How does one deal with annoying drifters while trying to FW a conference? It 
seems as if the nonsense is really snowballing, as if Grex is attracting a lot
of bored and immature users who have nothing better to do than kill conference
items (and conferences, for that matter) with their blather. I seem to remember
reading somewhere a way to "privatize" conferences, but I don't see that as a
solution. I'd like to think of Grex as an open environment where everyone can
feel welcome, but the current situation is ridiculous. Any help?

(note: I'm a struggling new FW who could greatly use ANY advice whatsoever.)

52 responses total.

The best solution I've seen is a combination of: letting the offender
know privately that there is a better time and place for such drift, and
then ignoring it when it appears in a serious discussion.  Unfortunately,
some drifters aren't out for attention, and they enter dozens of
responses in one serious discussion item, seriously derailing it.  About
all you can do is let them know where they can relieve their habit
(a drift cf?) and hope that they really aren't trying to get anyone else's
goat by their behavior (hopefully ignoring them will cure that, though it
could just as well escalate their attempts...).
  I'm just afraid this is a question without any good answer...

If anyone complains to you, you can point them to the twit-filter item in
this conference (or provide them with similar info) and encourage them to
use it.  I don't think it's an especially good idea for the FW to use this
in reading the conference of which he or she is FW, so that doesn't help
*your* peace of mind any.

Seriously, this is a problem, and one for which Grex has pretty much viewed
the possible solutions as being worse than the problem.  Kent's basic
approach is the best I know (oh, yes, and setting a good example, too).

I'm *REALLY* tempted to put the twit-filter to use via the login file for
the conference I'm FW-ing. Does anyone have a cure for such hostile
reactions as mine?

I've added a "poser, piece of shit, and other constructive criticism" item
in genx.  I'll give it an other day before deciding to do anything more 
drastic.

Yea, but then all the drift goes into my conference.

Where it belongs. I have not read the newuser information since I
originally logged in. Does it offer any "Guidelines for Conferencing"?
One of the most elementary one is simple courtesy. Courtesy. It is
courteous to not interject a lot of irrelevant noises, distractions,
etc into a conversation. There is a fine line between witty interjections
and discourteous interruptions, which I would not concern myself about.
But sometimes the discourtesy gets really out of hand. The only thing
I can think of doing has been mentioned - a private mail message. 

I think one thing we're running into in genx may be a problem with an end of
the age group the conference is started at.  We've apparrently got a few 
people who consider themselves to be "between childhood and adulthood" without
acting as if they've reached that point (I won't name any names, but they know
who they are).  Spending a couple of hours a week teaching sixth graders, it's
not that I can't understand what's going on there.  I see what's going on as
fairly normal for that age group.  However, there is a place I am willing to
deal with it and a place where I would rather not.  And these people really
do need a place to vent their drift.  If I can catch the drift early and
channel it into seperate items, that is a far preferable solution, as far as
I am concerned.

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I've tried a new rc, which seems to have helped so far. Then again, it 
hasn't been that long... I think I'll have to think of more ways that
prevent the non-Picospan literates (like myself, for now) from (actually,
make that "discourage" instead of "prevent") simply responding to
everything regardless of usefulness. More testing...

Actually, drifting does not belong in Role-playing.

Can one change the conference that is the default on login? Maybe some
users would prefer to log into a more compatible conference than agora,
when they call in (or, they could be persuaded to). Then, they could get
some of the nonsense out of their system before joining civilization.

If you have a .cflist, Picospan will start you in the first conference
listed.  Or, you can put "join my-favorite-conference" in your .cfonce
file.

Carson's new rc, by the way, changed the "respond or pass?" prompt to "respond
intelligently?"  A gentle reminder, perhaps?

Does anyone (else) think it might be useful to provide a simple choice
on signon, at least for a while, for users to select their signon
conference? Many newcomers don't know for a while how to set up a
.cflist, or might not know how to use it to choose the signon cf (I
didn't realize that until today!). But newcomers also don't know what
cfs they want, so the option should be brought to their attention after
several months of participation. 

good idea

makesmoresense than dumping them in agora, although everyone should
READ agora.

I agree.  Read, but not neccesarily respond.  I think it is important
for FWs to also state the types of input THEY want in their .cf...
I know it doesn't always work, but it helps.

You know, the first few times I logged on to Grex I was completly
confused.  I had no idea how to get out of Agora or what else there even was
available.  I managed to quit the conference but that left me totally high
and dry at a Unix prompt.  Not a good place for a total novice to be.  I
slowly, over several attempts, got the vaguest idea of what I was doing.
I found out about the .cflist thing and set it up so that my 1st conference
is Info, because that is where you need to be to figure out how to do stuff.
Until I got comfortable, Agora and Co-op were of no interest to me at all.

Idea:  would it be possible (and desirable) to add some kind of text to the 
newuser program which would give a simple description of grex's structure
and also give new users a few important picospan commands?  (like join,
read, browse etc.)  at least then people might be able to find there 
I mean their way around a bit.  Also maybe the default conference should
be Info.  When they learn to make a .cflist, then they can change it to
Agora or whatever.  Or would it be possible to set up a default .cflist
with newuser, including a few popular conferences so that all the newbies
would have to do is type next to get around.

Sounds Good.  And perhaps a few excerpts for _Unix for Dummies_?

Definitly!!.

so how do I set up a .cflist to let me read .cfs in my preferred order?

You create file called .cflist, with the cf names listed on separate
lines in the order you would like. *How* you do that depends on the
editor you use. Which do you use? (I use pico, as I am not mature
enough yet to use vi.)

You're too *young* for vi?

I hope we don't start another holy war here.

I did say "mature".

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That's right, popcorn: one of my radiating rays does not encompass
vi. 

You can type "n" instead of "next", too (no quotes). I never got
caught by ziggy's j trap, as I moved on with n or rew (rewind).

I didn't get caught at first because it didn't occur to me that I could
abbreviate.  Ok, so I'm slow...  I'm also still a bit chicken about wandering
around outside this cf level of things.  I think I'll wait a bit before going
to find the home directory and stick anything new in it.

Have you explored around where you are? Try !pwd  to see what
directory you are in. Try ls -al   to see all your files in your
home directory. Try !cd ..   (that's two dots) to move *up* a
directory, and look around with an ls -al     That's where everyone
else hangs out! Then do just a    cd      to get back "home" again.
I think this type of exploration is a good way to get a "feel" for
what's "around" you (so to speak). 

No, you can't do !cd .. and have it stick.  It would run the shell,
change directories, then lose the change when it exited into the bbs.

However, some of these Unix commands are implemented in the bbs.  Try
leaving off the ! at the beginning.  (This is *necessary* for the cd
command, unless you were to stack on a couple of other Unix commands
after it.)

Or type "tcsh" to get into a shell and then do that stuff.  Hit control-D
when you're done and you'll be back in bbs.

And if anything confuses you, don't be embarrassed - Ask in info.
There are a whole bunch of people who will be happy to explain stuff.

Right, I should have left off those ! at the beginning of commands, as
it isn't needed for the group I listed. The subsequent comments illustrate
what often happens in discussing unix commands - there are other ways
to do the same thing, and I think this situation confuses newcomers (it
sure confused/es me!). I'l like to suggest that a *very simple* "Tour
of Grex" be written by someone that really knows there way around here,
that newusers can follow, to see their directory contents, read a file,
see how .login (or something) works, move up the directory structure
a little and "look around", change permission status (and then see what
happened), and perhaps a few other simple "essentials". Any volunteers?

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And its very good. Perhaps it should go into a login "menu"? Now,
popcorn, write an interactive tutorial using all those commands :).

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I know a thing or two about UNIX and I sure don't understand all the stuff
in my .cshrc and .login files.  I'd like to see comments for (almost) every
line of the files created by the newuser program.  If such comments have
been added, how do I look at the .cshrc and .login files which are
currently being given to newusers?

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