropriate behavior.  I don't believe that
    happened here.

  - If staff had some good reason to suspect that willard was running an
    idle blocker, then doing a limited search through his directories to
    confirm this is justified.  I think this is what happened.  Note that
    the one he called 'watch' wasn't noticed for a while.  Nobody did a
    search through all his files for idle blockers.  Only when we had
    clues that 'watch' needed looking at did we look at it.

  - Use of an idle-blocker wastes system resources and reduces Grex's
    availability.  If lots of users did it, getting access to Grex would
    be extremely hard.  This is a clear impact on Grex's "performance."
    Willard's reading of this suggests that "performance" is only CPU
    speed.  It isn't.  Possibly better wording is needed here, but I think
    it should be obvious that hte "performance" we are interested in is
    everything that effects the ability of Grex's system to provide 
    services to users.

  - The telnet-bomb thing is more ambiguous than the idle blocker.  The
    privacy notes do not include a list of all the things that constitute
    "abuse."  It  is a privacy statement, not a "conditions of use"
    statement.  The paragraph about mere rudeness not being "abuse" doesn't
    mean what willard wants it to though.  It means that mere content of
    messages is not a reason to treat a user as a villian.  So sending
    rude tels does not justify searching a users directory, and tel-bombing
    is against the rules even if you use it only to send polite messages.
    This could use some clarification.

  - There is no 'list' of bad-guys people get on.  If you run a fork bomb,
    we take immediate action.  Staffers have memories though.  A person who
    has caused problems in the past is likely to be suspected more easily
    in the future.  After willard was found running an idle blocker the first
    time, staffers probably were paying a little more attention to his
    login times and process lists than they were with other users.  But
    basically when an incident is over, it's over.

  - In the best of all possible worlds we would spend more time talking to
    people about what they did wrong.  We used to do so.  But it takes a lot
    more time.  Write a message to the user, explaining the error of his
    ways.  If he replies, maybe engage in a conversation.  If not, remember
    to come back and check if the user stopped or not.  Staff rarely has time
    for this these days, not with a couple of these every day.  We tend to
    try to handle things in one transaction and forget about it.

response 48 of 163:

Sep 25 18:40 UTC 2000

You people make me sick.

response 50 of 163:

Sep 25 19:00 UTC 2000

From popcorn@tir.com Mon Sep 25 14:59:58 2000
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 00:05:58 -0500
From: Valerie Mates <popcorn@tir.com>
To: Kevin Nicholls <twinkie@cyberspace.org>
Cc: staff@cyberspace.org
Subject: Re: mass tels

Hm.  That's a good question.  I don't think anything like an AUP is all
collected together in one place on Grex.  There's a bit of a discussion of
acceptable uses of Grex in the newuser program.  There are bits and pieces
in the FAQ.  And there are bits of information elsewhere too.  I know for
years the staff has been telling users that sending mass tels is not an
acceptable use of Grex, but I don't think this is formally posted anywhere.
 I'm torn between saying, "we could do better at posting this; we should
write something up" and "One of the founding philosophies of Grex was to
have as few rules as possible, since as soon as you make rules people come
along and start testing them.  So we'll just expect the users to treat each
other respectfully and see how that works out" -- in which case it wouldn't
make sense to post a list of rules.

If you're feeling so inclined, you might bring this issue up for discussion
in the co-op conference.

-Valerie

At 11:39 PM 3/29/00 -0500, Kevin Nicholls wrote:
>
>I was not aware of this.
>Could you please tell me where I could find the AUP?
>
>On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Valerie Mates wrote:
>
>> Twinkie, staff is getting a barrage of e-mail complaining about these:
>> 
>> >Telegram from twinkie on ttyq6 at 20:21 EST ...
>> >Send your own masstels! Just type !./a/t/w/twinkie/masstel
>> >EOF (twinkie)
>> 
>> Sending mass tels is not an acceptable use of Grex.  Please stop.
>> 
>> -Valerie Mates
>> Grex staff
>> 
>>     -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>       Valerie Mates  *  Web Developer  *  http://www.valeriemates.com
>>                valerie@cyberspace.org  *  (734) 995-6716 
>>     -------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
>
>
>
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
      Valerie Mates  *  Web Developer  *  http://www.valeriemates.com
               valerie@cyberspace.org  *  (734) 995-6716 
    -------------------------------------------------------------------

response 52 of 163:

Sep 25 20:33 UTC 2000

willard, you are making an ass of yourself.  Not only are your actions wrong,
they are reprehensiblebecause you area a staff member on another system.  They
don't allow these programs over there, why should they be allowed here.  If
someone got into these programs and used the to damage the system, who do you
think would catch part of the responsibility?

Personally, I think they should do more.  I think your account should be
deleted.  You should be barred for a period of time.  Yout position on M-net
should be revoked.

You are intentionally doing things to disrupt this system and they are being
more than tolerant of your activity.  Maintainig it couldeven be considered
criminal if you keep pushing it.

response 54 of 163:

Sep 25 23:54 UTC 2000

So where is this AUP, anyhow?

response 56 of 163:

Sep 26 00:10 UTC 2000

#55:  You know what I think, Dan?  I'll tell you.  I think that as
      soon as Bruce finishes with that broomstick, you should go for a
      round.

response 58 of 163:

Sep 26 01:52 UTC 2000

So let me get this straight.  willard, who has made a point of
imposing on Grex's hospitality and everyone's patience and enjoying
every minute of it, is now breaking the rules of order on Grex... and
bragging about it?

willard is giving Grex a cause of action that has *nothing* to do with 
his being the verbal equivalent of a diarrhetic bovine in the living room?
willard is practically *asking* to be thrown off, and this time in a way
that's actually likely to achieve it?  And worst of all (for him), in a
way that leaves him with no grounds on which to honestly malign (as
opposed to abusing) Grex's commitment to free speech?

This is hilarious.

response 60 of 163:

Sep 26 02:16 UTC 2000

Is it possible Willard is trying to be amusing, rather than abusing?  I canot
imagine anyone keeping a straight face while making some of his statements.

response 62 of 163:

Sep 26 04:24 UTC 2000

resp:42  lol

willard, you're pathetic.  occasionally entertaining, too, but only when you
get pissy.  

looking forward to the next installment.  (who needs soap operas, anyway?)