For a number of months, Grex has required people to be validated after
creating their accounts before they can access the system in a useful way.

This was intended to prevent people from using greater access to abuse the
system.  However, it seems that this purpose is not being met:  at the recent
board meeting, one of the validators mentioned that on more than one occasion
a notoriously troublesome user had successfully been validated.  With 
validation as it is, it seems to me that any attacker with enough 
knowledge and motivation to cause harm to Grex would also have enough 
knowledge and motivation to get past validation.

There are many downsides to validation.  It eats up volunteer time.  It also
acts as a barrier to new users, who now have to discover the process, comply
with its conditions of entry, and wait for someone to make a decision.  A
potential new user could justifiably view this process with some uncertainty,
since it requires them to wait an indeterminate amount of time, meet uncertain
conditions, and the validators may seem inaccessible.  Given these added
barriers, new users are likely to go elsewhere.  Additionally, it might stifle
open conversation; I think that over the years many users have created new
accounts to make comments they did not want tied to their regular identities,
but validation makes this more difficult.

Given that the current system of validation is ineffective, and that it 
has many downsides, I think it should be disabled.  If someone wanted to 
harm Grex, they would have done it by now, since it would be trivial to 
simply lie to get an account validated.  At the least, I think Grex 
should remove the procudure on a trial basis; it's easy to remove, and 
it's easy to put back up if system abuse rises.

42 responses total.

I agree.  I don't think the validation system is really the deterrent
it's designed to be, and I think it does more harm than good.

It's not good if it chases the honest people away.  It's also not good
if it lessens the Unix experience for those wanting to learn more about
it.  When you come upon Unix for the first time, the last thing you
need is to jump through hoops in order to do an ls (most people are
confused enough).  If it is not a deterrent to the vandals, then we
should evaluate whether it is doing more harm than good in the long
term.  Still, no system is perfect and I'd hope any alternative isn't
worse.  Dealing with people trying to bring the system down also takes
staff time.

If vandals have gotten in, I think it was likely just to prove they
could.  I haven't seen any actual acts of vandalism, though, but I'm not
so sure the current validation scheme would do much to deter a determined
vandal, anyway.  Legal action is probably the only thing that would.

Anyone looking to do damage is more likely to see the validation as a
greater challenge rather than a deterrent.  It would be better to report
these things to the authorities and providers than the current system,
IMO.

It sounds like Tony would be on top of any vandal activity, as he's been 
on M-Net.  If that's what he has in mind I'd sure like to see us open the 
doors.  

I lump things like dumping hundreds of junk items into the conferences,
denial of service by using all ttys, and intentionally crashing or
hanging the system, to be acts of vandalism of a sort. I'm sure there
are other acts that would also qualify. Maybe there's a better term to
use to describe these acts, though.

What I meant by my comment was that haven't seen any acts of vandalism
after the current validation requirements were in place, but I'm not so
sure the validation requirements are what has prevented those acts.  I
certainly saw a lot of vandalism before that, though.

Okay, that makes sense.

I hope Grex isn't banking on Tonster being the magic bullet for its
policy based problems.

  
ummmmmmmmmmm, i was a thte meeting and i have an mp3 of it as well.
  
i remember zip about validatoin allowingvandals in, but i may be wroing,
and i can say that the validation i hvae done has resulted in noe
vandals ... it -has- resulted in non-validatoin for a few logins thogh.
  
yeh, it tkaes some amount of my time but i consider that valuable
enough to continue to do it.
  
it also provides the oppeot9nity to establish a peson on the 'other end' who
converses with newuseres ... rather than an imperosnal, click-here, weldcome
to grex. 
  
at a board meeingting 'we' might wnat to set up some boiler plate to add
to the personal touch..  i;ve been realtively careful with the tpyoing
on those, fwiw.
  

So what's the deal with that mp3?  I'd like to see it go up, public, just 
as the Grex meeting itself was public.  Board meetings should be open, 
welcoming and transparent.

Now, TS, you objected and for that reason it was up for the meeting but 
taken down the next day.  But now it's being passed around among friends?  
Yuck.  I'd like to just make it public and let anyone who wants to be 
"present" at the meeting be able to be part of the process.

if audio is taken, I'd say it should be public.  the board meetings are
public and anyone else could have taken audio and passed it around. 
trying to hide it or say it's private after the fact makes it seem like
there's something to hide.

as far as validation, the biggest problem I have is that it takes away
from the 'open access' system that has always been grex (and m-net). 
the opportunity to talk to someone on the other end is nice, but not
everyone gives a damn to talk to someone to get free access to
something.  they're more likely to just walk on by and find someone else
by putting up blocks.

  
re 11 .. i'll email you .. therse is some ocnfusion.
  
btw, only the offer has been passsed arond ... not hte file
  
no onwe took me up on it ... so far.
  

  
iird, the mp3 is 15 meg and the video is ~150 meg
  

Write the check

Re. 10:  I don't know who it was, but one of the validators who was at the
meeting mentioned that cdalten had gotten through the process successfully.

A while ago, we talked about doing something like what SDF does: you
are in a restricted environment until you pay some nominal one-time charge
via, e.g., PayPal.  It was agreed that we could do that, with some sort of
back-channel mechanism for people who couldn't otherwise do that.  I think
that makes the most sense.

Before people talk about removing the validation step, recall what life was
like before it.  Grex was up and down all the time; the open-access system
had failed.

Why is that?  I think it's worth investigating that before changing things
around.

in all fairness, the system being up and down has kind of been grex's
trademark for the past decade for whatever reason. :)  That said,
m-net's been pretty stable for the past several years and remains an
open-access system.  Even through similar issues as what cdalten did, we
remained online nearly the whole time, with some periods of slowness or
bbs/backtalk locked up when he played his little games.  Since being
asked to leave, those issues have not continued.  It should certainly be
possible to return to being open access without requiring some form of
identity to have a usable shell.

I think we should try being open again.

Re #18: yup. all it required was some will and vigour in tackling Chad
+I think he was a reasonably(electron microscope required) nice guy 
anyway. It also helps that the M-Net culture is less polite and more 
willing to do things (forcefully if necessary). We, are awfully 
bureaucratic! Too much chit-chat and soul-searching, and not enough of 
the red-hot poker. Oh well.. 

I think the Grex culture is structed to bring things like Chad on itself.

Why do you say that?

Grex is a place that never learned that just because you find people
who are messed up in the same way you are, that doesn't mean that
it's okay to be that messed up.

The Grex community prides itself on its openness, but the reality
is that Grex is only open if you conform to a very narrow definition
of what it means to be open; I actually find it very intolerant.
It's open in that same way that breezy-voiced ex-hippies who wear
wispy, flowing clothes and lots of bracelets like to think of
themselves as being open while locking their car doors whenever a
black person drives by.

Grex is the SUV with the "Save Mother Earth" bumper sticker.

Basically, Grex users are happy about users who are "supportive"
and "understanding" but completely intolerant of people who question
the established norms.  Asking the question, "why is it not okay
for someone to not breastfeed?" is likely to get someone jumped
around here (or was, back when Grex was more than just a shell of
itself).

In short, Grex is something of the worst of the 1980s BBS culture
mixed with the best of the 1960s hippy movement.

Is it any wonder, then, that people like Chad prey on it like a
vulture attacking a dying animal to hasten its death so to pick at
its carrion?  Chad could shut this place down, not so much because
of the technical accumin of his attacks, but rather, because the
Grex community responded so well to it.  M-Net could better weather
the storm because, in the end, its community is stronger because
they are less into this touchy-feely way of being and more into a
rougher, thicker-hided exterior.

Grex is the type of place that attracts anti-social types like Chad,
because they can get a rise out of the community because the community
is so weakly held together by a set of really unhealthy relationships.

well said.  I especially like the SUV comparison, although I'd change it
to a hummer.

Yeah, Hummer is the better analogy.  I should also note that Chad is now
back on M-Net.

Re resp:23 and resp:24 - If that's the way you feel about Grex, my
question would be:  Why do either of you want to have anything to
do with it?  Why do you hang around this awful place?

Re #26: it's kind of like wives.. just because they get old, crabby is 
no reason to dump emm :p

(anyway, M-net hasn't got a thicker hide or anything far as I could 
tell. The crowd is younger and more willing to scrap. Then they have 
better staff and a board that sleeps most of the time. It works because 
tony/rex are mostly  nice guys.. so benevolent CEO and a sleepy board)

resp:26: I think resp:23 answers that question as well.  There exists
the mentality that allows for idiots like Chad to come around and beat
the system, while at the same time there is still an appeal of
participating in the conversations that take place.  As well, we don't
get easily offended like so many grexers do and can ignore the idiots. 
Chad persisted in his behavior on both systems for far too long, though.
 Hopefully he doesn't come around again now that grex is back.

I don't think that answered the question posed in #26.  If Grex is as bad 
as you (agreeing with Dan) think, why are you here?

Perhaps the redeeming qualities are better?

resp:26 Well, that's really irrelevant....  The question was why
the grex community was more susceptable to people like chad.  Those
responses were the answers.

That doesn't mean that I don't think that Grex has a lot to offer,
as Nate points out in resp:30.

Another point is that the vast majority of Grex users fall outside
of the Grex community proper, if one defines that community as those
who participate in BBS and/or party.  It is this latter that people
take issue with; most Grex users just don't care.

In short, my definition of Grex is rather broader than most.  I
don't see it only as a BBS for the Ann Arbor, MI community.  If people
see it that way, they are probably viewing things with an outdated
point of view.

Glad to hear you think Grex has some good points.  I do too.

Good!

does it sound like that a girl who dresses skimpily asked to be raped ?

Huh?

ditto resp:35

he meant Mary's statement: if you don't like it here, why are you 
here?? He was wondering if that wasn't a little like, a skimpily 
clothed chick was asking to be raped.

hey SH, welcome back :)

#37
No i did not mean that.
I meant that the ongoing discussion sounded like its grex fault that
cdalten was being an ass.

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