How can we get more users on grex?  Brainstorm ideas here.

84 responses total.

One thing that occurs to me is that grex is really pretty bad at advertising
itself.  Consider that if one does a google search for, "public access
unix", grex doesn't show up until the 3rd page (SDF is the first link,
incidentally).  If one doesn't quote the search string, it is much much
further down in the list (I stopped looking after the 7th page of hits).

How about some kind of advertising campaign?  Maybe a slashdot story?
Perhaps a focus shift is useful, as well.  In particular, moving away from
the BBS as the primary focus of the effort to drum up new users and toward
the public access Unix side (e.g., ``Come check out our service and see how
a Unix machine is supposed to be run!'').

Ideas?

 How about an indiscriminately-targetted mass e-mail campaign?

 Or maybe we could convince the younger generation that it's a
 very highly stylized MMORPG.  We'd need to add some sort of 
 concept of "levelling-up" and establish a real-world exchange
 rate for gribblies, but it could work..

 On a more serious note, and re #1, I don't think we can credibly
 hold ourselves out as a model of how a public access Unix machine
 *should* be run.

True, but that could be fixed.  Imagine we could; then what could we do?
What about reaching out to emerging technology locations and offering up grex
as a place to learn, e.g., Unix and C programming.

I like the idea of a story in slashdot - the world's oldest surviving public
access unix server. Of course we nuke mnet first - but mnet won't be missed

Actually, it would. More than you think. I'm surprised at the old names that
pop up from time to time.

Well, anything to get grex on the map would be a good idea.

(I'm going to ask that this item be linked into the current agora....)

Wow! the newuser programme is back! Huzzah! 

jp2 wrote an M-net story and got it covered on Slashdot some years
back.

There's the bumper sticker idea from some years ago that foundered
on my lack of graphic software skills.   The idea was for a simple
sticker, maybe with the Grex logo, and large letters  
    www.cyberspace.org

Speaking of things like that, whatever happened with the rewrite of the main
web page?

Is there a way to create one item that is the Grex blog item, and have it be
published as a blog?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Colleen?

I'm thinking that Grex needs presence in the blogsphere.  One way of getting
that kind of publicity  is for Grex to create an Agora Item called "Grex
Blogs".  

That item would appear as a blog on the web.  Two or three items a week would
be promoted to the blog page. Grexer comments would automatically appear, but
other people would be invited to come to Grex to comment.

Wouldn't work even if you could get Steve off his ass to implement it.

I think the best way forward in this dimension is to get Jan to implement
blogs on top of backtalk....

Colleen, would the presence you're looking for through a Grex Blog item
require that item to be indexed and visible to search engines?  If so,
that would be new for Grex.  Something worth discussing, for sure, but
new.  Our conferences aren't visible to search engines - this policy
was a result of a long discussion among the users many years ago.

Blogs and BBS-style conferencing are different ways of organizing
discussions.   Or, perhaps more importantly, they are different
ways of controlling discussions.  The author of a blog has MUCH
more control than Grex has ever tolerated in BBS.

My view is that the cost vs.  benefit ratio of trying to provide 
"blog access" and "BBS-style access" to the same text database 
is low -- it'll be a lot of work for not much benefit.

If Colleen or somebody wants to start a Best of Agora highlights 
blog, a group-written blog,  by getting permission from the original 
authors and manually editing things, that'd work.  I think a lot of 
context would be lost, but it can't hurt to try.   That could be
done today using Google's "blogger/blogspot" service or Typepad or
any of the commonly available blog-publishing services.

Another point I keep pounding on, re: Grex and blogs, is:  if the 
project involves developing custom blog software for Grex, it will 
not get done in finite time.  Just get some open source blog package
(I'm assuming there is such a thing) and slam it into production.
We're losing valuable time here.

Yes, there are open source blog packages (e.g. Wordpress) that could be 
made available here, but when you can go to a place like blogger.com and 
set up your own blog for free, I don't see what adding a facility to Grex 
that's just like facilities that are already available would do for Grex.  
Frankly, I don't see what adding a blogging facility to Grex would gain 
Grex unless we *do* provide a meaningful integration of blog-style access 
and bbs-style access.

Actually, I was thinking more in terms of a conference on Grex that WOULD be
indexed by search engines.  In joining the conference, you would explicitly
agree that not only would your words be web-readable, but they would be web
searched.  No need for an editor, permissions, etc.  

Some software solution would exist that automatically made those posts visible
on the web, through search engines, linkable to other blogs, etc, etc.  

The idea is that conference would be blog like.  Each item would be a "blog
entry" and each comment would be visible like a comment on a blog entry.  If
you wanted, you could subscribe to an RSS feed for that conference.  

I'm brainstorming here.  I have no idea whether software is available, is easy
to write, would be an add on to front talk, or what.  

IIRC, that exact functionality (minus the "search-engine-indexable", which is a
separate issue) was proposed (at least as a brainstorming-session idea, if not
with more weight) by janc as a flavor of Backtalk and as a set of conferences
(separate from the others, and one per user).

Well, now htat newuser is back up, that should help!

Re #2: hehe, hey why don't we run a MUD :) We could all work off some steam
about other ppl's ideas by slaughtering them on the MUD. Plus daemon9, trig
and other like minded individuals can form a PK guild and go around trying 
to kill ppl. We could junk party and use the MUD interface instead.<g>
Plus we have kids logging in (bipolar, thewolf and now the quebeq-ers so..)

The blogosphere idea is a great idea, but we'd better warn ppl about Agora
and it's fractious nature and warn them that we are a little short of users
(we don't want to raise their hopes only to be disappointed) and i hope 
cmcgee or someone selectively paste's stuff after checking with people. 
I don't want my stuff to appear on google though Vivek is a pretty common
name. Actually why have a best of Agora? Why not a best of BBS blog?
#21's a super idea and solves all the above problems! 

vivek, I'm not the least bit interested in becoming a blog editor. My
suggestion is  a conference that people only participate in if they are
willing to have their contributions indexed by search engines.  

I do like the idea of having a small mud on here. I do get sick of
having to use my large machine when I want to game (WoW is a pig, and I
could have damn-near as much fun without the big, resource intensive
graphics)

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?

Why not have a granola bar givaway? Or you could have a eco friendly
"green" contest and first prize could be a bag of trail mix!

hmmm hmmmm good!

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

The problem with linking to the searchable conference is huge.

There was a big user controversy when we made Grex web accessible.  That only
happened because the policy explicitly states that the items will not be
searchable on the web.  

There is no way to have items cross linked between a searchable conference
and a nonsearchable one.  For an item posted (whether originally or by
linking) in a nonsearchable conference, replies must be nonsearchable.  

If someone linked an item from the searchable conference into a nonsearchable
one, there is no way to keep replies posted in the nonsearchable conference
from becoming searchable.  

I'm not sure I'd want to, either.  An item with half the replies blanked out
is pretty hard to read through.  

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

Okay, Viv- you can be host of the Grex MUD. Uh, how does it work?  :)

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..

Isn't it a multiplayer thing that someone needs to host on a server?

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

There is a conference that has a few items about muds, and a couple
roleplaying conferences. 

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. 

Could we run LORD on here somehow?

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

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss