Meeting begins slightly early to account for inevitable technical difficulties.

Called to order at 20:35 EDT.
roll call: kentn, tod, walkman, cross (tsty is missing)

* tod motions to approve minutes from previous meeting.
  - cross seconds
  - Motion carries unanimously; previous minutes are approved.

* Next meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 8:30 Eastern.
 
* Business:

  1. Less frequent Agora updates?  Is 4 times a year too much?
     a. walkman thinks a year is fine
     b. tod suggests trying every six months
     c. cross asks if we care?
        Is conferencing something we should worry about?
  2. cross motions to roll agora every six months
     - Roll on July 1 and January 1
     - tod seconds
     - Motion carries unanimously
  3. Rolling Coop
     - We haven't rolled Coop in quite some time: 350ish items
     - The current coop has several (different!) versions of the
       bylaws.
     - kentn will roll it.
       * We'll have one bylaws item with current bylaws.
  4. Ammending bylaws to change the 4:3 election split to 3:2.
     - This is a vestige of when we had a 7 person board.
     - It has to do with the length of board terms and the
       distribution between odd and even election years.
     - Right now, the distribution is 4:1; this will cause
       some awkwardness in the next election cycle (someone
       will have to take a short term or a longer term).
       An ammendment must take this into consideration.
     - cross asks how we can bring something to a member vote?
       * Need to get 10% of the membership to endorse a
         proposal for change before we can bring it to vote.
     - Talk of how we can attract members, how we manage
       membership, etc.
       * Most of this is specified by the bylaws.
       * Should we amend the bylaws?
     - cross motions that we bring the following to a member
       vote:
       a. 4:3 to 3:2 split amendment
       b. Change bylaws to move the membership due structure out
       c. Suggest an annual membership structure with fees TBD
          by the BOD.
       * tod seconds
       * Motion passes unanimously; Dan will post the items.
  5. SSL Class 2 certs for our domains
     - Our certifying authority needs proof we are an
       organizaton.
     - Requires a letter from the treasurer.
     - tod will talk to Tony.
  6. Staff recruitment?
     - There are only a few people doing staff work
     - Lots of plans, little action (time for staff)
     - If we solicit new volunteers, what would they do?
     - If we solicit new volunteers, will anyone respond?
     - What about soliciting specific projects?
       * What projects would we want to do?
     - Who would we want on staff?
     - Something to think about.
  7. Status reports
     - Treasurer report (tod):
       * $988 in PayPal
       * tod is waiting for access to the bank for the rest
     - Staff report (cross):
       * Grex rebooted four days ago; a block device in /dev
         changed mtime (maybe a fsck?)
       * We need to figure out a story for backups
       * We get lots of people trying to run bots and bouncers
         and stuff.
         - Should we care about that?
         - The firewall catches most of it.
  8. Walk-in business.
     - tod has a question about the bank:
       * He'd like to look into using a national bank
       * kentn asks what the fees would be?
         (We don't want to get nickle and dimed to zero)
         - Criteria: no or low fees.  No minimum balance.
       * cross asks if we could just use paypal?
         - tod says can't write a check with paypal
       * tod will investigate going to a national bank
  9. cross moves to adjorn
     - tod seconds
     - motion passes.  We are adjorned at 21:54 EDT.

29 responses total.

Thanks for the quick minutes, Dan!

 :)
Nice chat this eve.

Thanks to all the Board members who attended and for all the ideas.
For those who picked up tasks, thank you for doing so.

I would have opposed rolling agora less frequently. More often might help
more. As it is items become redundant and stale very quickly and at least
when it is rolled the decay has to start over. 

Of course you would have.

Every time we roll agora we get less and less items.  So that's not
helping at all.

More (and longer) items will not be an attraction to new users. Also, if
getting fewer items is a problem, just create more. Even automate it, creating
particular more popular items automatically. It's the appearance of
accumulated old stale items that will put newcomers (and oldcomers too) off.

Are you willing to help?

I don't have the skills required.

Okay then.

resp:7 This presumes that conferencing should remain the focus of Grex. 
But it will not.  Indeed, it has not been the focus for quite some time.

Doesn't matter if it isn't a "focus" of Grex. Why can't it be just a service?
I haven't been looking for other bbses, but Grex is Ann Arbor centered, and
can host the few people that enjoy it (or might even find it useful), so why
eliminate it?

How many of the current regulars are from Ann Arbor?

resp:12 In resp:7 you wrote, "More (and longer) items will not be
an attraction to new users. ... It's the appearance of accumulated
old stale items that will put newcomers (and oldcomers too) off."

Newcomers to what, exactly?  Grex?  Again, this presumes that
conferencing is the focus of what Grex is about.  Newcomers to the
conference service on Grex?  Again, you presume that they're
interested in that if they're coming to it.  If conferencing is not
the focus of Grex anymore (newsflash: it isn't, and hasn't been for
many years), then why would we worry about the roll rate in Agora
to attract new conferencing users?

Grex is also no longer "Ann Arbor focused."  Most of the users
aren't even from the US, as near as I can tell.

Grex isn't even located in Ann Arbor anymore. :P

I've never presumed that "conferencing is the focus of what Grex is about".
But some find it useful. Why should they be excluded from it? 

No one is suggesting that they should.

I'm glad we agree. Then it would facilitate that if items were started
automaticzlly (as well as by users), and the turn over was at least 
quarterly, if not more often. 

Oh?  How so?

I don't see how the frequency of restarts is tied to the ability to use an
otherwise unsupported conferencing service.  No one is precluded from it
regardless of whether the conference is "turned over" from time to time.

Users, especially new users, are put off by innumerable endless drifting
items. It is nearly impossible to find the meaningful bits of disucssion in
the midst of all the pointless babble that inevitably develops. Most
meaningful disucssion in new items occurs in just the first dozen or so
responses.

But we've already established that attempting to attract new users to the
conferences is explicitly not a goal.  We've also established that the rate
at which a conference is rolled is independent of whether it can be accessed
if so desired by a user.

So I'm still confused by your point.  The only interpretation in which it
makes sense is if you still believe that conferencing should be a focus of
Grex.  But it is not, nor will it be.

You seem to not want any conferencing here. Without making it a "goal", one
can still make it more attractive for those that happen upon Grex. I don't
see that anything you say has been "established". So I'm still confused by
your objection. If you think it desirable to have a conferencing option
available here, it seems desirable to make it most useful and attractive while
not compormising any other use. But you seem opposed to doing the minimum to
make conferencing more pleasant and useful. Why?

I think conferencing is dead, but that's neither here nor there.
I don't care if there is conferencing here, but I don't want to
waste any time supporting it.

You seem to think that conferencing will somehow be more "attractive"
if the agora conference (and only the agora conference!) is rolled
quarterly instead of biquarterly; I really don't see how it makes
a difference.  Three months or six is kind of arbitrary and our
observation (which is made watching the system over time) is that
each restart actually reduces activity.

You ask "Why?" but again, that question is predicated on your
interpretation of what makes something that the rest of us have
already concluded is essentially a waste of our time more attractive
by your definition of attractiveness, which we do not subscribe to.
Perhaps I should ask you why you seem incapable of seeing anyone
else's viewpoint on the subject.

As for my "objection", I really don't know what you are referring
to: I am not objecting to anything.  I am merely making a choice
of where I think I can most profitably spend my limited volunteer
time.

You, on the other hand, have made it clear that you have no intention
of volunteering any of your time (you may consider your incessant
complaining to be "helpful" but I assure you I, and I believe others,
merely find it tedious).  However, if you feel strongly that rolling
agora once every 3 months is somehow preferable to rolling it every
six months, we would still be open to acceping your volunteer time
in doing that.

I don't have the skills to do that. So I guess I will just give up since I'm
in the minority.

That sounds like a sensible course of action.

re #24
You have a knack for finding meaningful discussion items.  Maybe, if you'd
like, we could setup a landing page for newbies which puts them into
a "Welcome to Grex" forum and the items in it could be ones you've linked
in as the cfadm.  I don't think there's a big enough userbase in BBS
that anyone should get their dander up over such an idea.
Of course, you'd have to learn a few cfadm commands but since you brought
up the idea maybe give it a shot?

I'm closer to abandoning the bbs as almost all the sensible users have drifted
away. I've been sort of reduced to a holdout sticking around to refute the
garbage now and then. I will admit it seems like a lost cause. 

I have old shoes just like I have picospan - good and reliable once in a 
while.

Not everyone has completely drifted away from the conferencing  Just my
2  cents.

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