At last night's BOD meeting the subject of Grex's mission was raised.  
Our mission statement, titled Declaration of Principles, was written in 
May of 1991, and it hasn't really been formally reviewed since.  At 
least not that I'm aware of.  Maybe that's because it's so broadly 
written that it's still a good fit.  Or maybe not.

I'll post it below.  Does it still capture what we are doing?  What we 
want to be doing?  Are changes needed?

          *******************************************

              Grex's Declaration of Principles

This system is intended to foster community education and the
    spiritual and intellectual enrichment of its users through
    the peaceable interchange of ideas.

The members of this system hope to attract a large, diverse, and
    mature group of thinking individuals and thereby to contribute
    to a better-informed citizenry.

Governance of the system is based on cooperative principles,
    including open membership, democratic control, and non-
    profit economics.

This is an open-access system; the public is welcome.  However,
    regular users are encouraged to become members and help
    support the system financially.  Voting on system policy
    matters is restricted to members.

It should go without saying that the system is specifically NOT
    intended for any illegal purpose.

Users are asked to be considerate of others, and are especially
    asked to make a point of setting a good example for those
    few who may from time to time fail to return the favor.

       ******************************************************

Online this document is found at: 
https://grex.cyberspace.org/cyberspace/principles.xhtml

28 responses total.

I should add that it's my recollection that this is a founding document.  
Even the bylaws came later.  But if someone else knows more about its 
history, please correct me.

  
i thnk we are still upholding this declatration. 
  

We aren't attracting a large mature group...in fact, we're attracting
less people, less members.  It's hard to say we are open-access if we
drop people into a restricted shell right away and then force them to
apply (in several steps) for further access.  That doesn't seem very
welcoming to me.  We aren't encouraging regular users to become members,
either, and haven't for some time (over a year).  Thus, our ability
to govern is falling apart (how many members do we really have if you
ignore that the Board extended memberships to people who had not paid?).

So, it doesn't seem to me we are upholding this declaration very well
at all.

Adherence to a mission statement without regard for changing conditions
will not lead to any improvement in our current situation, which many
feel is untenable already.

If the declaration itself is good, then we need to start improving our
adherence to it by actually doing the things it advocates. If we can't
do that, then we should change our declaration to reflect how we intend
to operate and change what we do to adhere to that new declaration.

I'd like Tony's advice on how we could open up access without being so 
very vulnerable to twits.  M-Net doesn't see to have that problem.  Why is 
that?  

I agree with Kent's #3.

I'm not as familiar with OpenBSD as I am with FreeBSD, but I, like Dan,
wonder how it is that OpenBSD seems to have more issues than M-Net, and
further wonder if we wouldn't find the stability increase if we
switched.  It's among the reasons we've lobbied for switching away from
OpenBSD.  We know that we've got the same users who have abused both
systems, but only Grex has really suffered real downtime.  m-net has had
it's share of annoyance, but only once did we ever even reboot due to
the abuse, and I'm not sure the reboot was necessary so much as easier.

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit
there." (Will Rogers)

I agree with switching.  By the way, greetings from Helmand, Afghanistan.

Nice to see you, cross. Stay safe! 

Yeah, thanks for dropping in.  I hope everything is going well for you.
Do please stay safe!

I have the impressions that: 1. M-Net has more aggressively managed individual troublemakers. 2. Grex has been more aggressively targeted by troublemakers.

In regards to 1, I think M-Net staff has felt less bound by principles in dealing with the problem than has Grex staff.

As for maintaining an "open" system, it has to be said that the viability of any open society depends on the willingness of its constituents to band together to isolate and/or exclude those individuals who would otherwise effectively destroy the system through sociopathic behavior. Grex has shown a willingness to take limited steps toward that end, but most constituents have simply felt it was easier to walk away.

The obvious conclusion is that in the current environment, Grex is either not viable, or will have to demonstrate a willingness to adapt (possibly compromising some principles) in order to prove it is viable. In the latter case, the follow-up question is, "What does Grex have to do (and become) to remain viable?"

re #5 yes some of the same trolls who sabatoge grex also use mnet and 
cause no problems there.  I think Grex comes across as more bureacratic 
than Mnet, for whatever reason and has more older regular users.  When 
you have more high minded people to piss off, it sseemingly makes it 
more fun for them.  

Grexers hold themselves very superior to most people; I think that has a lot
to do with it.  resp:12 is a perfect example.  "When you have more high
minded people to piss off, it seemingly makes it more fun for them." 
High-minded people?  Come on; how arrogant.

"more bureacratic"??? It is almost impossible to find any bureau around here
at all. 

I should have said, 'more people who SEEM or might come across to 
outsiders as high minded'  

re #14
I think a better word for Grex's arrogant few would be cohors praetoria.
M-Net is plain anarchy with a disregard for the Ann Arbor superiority 
complex.  Grex ails from the latter.

re #16 plain anarchy isn't conducive to running a solid organization.  
Arbornet is a shell of what it once was and has even less of a 
mission/purpose than Grex.  

r e#17
 plain anarchy isn't conducive to running a solid organization

WHat's to run?

resp:17 That's looking at the situation with an extreme bias.  At this
point, M-Net has a much more vibrant system than Grex.

OK, so are there any other opinions of our mission?  It has been in
place for almost 20 years and while it was well-written and for at least
some of that time was what Grex did, do we need to change it now?  Or
change how we're running Grex to be more in line with the original idea
of what Grex should be and do?  Or both?

It doesn't hurt to review the purpose of an organization periodically,
especially if times change and the organization seems to be drifting
from its original purpose.

Would changes to our mission mean we'd need to update our 501(c)3 filing?  
If so, I say we let it ride for now.

As long as we adhere to the general principles of our filing in our
operations, I don't see any issue.  To expect nothing to change in 20
years is a bit much.  If we modified our mission to do something totally
different, then I'd expect we'd need to make sure our filing was still
okay.  We're not doing anything totally different.  In fact we're doing
essentially the same thing we have been doing all along (for example,
computer conferencing, discussion).  I don't think we are proposing to
do something totally different, either.  At least, I have not heard
such a proposal. 

In terms of our ideals, I don't think we're too far off from what we
want to be (though that is something it's good to revisit from time to
time), so in that sense we can leave the principles as-is.

The next step, though, whether we change principles or not, is making
sure we're operating in agreement with those principles.

As long as we don't violate the terms of 501(c)3 we can do *anything*. However
there are a few hoops tojump through. See

http://is.gd/c990F

Thanks Rane.  That would be a good reason not to change our principles.
But, as for operations, we're still doing essentially the same thing
yet, we probably need to review a few things to make sure we're still
in line with our status.  As I've pointed out, it's a good idea to
review this sort of thing every once in a while to make sure we're
still on track.  

Of course, I don't think we're planning on changing from doing medical
education conferences to assisting children like the organization in 
the link information.  That is definitely a change in purpose for an
organization and would require re-review.  

Grex (or more properly, Cyberspace Communication, Inc.) is a
Michigan not-for-profit corporation and as such is legally bound
by its Articles of Incorporation: 
http://grex.org/cyberspace/articles.xhtml

Here's what the Articles say about our mission:

    The Corporation is organized for such charitable and
    educational purposes as may qualify it for exemption from the
    federal income tax under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal
    Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (or the corresponding
    provisions of any future United States internal revenue law.)
    More specifically, such purposes include, but are not limited
    to, the advancement of public education and scientific
    endeavor through interaction with computers, and humans via
    computers, using computer conferencing. Further purposes
    include the exchange of scientific and technical information
    about the various aspects of computer science, such as
    operating systems, computer networks, and computer
    programming.

Is anybody thinking of taking Grex in a direction that's wholly at
variance with this?  I'm inclined to doubt it and in any case, the
mission statement is open-ended enough to give us a lot of
flexibility to tweak things, I'd think.  Note the "not limited to"
escape hatch, in particular.

Whatever else it is that we might want to do, I do think that Grex
could benefit from a major facelift to the conferencing software,
which is solid and stable but *SO* 1980s.  My feeling is that the
rigid and venerable conferencing model on which Grex (and M-Net,
and a few other systems) is based needs a serious re-do in the
direction of more flexibility, probably by recasting it as a web
service with an open API.  Something that would facilitate the
development of third-party clients, in much the way that can
currently be done with Twitter, Netflix, and any number of other
web services.

Of course I realize I'm not being very specific at this point, and
that I'm talking about a fairly major project.

As long as it doesn't get fancier (and therefore harder to use) than at
present....

Just do it and see what happens.  No one said we'd have to shut off 
backtalk or fronttalk if there was another conference option available
on  Grex.  Could this be the second system that Mary proposed, or at
least a  prototype of some such thing?

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

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