64 new of 84 responses total.
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".
Seek ye the conference known as "mud" and all thy questions shalt be answered!
I started an item there. :)
:)
We need/demand Gnuchess to help while away precious hours!
Somebody can compile it and make it readable to everyone in their home directory?
cross per usual has really great ideas that are shot down quickly, also per-usual. :(
re 0 - hey cross, come to m-net, someone bought you a citizenship :)
I saw that! I'm on M-Net frequently; I just find that general has more going on than I can keep up with.
I actually avoided general for pretty much all of last year... sticking to sports, policy, sysop, programming, etc... I'm back in the general conference again but only due to LIBERAL use of "forget". I recently entered items in the tv conference about LOST and Battlestar Galactica.
Don't forget to check out the chess conference where our very own Nate is getting his ass handed to him by tanis.
awesome.....
A few ideas have been rattling around in my brain. I guess there are two issues: (1) How to make Grex more visible, and (2) how to entice people to stick around, once they've taken a look at it. One easy, low-cost way to address (1) is to put out information about Grex in public places. In the pre-internet days of the early 1990s, the Grex publicity committee used to walk around Ann Arbor putting up fliers with Grex's phone number. The hardcopy flier approach was pretty effective in its day. Nowadays we can do the equivalent on the World Wide Web, on a global scale, by putting up electronic "fliers" on places where people can post things and which other people use as resources for finding things. I'm thinking of social sites like Upcoming (http://upcoming.org) for announcing upcoming events, and Delicious (http://del.icio.us) for sharing bookmarks. I've started putting up a few of these electronic "fliers" myself. On Upcoming, I've started posting announcements, in the "Ann Arbor" metro section, of weekly Saturday walks and lunches. At this writing, the URL for the March 10, 2007 walk is http://upcoming.org/event/158733/ (although it will disappear once the date has passed), and I'll be posting the lunch info on Upcoming as well, as soon as I know the location. Anybody who keeps track of upcoming Ann Arbor events (URL: http://upcoming.org/metro/mi/aa) will see this announcement. (I'm attaching a "grex" tag to each such event, so that http://upcoming.org/tag/grex gives you a complete list. Google indexes upcoming.org - try a Google search on "ann arbor" grex. Another source of visibility is http://del.icio.us, a very popular social bookmarking site. People can post URLs of websites and attach descriptive category labels called "tags". The tags help me find websites I've bookmarked and, since they're public by default, help other people find websites relevant to their interests. For example, somebody interested in the PHP programming language could open the URL http://del.icio.us/tag/php to see a list of all sites any user has tagged "php", or go to http://del.icio.us/popular/php to see sites that a LOT of people have tagged php. Sort of like a search engine, but returning results based on human judgement of relevance rather than Google's algorithmic approach. As an example of what can be done, I posted http://cyberspace.org to Delicious, attached a brief description of what Grex is about, and gave it the tags "annarbor", "forums", "unix", "ssh", "free", "501c3", "organization", "nonprofit", and "shellaccounts". (And anybody else with a Delicious account can do the same, perhaps with a different tag set.) Anybody tracking any of those topics on Delicious will see the listing. (Go to http://del.icio.us/jremmers/grex to see my description.) I don't know how much effect this will have in attracting new people to Grex, but Delicious has over a million users. There are no doubt a lot of other places on the web where Grex can be publicized with little effort and no cost. And anybody with the time and interest can do it - you don't have to be a board or staff member. Issue #2 - how to make it more attractive for people to stick around once they're here - is more difficult. I have some thoughts about how this might be approached for the "bbs" part of Grex, but this response has grown way long, so I think I'll save the ideas for later.
Oops, typo: The URL for the Ann Arbor metro on Upcoming is http://upcoming.org/metro/us/mi/aa/
Good stuff, Remmers. Thanks a lot.
PS: Is anyone willing to write a story about grex for slashdot? That would certainly give us visibility in the geek world, which could be really interesting. Maybe if there were a call for a grex `project' more people would be interested; for instance, looking for a replacement for picospan might draw in some folks.
Short answer: yes. Long answer: Some info on the history from a personal perspective would be appreciated. Reachable via the usual email address. All comers welcome.
A good historical perspective is in Jan's history, on www.unixpapa.com.
I'm trying to imagine the results of a slashdot grex article: Imagine a Beowoulf cluster of script kiddies... In Soviet Union, Grex logs in to you!
Heh, marc. Don't forget "Does it run Linux?" I think we should hold off on attracting new users until the we get the system to a better state of stability. The last thing I want is for Grex to go down for a couple of days during a Slashdot article and lose what chance it might have had. Also, with that many eyes on Grex how shallow will its security problems become? For that matter, could Grex handle a slashdotting?
could Grex handle a slashdotting? Arbornet did.
Are grex and Arbornet comparable? What is our weakest link? What are our single point failures? For that matter, what do we do better than others to attract new visitors?
Actually, Arbornet (in terms of hardware resources, at least) is significantly weaker than grex these days. It runs on a much older system, running an old version of FreeBSD (though they're upgrading), with much less RAM and much less hard disc space.
Maus should still check out arbornet, even though she'll need a different username.
Arbornet is the org that runs m-net server?
Silly question: what is the ratio of horsepower:active_users ? What is the ratio of horsepower:services_offered?
Arbornet is the organization which owns and runs M-Net. You can get to M-Net by going to: http://m-net.arbornet.org
re #64 I'd say the different between M-Net and Grex is nominal. If any comparison is to be made, Grex is more robust scientifically.
I would say that a useful metric would actually be those ratios, especially if we break the nebulous horsepower into concrete things like measurable processing power, available memory, available network throughput, &c. How much processing capability *per user* do we have, and what would be an acceptable baseline, below which a user does not get a nice experience? Same question for available virtual memory per user. Do we have resource limits in place to make each user play fair, so that there is a base amount of resource per user (e.g. if there are 18 available concurrent ssh sessions, each user might get 5%, leaving one session's worth for root and one for the system or something like that). By how much do we oversubscribe our resources?
We can't answer that now, Ms.Spock but we know we need to get the Enterprise into the Slashdot quadrant before the Romulans uncloak.
Sorry, Jim. I'm a systems engineer, not a publicist. You simply can't change the laws of physics.
Hmm, would we get much exposure on the AA [or broader] craigslist page in one of their sections? [A month or two ago, I posted info about a group I'm in to the 'group' page and had it sent to the AA as well as the Detroit area's list. And I did get some response from it.] Dunno if thhis would work for something like Grex, though.
I like that idea Denise! We could do that on a regular basis!
I'd like to see a broader target audience than just the Ann Arbor area, though. That said, posting on criagslist is a great idea. How about some posts on the Well also? I imagine that community might be interested in another Picospan-ish system.
At least that settles something, maus isn't maus I was thinking of. I was wondering how Amy got so ComputerGeek savy so fast. :)
Amy is savy but also wise enough not to spend solar hours on Grex.
This maus is a different small, cute rodent. This maus also demands offerings of cheese.
There are too many mice and now I'm just confused. Will the real Maus please stand up?
I don't know anyone named Amy, but I have been 'maus' on grex for quite a while (I think late 1990s, maybe 98 or 99).
a maus in da haus !
Not to be confused with chris (mouse)
There's plenty of "cheese" on m-net, maus.
The user known as maus on m-nut is Amy, and has been since, uh... a long time ago. :)
you dream about her at night dON'T YOU
Continuing with the ideas of resp:51 - I've begun posting bookmarks on del.icio.us to selected Grex items, tagging them with "grex" and other tags appropriate to the subject matter of the items. Thus far, just two (though I plan to do more): Item 4 in the web conference (item:web,4). Tags: grex, microformats, semanticweb, web2.0. Item 69 in the programming conference (item:jellyware,69). Tags: grex, programming, goto. The idea is that a lot of people follow tags on del.icio.us that correspond to their interests, either by visiting a page such as del.icio.us/tag/NAME-OF-TAG or subscribing to the corresponding RSS feed. So anyone with an interest in Microformats and following what's new on http://del.icio.us/tag/microformats will see the link to the Grex item. If they follow the link, they get to read the item and a notice that to respond to it, they need to have an account. In addition, they get other links enabling them to explore Grex further. I don't know how effective this approach will be in drawing in new users, but I have a feeling that doing it enough could bring in some new folks. After all, we have almost sixteen years worth of items here, many with quite good discussions, that could be linked to on del.icio.us or other public bookmarking sites that are looked at by a lot of eyeballs. Free publicity for Grex, without a lot of work on our part. Go to http://del.icio.us/jremmers/grex/ to see what I've bookmarked so far.
at least we're in wikipedia, search public access unix and we are second after SDF. (figures).
You have several choices: