response 76 of 96:

Feb 1 11:51 UTC 1998

Telling them that would certainly be consistent with what
people are told when they try to do other things that are
too taxing on resources -- such as running mailing lists
from Grex, or building eggdrop.

response 78 of 96:

Feb 1 17:01 UTC 1998

Having two accounts under one name isn't using more of our resources.  Oh,
maybe a little if you take into account the treasurer's time.  Mostly,
option two would be extending additional perks for membership, something I
thought we were going to avoid doing as much as possible.

Maybe it's time to again go to the membership and find out how folks feel
about this.  Maybe the "we" of Grex would like to bundle lots of incentive
perks into the membership catagory.  That would certainly bring in more
money and lots of voting members who would probably be real supportive of
the concept of membership perks, and we could be off and running in a
whole new direction. ;-) 

response 80 of 96:

Feb 2 16:41 UTC 1998

Guests can have as many pseudo accounts as they want.  Why not members?  Why
is that a "member perk?"

I actually only know of one person who wants this, and that person doesn't
seem ready to jump off any bridges if they don't get it.

response 82 of 96:

Feb 2 19:31 UTC 1998

Members can have as many pseudo accounts as they want, too. Just not with
more member "perqs".

I just see no good reason for expanding this "perq" for members. I think
that one-person, one set of member "perqs" is a good policy. Given how few
members we have, it would probably not overload the system, but the principle
runs counter to the purposes of Grex (IMO).

response 84 of 96:

Feb 4 02:11 UTC 1998

when I break up this idea into a pie chart I see a huge wedge of it
being staff time.  Staff time is not something we have lots of.  I'd
rather see us stay where we are.  I might sorta like to have more than
one account with outbound access, but I don't see how that contributes
to grex in any way whatever.  I see how it drains staff time away.  I
see how it can be abused.  I see how it can cost us money, but I don't
see enough increased revenue to offset the staff costs. I also see
allowing multiple paid accounts as selling access.  I would be crushed
to see grex go there after being what it is for so long.  Yuck. 

response 86 of 96:

Feb 4 17:49 UTC 1998

This doesn't sound like a reasonable goal to me, anymore.

As someone pointed out up there, the cost of Internet access has come down so
much that it's now within reach for most people who consider it a priority.

If we can't offer free access to everyone (and there have been some good
reasons given why that doesn't seem like a good plan) we shouldn't be going out
of our way to try to provide twice as much access to certain people while some
get none at all.  

After all, the people who can afford to donate twice as much to Grex are not
the people who can't afford a reasonable ISP.  

I think Grex's goal has been and should be to get information technology into
the hands of people who would otherwise have to do without, and far less so to
provide it to those people who would otherwise be inconvenienced by higher
costs.

Yes, donations are Grex's lifeblood and we oughtn't discourage people from
donating as much as they'd like.  But we aren't a pay for service ststem, and I
don't think very many of us want to see grex head in that direction.  

If people donate because they think they get something out of it, they're
donating for th wrong resosns and we'll eventually, as Mary said, find that we
have a membership intent on voting to up Member Perqs to the detriment of our
original goals.

Want to donate a little extra to Grex? Want to feel like you're "getting
something for the money"?  Why not pick your favourite non-member grexer and
gift him or her with a membership?  You'll be adding to the number of members,
steering Grex in a direction you like (by influencing the balance of the
membrship) and doing a good deed for someone else.  Great idea?  I think so.

And, maybe, when that membership is up, your beneficiary will find that they
can afford to renew.  If so. that benefits Grex far beyond your 3 or 6 month
donation.

Want two identities on the net?  Use grex for one and get an ISP for the other.
 Many ISP's will even let you use more than one mailbox (intended for family
members, but also useful for nicknames for non-business use.)

Yes, some people will be left behind this way and that's unfortunate.  But we
can't be all things to all people.  We have to decide whether we want to be a
conferencing community that also provides an alternate to an ISP for some
people or whether we want to be an ISP that sponsors a conferencing system.

response 88 of 96:

Feb 5 05:20 UTC 1998

There are at least three options for what to do (I outlined them in #71), so
I when you say "this policy", Charles, it's unclear what you mean.  One of
the options would give people access from multiple accounts without selling
it.  And keeping track of the linked accounts won't require any staff time,
because the treasurer can do it (and it's really pretty simple).  I don't
understand what you mean about spending time on policy associated with an
"event".  And as to accounts being abused, we have to worry about that now,
too.

response 90 of 96:

Feb 5 21:22 UTC 1998

Mail abuse isn't the best example to support your case, since all
users have access to outbound mail whether they're validated or
not.

I don't see significant support for selling additional net access
for a fee.

response 92 of 96:

Feb 6 04:24 UTC 1998

Right, I was busy with other things when I wrote that.  Here's a better
example.  Stopping all AOL users in a region from using their web
browsers by telnetting to the DNS port on the AOL machine and sending a
stream of control characters to kill named.  If someone were stupid
enough to do that from here, currently we would be able to help trace
that event.  With the enabled pseudos we can't necessarily do that. 
That worries me.  I don't want Grex to become 'that system' on the 'net
that allows crackers to do what they will.
Certainly this is an extreme example, but I would rather fasten down the
edge of the tent just a bit.

response 94 of 96:

Feb 9 01:27 UTC 1998

There is a response in Agora's "spam email" item that points out why it would
be good for members on Grex to be able to use two logins  [Item 87]

#19 of 19: by Mike McNally (mcnally) on Sun, Feb  8, 1998 (19:46):
   However it is far more common to wind up on a spam delivery list because
   you visited a web page, belong to a mailing list, or posted something to
   a Usenet newsgroup.

   I have two main accounts, one of which is the one from which I post to
   Usenet and which belongs to non-local mailing lists.  That one gets about
   40-50 times as much spam as the e-mail address I give to family, friends,
   and professional colleagues (which receives virtually none..).

If someone on Grex wanted to use this strategy, they would not be allowed to
have telnet access for both accounts.

response 96 of 96:

Feb 10 02:30 UTC 1998

Right.  You don't *need* to be a member to join mailing lists or to visit web
sites.  At least in principle, you can't post to usenet even with a
membership, at present.  Obviously there are ways around that, but as at least
some of them are just mail gateways, you don't need membership for *that*.