response 75 of 120:

Feb 19 19:13 UTC 2000

To be a little more focused I think if the "cutout" conf were to be started
it would be a very bad precedent for Grex.  I guess if prp wants to freeze
every item with a bad word in the general decorum conf he could do that
although it seems rather silly to me and it seems as though prp is missing
the point of Grex as a free speech oriented system.  If prp doesn't like
the racousness of speech untamed why doesn't he just find another online
community?  It's not like the world is lacking message boards these days...

response 77 of 120:

Feb 19 22:17 UTC 2000

Grex is an open system, and decorum will be an open conference.  I'd 
guess that prp will let people know as they enter decorum (say, in the
login file) that it's not the usual mostly-anything-goes grex cf.  If
decorum attracts people who like prp's active fw'ing, i'd say hurray.
We can't really forbid active fw'ing on grex anyway - if a few people
wanted such a cf, they could set it up outside of PicoSpan, Backtalk,
and /bbs pretty quickly.  

response 79 of 120:

Feb 19 23:28 UTC 2000

err make that message board, something like wwwboard which is a cgi based
message board, do we have cgi/perl enabled on our web server here?

I have to say again that I would be very opposed to a moderated conf like the
proposed cut and paste.  See coop6 item 96 for a dicussion of why free speech
is important on Grex.

response 81 of 120:

Feb 20 03:02 UTC 2000

Now that raises an interesting possibility.  We've already seen the
existence of distributed party filters, where someone compiles a list of
"obnoxious users" and lets those who have similar taste also automatically
ignore people on the list.

There's no reason why the same thing couldn't be created for bbs.  prp
could, for instance, set up three lists of response numbers: "fabulous"
for the ones he loves, "awful" for those he hates, and "worthwhile" for
those in between.  Prp could then set up a program that would show just
those responses on a particular list.  Running it on the "fabulous" list
would show me the equivalent of prp's "Active" conference; running it on
the "awful" list would show me the equivalent of prp's "Cutout."  Any
other users who agreed with prp's taste could do the same. 

If I'm understanding the proposal right, this would create a very similar
situation within Grex's policy as I understand it, and without the need to
create three or four new conferences.  The downside would be the need to
write the program and keep the lists up to date -- certainly more work
than fairwitnessing a conference, at least at first.  

response 83 of 120:

Feb 20 06:18 UTC 2000

This is pre-supposing 3 things: (1) there are lots of new people who
find some of the content of agora "offensive", (2) we want to keep thse
easily offended people on grex, and (3) someone wants to go to the work
of maintaining a twitlist that will please these people.  I think all 3
suppositions are likely to be false.

response 85 of 120:

Feb 20 09:35 UTC 2000

What's going on here?

Ok: j decorum
Failed security checkpoin

I thought  this conf was not authorized to be started.  Is there a private
conf already?

response 87 of 120:

Feb 20 13:05 UTC 2000

I beleive it's closed for the time being while the fw sets it up (user 'i'
mentioned this somewhere from recall).

response 89 of 120:

Feb 20 13:15 UTC 2000

Nope.  When a conference is started, it's often set up so that
only the fairwitness can join it, to set up the login screen and
one or more initial items.  Then when the fw is ready, it's
opened to the public.  Right now, it technically exists, but only
prp is in it.

There are no private conferences on Grex, other than the staff
conference.  That policy was established by member vote a few
years ago.  In my view, it would take another member vote to
overturn it.

Decorum was authorized to be started a while ago -- I guess the
reason we're still discussing it is because of the concept of its
being a collection of conferences instead of just one, which I
don't think was clear to people earlier.  I know it wasn't to
me.  Personally, I think the whole concept is screwy, unlikely
to have popular appeal, and will just lead to there being a
few more dead conferences.  Also, again speaking personally, I
think Agora is fine and doesn't need fixing.  If there's wide-
spread dissatisfaction with it, as Paul believes, why don't we
see anybody else in this item other than him expressing it?

I suppose I could be wrong, I've been wrong before, and anyway
Grex policy is to let people try out new ideas for conferences.
We even let some guy have a thing called "cyberpunk" a while
back despite some people's misgivings.  ;-)  So if Paul really
wants to try this, I suppose he should be allowed.  Hopefully
he understands that the software imposes limitations on what a
fairwitness can do, that he has to work within those limitations,
and that the burden is on him to get people interested in
participating.

response 91 of 120:

Feb 20 19:54 UTC 2000

So what about the twit filter or a seperate message board.  Any interest prp?

p.s.  prp I *really* hope you read coop6 item 96 to get some historical
perspective. Try at the next Ok: j coop6 r 96

response 93 of 120:

Mar 13 19:29 UTC 2000

R.I.P. decorum?

response 95 of 120:

Mar 15 13:26 UTC 2000

I can FW it, as I offered in the beginning. A while back I dropped my
advocacy of the conference, but if Paul's temporarily gone for a while I can
start it up. I guess I'll go by this item to figure out how to run the thing.

response 97 of 120:

Mar 17 01:09 UTC 2000

Hmm. Good question. I think that was the whole point of the conference.

response 99 of 120:

Apr 20 07:44 UTC 2000

Any interet in fwing intro DOn and letting decorum die a graceful
death with well ummmm decorum? :-)