response 75 of 299:

Mar 31 05:18 UTC 2005

That then begs the question, if wtmp is NOT logging use of accounts by
Backtalk, then will accounts be reaped after three months of http-only
access?

response 77 of 299:

Mar 31 05:41 UTC 2005

Re. 75:  that's not actually beggint the question.  begging the question is
when an answer to a question is obviously not adequate because it just pushes
the question one step back.

the thing with the elephants holding up earth is the standard example.  what's
holding up the earth?  an elephant.  what's holding up the elephant?  another
elephant.  this last answer is begging the question.

response 79 of 299:

Mar 31 14:24 UTC 2005

Re #74:  Nope, too subjective and difficult to automate.
Re #75:  Good question.  I don't know the answer.
Re #78:  Right.  The "confusers" command outputs in alphabetical order,
         so I piped the output through "sort" to get descending numeric:

                confusers | sort -nr

response 81 of 299:

Mar 31 22:23 UTC 2005

Instead of closing newuser, why not just close the conferences.  Make all 
the conferences read only for new users, and if a newuser wants to join a 
conference for posting purposes, he/she has to be approved by one of the 
fairwitness(es).  The fairwitnesses would then also have the ability to 
grant a user posting access or deny a user posting access to that 
particular conference.  I think if these certain abusive users could no 
longer post right away with each new login, that it would be a reasonable 
deterrent.

As has been pointed out, it is only the conferences that the abuse is most 
noticeable on.  I would hate to see newuser close when we get so many 
users from around the world who get new logins and come on to party, 
particularly late at night.  Grex has been getting new users from russia, 
china, mexico, and many other countries who they would not get if newuser 
closed.

Also as a further deterrent, I suggest that the time has come for grex to 
stop offering offsite email, at least to non members.  There was a time 
when the free email service was badly needed, but it is not anymore.  Grex 
devotes too many resources now to processing mass emailings and these 
abusive users use email to mailbomb other grexers (I personally received 
over 8,000 emails from another grex user in less than thirty minutes a 
couple of weeks ago, from 
one of these grex users who was trying to be a pain in the ass)  Take away 
automatic email priviledges and automatic posting priviledges, and you 
would solve your problem.  These users would probably go away.

response 83 of 299:

Mar 31 22:31 UTC 2005

further, if say newuser "xyzy" requests to join the agora conference, 
couldn't it be set up the agora fw can run a program that automatically 
looks up the ip that xyzy is using and sees if it is used by other users?  
This could be a basis for denying xyzy posting privs or granting posting 
privs

response 85 of 299:

Mar 31 23:05 UTC 2005

Re: #82  I agree with you, the ribbon should go.  It should have 
gone over a year ago if interpret it to mean we detest censorship 
more than we honor friendship.

We have always filtered for the type of users we attract.  Mostly, 
this filtering has been by pretty broad strokes.  In the beginning 
we filtered for geeks because you had to be pretty geeky to figure 
out the hardware and software back in the mid-eighties.  Then we 
filtered for those who like free-wheeling, in-your-face type 
discussions, by avoiding censorship.  We filtered for a bigger pool 
of users when we opened up to the Internet and Backtalk went live.  
And we filtered for those with more time on their hands than is 
healthy when we let the system get deadly slow for a very long time.  
Open newuser filters yet again, for better and worse.

Whatever we do we're making choices about the type of community we 
attract.  It may be a passive type of selection, but we're selecting 
just the same.  Are we happy with the status quo?  I'm hearing yes 
from a whole lot of users.  Which is what I'd expect to a large 
degree, they're here because we filtered for them.  And I guess if 
our selection process will leave us with a pool of users who will 
support Grex, both financially and in terms of attracting new users, 
well, then all is well, and nothing should be changed.

I guess the question I'd like folks to consider is this.  If Grex is 
like it is, one year from now, do you still think you'll be here? 

response 87 of 299:

Mar 31 23:25 UTC 2005

i will always be with you, mary.

response 89 of 299:

Apr 1 00:19 UTC 2005

And I agree with you, Todd.  But the membership voted otherwise and 
we, those who disagreed, need to get over that specific episode and 
move on.  It can't always go my/your/our way.

response 91 of 299:

Apr 1 01:16 UTC 2005

Gawd, that sounds awful.  Is that really how other systems are 
dealing with the same problem?  I kinda doubt it.

I think I'm leaning toward supporting a system-wide twit filter, 
maintained by staff, with the threshold for being on the list, quite 
high.  By default the filter would be on but users could, of course, 
opt out and see it all.  Could such a thing be effective with an 
open newuser?  

I understand it's still censorship.  But when free speech becomes an 
anti-social attention getting device, well...  There's the rub.

response 93 of 299:

Apr 1 01:27 UTC 2005

Re. 91:  i can tell you from experience that it IS how other systems operate.

chinet shut down new users right after i made my first post.

response 95 of 299:

Apr 1 02:03 UTC 2005

what !

scholar!

what did you post on chinet ?

response 97 of 299:

Apr 1 02:28 UTC 2005

ryan:     no point in staying here when everyone is on my filter list
---- ryan leaving (Mar 31 21:16)

Re. 95:  I don't know!  I forget!  Itw as years ago!

response 99 of 299:

Apr 1 03:09 UTC 2005

I'd like to see us try something like slashdot's rating system.  It's
complicated, but if enough people participate in rating users, we could
deprecate most of the noise quickly.