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<gets indignant> *tut tut*
You'll only be able to edit one response at a time via the usual interface. So each of those responses can be denied or approved based on their date/time stamps if we were able to implement that feature. While it is true that discussions here quite often generate more heat than light, at least we are trying to understand and trying determine how best to do things. A lack of good information quite often leads to misunderstandings, too. So it's fine if someone corrects such a misunderstanding or asks for more information. We can move forward from that point.
the time limit is important because it would prevent circumstances like when valerie mates decided to leave grex and decided to delete all of his past posts she ever made here going back years.
But we're talking about time limits for editing, not deleting. Are we proposing a time limit for deleting?
I think both are advisable.
That runs counter to the "you own your own responses" rule.
re #169 but on grex you don't own your own responses because you can't edit them. If you write a column in the newspaper, you can't retroactively go back and remove all the printed columns because they have been printed and everybody has already read them. They are part of the paper's record. I'm all for time-limited editing and deleting, say for twelve or twenty four hours or something, but there should come a point where the post is considered 'published' and is part of Grex's record. Valerie should not have been allowed to go back and delete all her old posts because it makes some items in the old conferences, if you went back and read them, not make sense. Instead of a conference that reads like a whole work from a particular point in time, you have some old confs that now are full of holes because of what she did.
Ever hear of copyrights, Richard?
re #171 yes and Grex owns the copyright. If you publish a letter in a newspaper, you don't have the right to ask for all copies of that paper to be destroyed because you changed your mind about what you wrote. When you gave the letter to the paper and they published it, they retain the copyrighyt.
Only if Grex asserts copyright. Under international law the author owns the copyright to their work, not the publisher. We could really have fun with that if it were true (I could just publish someone else's book and say I own it). I don't think Grex has ever wished to be the owner of people's copyright to a conference response.
resp:141: Are you going to re-write backtalk to introduce that functionality? Does janc still maintain it? It's not a function of backtalk today, therefore it's not possible. resp:170: I can't really agree with that. I don't think that it should be required that everything I write here be forever property of Grex and I have no right to it's removal, particularly since Grex allows open viewing of the conferences without a login. And in case you didn't realize, Grex is not a newspaper. We have far more in common with Facebook than with in newspaper, and oh yeah, you have the ability to remove your posts from Facebook (and if you remove your account, all your posts go away too).
Actually didn't Facebook assert last year its rights to posters' material, because they felt that any comments a user left on another user's facebook page shouldn't automatically disappear once that user deleted everything from their own page? Their argument was that if you post to another user's facebook page, that does not mean that you control their ability to decide who they share *their* page's content, which your content is now also part of, with?
When you send a letter to a newspaper, you agree to the terms of the newspaper regarding what will be done with that letter, including not publishing it all, editing it, publishing it when they feel like it, destroying it, adding an editorial comment to it, leaving your typos and bad grammar in it, etc. If you don't like those terms, don't send a letter. Included in those terms is very like a grant of the right to publish your copyrighted work (once or many times). Likewise on Grex, we ask that you not publish anything that will get Grex in trouble (the proverbial credit card numbers), and that could be construed to include libelous responses and other responses that are in some way illegal or which govt. agencies may construe to be illegal or in need of investigation (e.g. anything that would get DHS on our backs). Maybe it's time to revisit the terms you agree to when you post conference responses, use e-mail, put up a personal web page, etc. And what Grex may do if you violate those rules.
Kent said: "on Grex, we ask that you not publish anything that will get Grex in trouble (the proverbial credit card numbers), and that could be construed to include libelous responses" And lar calling keesan an 'ugly little retard' in the subject line of his item he just posted isn't libelous? Anyway there is a big difference between 'asking' and 'requiring' Perhaps Grex should make explicit that it will assert its copyright as publisher if necessary and that certain posts, related to libel or encourgaing illegal activities, will be censored or deleted altogether if staff deems it appropriate to do so.
Here is a statement on copyright for a bbs: http://is.gd/d2syN Grex should adopt and state a copyright policy.
how is calling someone an ugly little retard being libelous?
re #179 It is claiming as a fact that a user is mentally challenged. lar didn't state it as his opinion, he stated it as a fact without any basis to backup the assertion.
re 178: that looks pretty good (the board in the link retains a compilation copyright so they can archive and distribute, but the individual responses are owned by the people who posted them). As to asking or requiring, I was paraphrasing. We should look up the actual wording used on Grex's web page.
"And lar calling keesan an 'ugly little retard' in the subject line of his item he just posted isn't libelous? " It has to untrue before it's libelous, richard,you are a STUPID COCKSUCKER.
Basically, unless someone comes up with a good way of putting a leash on trolls like lar, I wouldn't expect a whole bunch of additional people to come to Grex conferences. The population of Grex declined sharply with the rise of systems which took a more pro-active approach to troll management.
yeah get rid of lar and they will flock to grex in droves. You are almost as stupid as richard No one new will be coming to this circle jerk fest until you turn newuser back on.
The newuser function on the web page is screwed up and staff is aware of the problem. The newuser you get when you login as newuser@grex is working just fine. As to the restricted shell and the need for validation, I agree, that sucks and is driving people away.
lar, I think he's saying that if you wear a leash then it will attract a certain element to grex
ok,I'll break out my spikes and spandex to go with it.
resp:183 That is true. It would mean a major philosophical change for grex though. I can't say that it necessarily a bad thing. The best solution would be allow the author of an item to moderate it if they chose to do so. That could absolve grex of some of the legal issues that have come up in past discussions of moderated conferences. IIRC, the issue is that if grex volunteers/staff moderate conferences as a matter of policy, grex could be sued if something which should have been deleted wasn't.
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re #183 indeed I can think of numerous longtime users of grex who have long ago left specifically because they felt staff was all but completely apathetic towards trolls. staff's desire to not have to delete or close trolls' posts led to the validation patch on newuser which only punished every other new user. I don't see anything wrong with requiring that a new item posted by someone be at least remotely vaguely substantive, saying that a new item posted that just calls a user names, says "so and so is a cocksucker' has no merit and will be removed unless the poster can defend his reasons for the post. Give the user the opportunity to defend his item. "Your item appears to be just using Grex's conference space to call a user derogative names. We ask you to defend substantively the reasons for posting this item in the next 'x' amount of time. If you cannot do so this item will be deleted." re #188 I would not allow posters of an item to be moderators of that item, because inevitably what happens on other boards that have this is you have an item entered on a political topic and the author of the item deletes responses in it left and right that he disagrees with. Limit moderation to the conference fairwitnesses.
my posts will not be removed you stupid cocksucker. who gives a fuck what your fairy faggot ass would do? you pansy ass girlie man
re #190 I can think of numerous longtime users of grex who have long ago left specifically because they felt staff was all but completely apathetic towards trolls You mean they wanted CENSORSHIP
re #192 no they didn't want censorship, they wanted trolling to not be encouraged and they wanted name calling and use of needless derogatory hurtful language to not be ignored by staff. why do you think valerie mates left? She was being picked on troll-like by a group of users mostly from mnet who had it in for her and she felt like she was being ridiculed, and staff was too high minded to step in and try to do anything. It wasn't worth it to her to stay around and put up with mean spirited behaviour in order to read the good posts. She saw Grex as maintaining a board rather than trying to maintain a community with good civility. So she left and took all her posts down.
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Oh shut the fuck up you dumbass...you don;t have a clue what you are talking about. She left because she got her panties in a wad over the parody of her baby item in m-net's agora. slynne,mynxcat and a host of other GREXORS posted in the item just having fun. get the facts straight you lying sack of shit
She felt that was ridiculing her, picking on her
re #193 why do you think valerie mates left? She didn't like dissent. she left and took all her posts down. She left and took EVERYONE's posts down in the parenting conference. we had some legitimate discussions going on. She was very pro breastfeeding of toddlers or whatnot and some of us differed on that front. So instead of simply agreeing to disagree or what have you, she zippety zapped all the items in that conference. And believe you me, I had volunteered MANY times to co-FW in that conference and was ignored. I won't dish out my own suspected gender discrimination in that whole ordeal but I will say that I was displeased to have lost so much content of discussion (not just of hers.)
I thought staff should have put those posts back into the Parenting conf but they declined, that would have been 'censoring' Valerie right?
#re197 she is a neurotic cunt,she is smart as hell but her head is still fucked up. re#196 as for running people away I do wish the fuck you and keesan would both go find some other place to vomit your stupidity on therefore I will troll the two of you from now on.
re #198 I thought staff should have put those posts back into the Parenting conf but they declined They all admitted it was censorship. Mary was the biggest supporter of censoring because Valerie is a "friend of Grex" while the rest of us are peasants or something.
valerie also used the same little program she wrote to delete her posts, to also delete those of JEP in one particular agora. JEP had written I thought very honestly and eloquently about his divorce and then some time later regretted doing so and asked that all his posts on that subject be removed. IFRC staff declined his request but then Valerie, who was herself staff, did it for him anyway on her own. This action took out the posts in items that a lot of others responded to, and left a couple of items full of holes with the responses that are left there now out of context. These are excellent reasons why if there is a new version of grex, that it should be stated posts can only be edited or deleted by poster for a short period of time after posting. After 'x' amount of time, the copyright reverts to Grex and the item and responses are considered published.
mary is a total slut...an old ugly one at that. the only one who made any real sense on staff in those days was cross. fatass STeve and ugly glenda could not stand his superior knowledge so they got all defensive and shit. mary was such a commie cunt she made cross resign from staff..with a little help from naftee and polytarp
re# 201 no dumbass,this is why grex should have backups to restore items like that and once a root pulls nazi bullshit like popcunt did then the privileges should be revoked.
Well, if Grex told me that they expect to have copyright of all my entries in BBS then I would probably stop participating. I don't want people (including Grex) having the right to steal my creative works or relayed expressions of my own experiences. I'm also against having my entries webcrawled to the Internet. Grex has always been a spot where I can converse freely to whatever set of participants are listed for a particular conference. I have never seen Grex as a place to "blog".
" the time limit is important because it would prevent circumstances like when valerie mates decided to leave grex and decided to delete all of his past posts she ever made here going back years." Your stupidity knows no bounds. popcunt had root and this allowed her to do anything she wanted. no lame ass bbs block could stop that bitch just shut up richard,you are a fucking fool
It is not a matter of 'expecting' to have copyright. They do have copyright. Look at the bottom of the home page on the website where it says: " 2008 Copyright grex.org. All Rights Reserved". Grex has to be responsible for what is posted on its site. If someone posts an item advocating specific acts of terrorism in Agora, the feds are not going to buy any claim that grex's board/staff are in no way responsible because they claim no copyrights. By use of this board to post, you consent to grex's publishing your work and grex retains responsibility for the consequences of publishing it. It has to because you can get a login here and post without divulging who you are. Grex has to accept that it holds the legal liability for open anonymous posting. We had this discussion back when the Communications Decency Act and Michigan's version of it were being proposed. It was even suggested that if the Michigan CDA took effect that the entire Grex board should resign so that it would be difficult for the state to hold anyone responsible for what is posted here. re #24 5tod you said earlier you were against valerie removing her posts in that conf, and now it seems you agree with her that she owned her posts. contradictory?
Tod, sometimes it boggles my mind how you can be so confident and wrong at the same time. You've made comments like resp. #200 before - "Mary was the biggest supporter of censoring because Valerie is a "friend of Grex" while the rest of us are peasants or something". All the history on this incident is still available, here, on Grex, word for word. Someone else will have to site the conference and item numbers. I didn't support Valerie's actions and I was a strong advocate of restoring the deleted items. My position actually cost me a few friendships but I still believe allowing it to go down the way it did was wrong. Very wrong. I'd take that same position today no matter the persons involved. But the community voted otherwise. Such is democracy. Most of us accepted that and moved on. There is integrity in honesty. Try it on for size, you may like the respect that comes with it.
Summary: we cannot move forward, because this community is incapable of anything other than navel-gazing and obsessing about minutiae.
re#207 don't laud your self rightoeusness with me you ugly whore....you had the gall to contact a previous employer of mine.
It wasn't always like that, Marc. I tend to think of the Grex community as family. You know, real family not the idealized version where everyone likes everyone else. We get thrown together and have to learn to get along. Mostly. Or at least learn to tolerate what we can't accept. It's a valuable experience. But maybe, just maybe, at some point, we learn enough to move on. Next stop, the Well, where adults bicker. ;-)
re #207 There is integrity in honesty. Try it on for size, you may like the respect that comes with it. Feel free to post your comments from January 2004 regarding the restoration. If I'm mistaking your comments for Glenda or somebody then I apologize. I am fairly certain though that I recall you defending Val's actions as "favored persons who are friends of Grex" or something along those lines. I appreciate that you have a hardened stance against censorship.
Re 206, by that logic, look at the bbs at the command line. Right there near the top it says "Copyright 2001-2005, Jan Wolter" therefore Jan owns the copyright to the conference responses. I'd like more clarification on what the copyright situation really is. From what I've seen since I've been here, Grex doesn't want to own people's words, but maybe the law forces that upon us. If so, as Rane has shown, a copyright policy can be put in place that divides copyright between users for their individual responses and Grex for the collection of responses and their presentation.
I'm feeling an urge to parody this item over on m-net.
re #212 actually that backtalk copyright indicates it expired in 2006, so possibly this means the program is in the public domain now and anybody here who can get the code and knows how to do it could do some of these updates we've been suggesting. Also consider this, if in fact Grex does get sued over something posted here, and the specific post or posts are edited after the fact, how can Grex defend what was originally posted? Allowing users, past a stated time period, the right to permanently edit or remove any item or response they put up at any time paat or present, could leave grex in a legally vulnerable situation. Grex IS publishing these posts, it is putting them on the internet. If somebody enters an item on how to do terrorist acts and then deletes it a day later, it has still been on grex and published on the internet for a day and if the item was deleted how can grex defend itself against those who will use their imaginations to exaggerate to authorities as to what was posted? Grex isn't and can't be invisible in these matters, it has to assert copyright.
you are a total fool,shut up idiot,you don't have a fucking clue
Good grief. The copyright didn't expire in 2006. That just means it's probably the last time new code was added to the program and copyrighted. Copyrights in the U.S. go for many decades and certainly don't end the year they were begun.
They can go on for many decades, but that one said 1996-2006. It was for a decade. Did they bother to renew it? I suppose Grex could buy new conferencing software. Anybody know any good ones on the market?
I suppose janc would sue for 5 years of back licensing.. FrontTalk 0.9.2 Copyright 2001-2005, Jan Wolter Connected to Grex server (version 0.9.2 - direct)
Hmmm...if you go by their web site, it's free: "Fronttalk is available free of charge under a standard Gnu License."
Re 217: if your copyright goes for 95 years, which it does in the U.S. then it hasn't come due for renew yet.
Grex needs to quit going into a tizzy every time someone uses the magic word, "censorship". That has a specific meaning and it's not "someone deleted anything and one individual didn't like it". No one flutters their hands and runs around in circles wailing "censorship" because a blogger deleted something. Grex can stand four-square for a uniform heap of garbage where any meaning is buried in excrement and attacks, with no rules or conventions. It can promote discussion, conversation and community by creating an environment of civility and tolerance for others. It cannot do both.
resp:221 I disagree. If grex were to give control of items and their responses to item authors, various authors would have inevitably have different styles of moderation. People would then be free to forget items not moderated to their taste. If a high moderation item author were to censor anyone, that person would be free to enter their own item. So no real censorship but still the ability to promote discussion, conversation, etc.
resp:201: I absolutely disagree with that, and I will not agree that I give up my right to delete my posts if and when I choose to do so in the future. I'm not aware of anyplace that takes sole copyright over content like that. I disagree with the time limitation of being able to modify posted content, however I can live with it. I will not participate in Grex any longer (and will remove my content prior) if such a stance is enacted. resp:204: I totally agree. resp:221: There's little more important than keeping censorship nearly non-existent. If you want censorship, move to china or south korea or iran.
There is a command that will go through conferences and remove all you've ever entered. It kind of makes a mess of things as a coherent archive, but hey, that's how it goes. Some people have used it repeatedly. I don't have a problem with that although when they come back and immediately start entering new, similar responses, I tend to think of it more as passive-agressive behavior than housekeeping. Deleted responses will make the item look new to everyone else. But a quick "fix" takes care of that. I like the way someone can take all their toys and go home, if they want to, and I hope Grex continues to allow folks to do this.
resp:223 Did you know that anyone can archive anything you say so in a sense, you already do not necessarily have the ability to delete things you have written.
Yep, and some people do tar backups on a regular basis. And have for decades. Scary? Only if you used bad judgement in the first place.
I realize that it's possible they could come back, but I think it'd be pretty clear my intent was for them not to, and it'd be pretty difficult to put them all back right in the places that they were without taking an enormous amount of time to accomplish it. I wouldn't use a script to do it anyway, that's pretty hackish. More than anything, I just want to make it clear I'm greatly opposed to such a change in position for grex.
re #221 it's not "someone deleted anything and one individual didn't like it" Censorship is more about affecting someone else's right to publish. I have no problem with someone deleting their own entry..just don't delete responses or items by others. re #224 they come back and immediately start entering new, similar responses I admit I'm a guilty participant of such behavior. Initially it was because my full name was attached and I was beginning to suspect an unwanted webcrawl. I like the way someone can take all their toys and go home, if they want to, and I hope Grex continues to allow folks to do this. I like that too. So long as it is not the toys (postings) of others which are affected.
Consider that there is fair use of what others write and then there is a potential copyright violation due to wholesale copying and publishing. Electronic documents are not immune to copyright violations even though such data are very easy to store and bring back and some people seem to think because it is possible it is okay.
Quoting kentn from resp:0 - "we'd like to ... develop a plan for Grex to move beyond where it is today." 230 responses later, how much closer are we to doing that?
I am absolutely completely with 100% certain without a doubt clueless where we're going but we're way ahead of schedule
I've got a clue.
It's only been a week and a half. Unfortunately, I don't expect much else at this point unless we get some new participants with ideas. I'd like to be surprised, of course.
The whole community wants things to stay the same, and they will get their wish. Things will continue to shift in uncontrolled and unplanned ways, just as they always have in the past. That is, unless someone takes charge or gets a small group to do so. A year ago, I thought Dan Cross would do that. Now, I'd say Mary Remmers could. It'd take someone who wants Grex to follow a particular plan, is willing to put in some work, has a little ambition, and can get some people who will go along with what he or she wants and maybe help a little. My guess is that won't happen here, and so no significant choices about the future will be made.
If things stay the same as they are right now, Grex will cease to exist. As to people who will go along being not likely, more's the pity. Inertia tends to win out due to being easiest. So much for democracy. It will take the Board to do something, I expect, but they are not responding here.
"To everything there is a season." :-) I participate in two other forums whose structure is derived from Picospan -- NewCafe (formerly Utne Cafe) and TheTown -- and both of those are fading away from inactivity, just like Grex. (And they don't even have the troll problem, as users can be banned in those systems.) I am thinking that the Confer/Picospan model has just run its course, kind of like Usenet and Gopher. On the other hand, if anything changes, some sizable amount of the remaining user base will be turned off and go away. One of the big issues is that there is no consensus on what is to be saved, what the priorities should be.
Thanks for responding, Ken. What do you think should be the priorities?
re #236 The generational issue is being ignored. These places don't attract young users. Younger users want as much functionality as possible. They aren't likely to participate in conferences that aren't as functional as Facebook and the like. What you have here on Grex and these other boards as a result is a user base that is getting older and dwindling away. Grex used to attract plenty of college students, from UM, MSU and other schools. There was a school down near St. Louis, whose name escapes me at the moment, where a number of students used Grex. Not anymore. Those times are long gone.
re #235 If things stay the same as they are right now, Grex will cease to exist. Why?
No members, no money eventually. End of story.
Re 238: which is why we should add more functionality.
I don't think features need to be changed to attract users and revenues. It is always amazing to me how the existing positive of features enjoyed by existing users is not leveraged toward better marketing.
Certainly there is more than just features that will attract and retain users, but a failure to keep up with the times will leave us with a group of users attracted to what we have now and as we've seen, a slowly dwindling group. I don't have a problem with a retro style of offerings per se. It's just that there are other groups of people out there that look for more. And of course, our restricted shell and validation procedure probably chases off many (I know I wouldn't go for it if it were in place back in 1991).
That newuser is almost IMPOSSIBLE to use, too.. *snort*
There's also a strong sense of inertia here. For instance people have been complaining about the validation patch since the day it was put in, but its all hot air because staff has its feet bolted in place.
I forget if this is the item in which the question of our resident agent came up, or not, but... I spoke with Mark Conger today and he'd be fine with continuing in that role. I'm looking around at conferencing sites for an online community we could experiment with. Not places where we'd rent disk space and install our own software but rather where we'd use existing software on a hosting service dedicated to such use. Quite a few look fine but tend to function more like mailing lists than conferences. Google Groups, on the other hand, threads better and has some nice features. I'm still playing with it and will come back with a list of pros and cons sometime within the next. But I thought I'd mention it here so the naysayers could have a head start. ;-)
Count me out of anything with Google attached to it.
Re 247: that may have been one of the Board minutes items, but it doesn't matter as long as we get the information :) For that, thanks for talking with Mark and I'm glad he's willing to continue in that role. There isn't much to do for it, generally, but we do need someone to take care of the requests that the resident agent gets, like that once a year corporate update form.
Could someone PLEASE tell Mark we have a reel-to-reel tape deck for him.
resp:248: why the negative stigma to google?
Because I don't trust their data policies any more than I do with FB.
Yeah. One if the things I like about conferencing here is that posts here don't turn up in search engines. But I am not too worried about that on whatever web based place we try. I'll probably use a pseudonym though. I figure you folks can probably handle that.
That's a good way to go if you don't want your comments to be indexed. As I'm looking at Google Groups I see it's possible to be just as closed and locked-down as the current Grex but also make more open choices. If this is going to be truly an experiment I sure hope we take a different approach and try to be more open.
That's certainly one candidate for a focus of the system -- catering to people who have some reason they'd prefer to avoid the mainstream Web 2.0 services like keesan and cyclone. I have no idea how you would market to them though.
> [...] the mainstream Web 2.0 services like keesan and cyclone. I don't mean to be rude but that made me smile... broadly. By the way, I'd rather classify "Web 2.0 services" as sewerstream. It's a pity the strongest currents on the web, and on the Internet, consist mainly of domestic sewage even though I do take pride in contributing my fair share of alimentary canal status reports. Oh, and Grex needs a topic--users will follow. It seems to have lost its function as a regional hub and after that loss it hasn't picked up any specific role beyond being a low-impact discussion place (which is nice, by me; I learnt quite a few things on here that would've been a lot less easily learnt on a place with higher impact and broader participation of random people).
Re 244 and newuser is impossible to use: Yes, it's difficult to wade through, especially for first-time users with no commandline/shell experience. I wonder if we had more web-based services (chat, bbs, email) if there could be a simplified newuser for people who have no desire to set up a shell account so that they can use the web for conferencing? This would lock people out of a commandline/shell, presumably, or else give them some automatic defaults for a shell they'll never use. If they do at some future point desire to use that shell, they might want to redo some of the settings (and that might lead to another program to help with that along the lines of the historic newuser program). Another thing that would be interesting, at least, would be a way for people to quit newuser before finishing (I've done it but it was a lot of interrupts, etc. before it finally decided to stop) and tally the number of people who do that. I suspect we'd see plenty of people who opt out before finishing vs those who actually do get through the setup.
Re #253-255: My views are colored somewhat by the recent mnet incident involving an Iranian user (not bellstar, to the best of my knowledge) who became fearful after learning someone had messed with mnet in a way that made his posts or files web-searchable.
re #258 how by hacking mnet? all this guy has to do is not post using his real name. no big deal.
Take it up with mnet's BOD. I wasn't in on the discussions or the hack.
One user put some code on his m-net web page that acted as a gateway to the conferencing system, so via that link and a browser you could see the conferences from outside m-net. Search engines apparently picked up this 2nd hand content. This was discussed in the m-net conferences.
Re #258: On M-Net I'm klokster and, incidetally, I made a comment there about how M-Net's security is better than Grex's. As everybody should by now know systems can be proofed against folly but not against active stupidity (the original dictum says this about malice). I always keep that in mind.
re #262 Agree I also made comment similar
How specifically is mnet's security better than grex's?
resp:259: It wasn't a hack at all, and could be done even more easily on grex, if he so chose.
(oops, tried to deleted my response before posting it)
re #264 Fiscally for starters..
But not necessarily system-wise as we've shown when we turn off the restricted shell. But with the restricted shell, we seem to have helped our security some albeit at the expense of general membership.
Re #264: The web frontend to M-Net's conferences is hidden behind authentication (and served over HTTPS). It requires active effort (or active stupidity) to get crawled. All's needed for Grex's forums to get crawled is one hyperlink on a third party site, which is neither active effort on part of the crawler nor active stupidity on part of a user. After all, if you have your stuff out in the open you're inviting people to link and to explore. The reason Grex conferences don't appear in Google results is that Google respects the 'robots.txt' convention. The same is not true of someone who programs a robot to harvest email addresses or any other useful information, say (using a Vim regex) /[Ii] \(have \)*work\(ed\)* at \(.*\)/. (Not that there is much of valuable information on here.) P.S. Poor tod has some unfriendly stalkers in Spokane. I wonder how come they still haven't found this place. His presence here is very easy to find, as is the presence anybody who ever participated in Grex BoD meetings. In this case M-Net's worse than Grex thanks to one 'yuno.'
(Or, maybe, an unfriendly tod has some poor stalkers from Spokane...)
re #270 Unfortunately, Spokane is only part of that list. There's a very fun one out there calling me a neighbor killing psychopath or something. And a small handful of the incarcerated waiting their turn.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeWillMeetAgain
With his latest Evil Plan foiled in Bleak Expectations, Mr Gently Benevolent declares "I shall return!" and rides away. He rides back a moment later: Pip: You returned quicker than I expected. Benelovent: I forgot my hat. [Exits.]
It's not over. :)
"Grex needs to quit going into a tizzy every time someone uses the magic word, "censorship". oh? you mean the way you get your panties in a bunch when someone doesn't post using your eagle scout critera? fuck off fat BOY
How do I make a knot for carrying other people's water?
haha
the only cool people on here are m-netters
I'm drinking hot coffee
Here is a short article on another site (kuro5hin) apparently suffering a decline in membership due to social media like Facebook and Twitter, similar to what Grex is (somewhat) experiencing. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2010/5/18/231429/217
I don't think Grex's decline is at all related to Facebook and Twitter.
They have certainly sopped up a huge amount of user hours.
Whatever happened with this? #3 Mark A Conger (aruba) Mon, Sep 13, 2004 (12:28) The executive session the board went into was to discuss a subpoena we received from a law enforcement agency, relating to a particular user account. The board read over the subpoena carefully, and agreed to comply with it. We have now done so.
Was this related to that guy who mostly used mnet and kept constantly threatening to sue mnet for libel because of discussions about his rather complicated personal life, accusations that he did this or that at home, that had taken place on party? Every time he'd get worked up, he'd say "I'm gonna sue!" If so it might have been his lawyer trying to get grex party logs where similar discussions might have occurred. It is rather disturbing that the board chose to meet in 'executive session', a priviledge not even actually spelled out in the bylaws as something they could do, and then not discuss the details.
Maybe...I don't recall that guy. What was going on?
Executive or closed sessions are used for personnel issues and discussions which, for any reason, cannot be made public. Every board has to use them for some things. If it's rare, I don't see any reason to be concerned about it.
The board at that time said they would discuss the matter openly after the legal stuff was over with. I think it's well over with.
re #286 this guy kept threatening to sue mnet, I mean like again and again, he'd post items on general with what he said were quotes from legal papers he was always about to file. he and his wife both were both users as I recall, and he had this narrow view that anything anybody said in the confs or on party about him, his wife, his kids, whatever mnet was liable for.
re #284 If the staff conference was ever opened, which has been requested on numerous occasions, you could go back to that time period and read the discussions about this issue that are undoubtedly on there. However 'open' grex is supposed to be though, staff inevitably drags its feet when it comes to opening the staff conference.
Re 290: I don't think we're going to open up old staff conferences, which were responded to under the premise of privacy due to the issues discussed. If we do open up the staff conference, it'll be with a new version of the conference, or so was my recollection of the Board's discussion on the matter. Re 282: not at all? I doubt that. Note that the (somewhat) in that response is to indicate I don't believe it's entirely due to this reason given in the link. There are undoubtedly many reasons why Grex is in the situation it is today.
re #289 Wow, sounds crazy. I must have not been logging in at that time cuz I'd remember a weirdo like that.
Sounds like Bill Rugg, and I wasn't even on back then; I just remember the descriptions people posted.
re #293 bingo! you have a good memory. it was guys like bill rugg that killed mnet, which in its prime was much larger than grex ever was. there was a time back in the 90's when mnet was huge, had a potential to be something special. it was guys like bill rugg that brought it down. he'd only come on grex if mnet was down for a time but it would have been more than enough for him to fuss if he saw the same conversations going on here that went on there.
M-Net lost most of its userbase after it crashed from the big hack in 2000.
*cough* bullshit
vas u there charlie?
yes
Do you remember how many were logged in daily in 99 then how many in 2001?
I remember how many were logged in when I came on in 97. The numbers had already dropped alot by 99.
I agree
video killed the radio star and HTML killed these kind of systems
AOL killed the INTERNET
This response has been erased.
This response has been erased.
Man, spend a few years away and you forget how things work..... But it's interesting to see that you all are discussing the same things you were discussing 5...no, 7....no, close to 10 years ago. Keep discussing, maybe things will change. ;-)
LOL
resp:306 Grex is like comfort food in that regard. It is always the same even decades later :)
er...as in stale ass 10 year old "food"
eat up
grex = twinkies
grex=granola and dry oatmeal
Wow, you guys sure do write a lot while I'm gone. A few short notes (I don't have a lot of time right now to get too deep into the weeds. Such is life for me at the moment; at least no one has been able to kill me yet, though they've certainly tried). First, regarding the valerie issue. valerie mates wrote a script that deleted all of her posts in almost every Grex conference, save staff and maybe coop. She then used root privileges to delete her `baby diary' items in the parenting conference, though to my knowledge, she didn't delete anything else there. Grex staff was urged to restore those posts, but did not. As soon as it became apparent that staff would not restore the baby diary items, John Perry requested his divorce item to be deleted, and it was by Grex staff (I do not believe this was done by valerie mates, who, I *think* had revoked her own root access by then, but maybe I am wrong). It was requested that that, too, be restored but again, Grex staff declined. This then led to a series of member votes aimed at restoring the items, none of which were passed, and the number and frequency of such votes then led to a proposal that a certain percentage of grex's members would have to back a proposal before it could be brought to vote by the general membership, which passed and became grex policy. As I recall, both Mary and John Remmers were vehemently opposed to the deletion of the baby diary and divorce items and both lobbied hard to get them restored. The facts of this are, simply, that Grex --- as a whole and as a community --- compromised its free speech ethic here by supporting censorship. It really cannot be spun any other way. Was it democratic? Yes. But does that make it any less censorship? No. It just meant that the community democratically decided to censor itself. I think it's sad, and that it has permanently diminished Grex's claim to freedom of speech, but in the end, it's what the community wanted. Anyway, I just wanted to set the record straight on that. The idea of a second system sounds interesting, but I'm not sure it will do anything other than dilute the already existing one. That said, there might be a way to do both.... In order to explain that, though, one must ask the question, "What is Grex?" Some say it's a community, but it's more than that, really. It's the union of the users who use it, the system itself (including the software that runs it) and the activities of those users on that system. Consider this: the Grex community could move to any other conferencing system, but has not. Why not? Because that wouldn't be Grex. So there is something to be said for continuity in the technical sense, since that is part of the definition of the community. That is, the community is defined, at least in part, by the system it exists on. For proof, bear in mind that we actually lost a lot of users when we moved from the Sun to the current Grex machine (which was called `NextGrex': That is, the new hardware and the move to OpenBSD was the NextGrex project, not a re-invention of Grex as a system). Now, in this, I'll say that I think the hardware is more or less irrelevant at this point. We're running on x86 gear and will continue to do so probably until Grex ceases to exist. There's just nothing else out there that's viable to move to. So that part can be futzed with at will. The software, however, is much more integral to what Grex really is. People, for whatever odd reason, tend to get emotionally attached to software (be it operating systems, programming languages, or particular programs written in those languages and running on those operating systems). I get a sense of nostalgia whenever I use VMS or an older version of Unix or an IBM mainframe because that's what I "grew up" on, so to speak. Software has a much greater attachment than hardware for most people, and the Grex community is no different. Witness how many *years* it took to retire the PicoSpan program, despite having superior alternatives available. There's still some nostalgia for that, I'm quite sure. But here's the thing about software that, I think, is both interesting and relevant to the present discussion: software is *malleable*. It can be modified and shaped to be, essentially, whatever one would like. Why is this relevant? Well, Grex is now running on all open-source software; there is nothing here that we don't have the source code to, and the only thing I think there's any question about whether we have the right to modify is the "gate" program, because it's not clear what license Jan Wolter applied to it when he wrote it. Since it's available for download from his web site, I'd guess it's implicit that we can modify it as we see fit, but I really don't know if that's true or not, and I'm not a lawyer. I sent him email asking him about it some time ago (because we made a local change to support job control under fronttalk on OpenBSD), but he never responded. I doubt he cares, but perhaps someone who knows him better could ask.... Anyway, as I was saying, software is malleable. Meaning that it can be molded to be, essentially, whatever someone would like. All it takes is time and energy put into the software itself. If Grex would like to put a modern face on itself, then there's no reason it cannot do so and yet retain compatibility with the retro feel that some value so dearly. All it would take to do that would be some effort put into the software itself. In many ways, this is exactly what fronttalk is: a retro frontend to backtalk, which is a web-based conferencing system. If people want to extend the system in various ways, it's certainly *possible* to do so: just mold the software to be what people want. The thing that's lacking here is time, energy, and people. About a year ago, I wanted to do a lot of this kind of work, but, well, then I found out I'd be in Afghanistan, and here I am: typing this while leaning up against the side of a tent in Helmand Province, a 9mm handgun strapped to my hip with a couple of (loaded) magazines in case the base gets overrun. I'm afraid I'm hardly in a position to invest lots of effort into re-working Grex's software for at least another few months (and if I take one through the running lights, then forever). That's just the way it is. So I think that, perhaps, a good question to ask is *why* Grex isn't attracting the type of people who would be interested in doing that sort of thing? The answer to that is going to be a lot more illuminating, and I suspect that, in part, it has to do with the nature of the community itself. People have drifted away, but few people ever ask why. There's lots of speculation, but no one has polled those people to really get a feel for why they've moved on. For instance, has anyone thought to poll people like Marcus Watts, or even Steve Andre? Sure, the latter logs on, but only sporadically and he rarely participates in the BBS. Anyway, I guess the point is this: recreating Grex doesn't require throwing away the existing system; it just requires another layer of abstraction. Both can coexist happily on the same host. Actually, that's something that's sort of always intrigued me: the idea of multiple communities existing within the same physical (or virtual) space. I've thought about this quite a bit, and I know I've mentioned it here before (my "community of communities" idea); this grows out of a social observation I've made living in the physical world, that in any given physical space, there exist many, largely independent communities. Look around you sometime and you'll probably see what I mean; people with different friends and interests who comprise one community living next to another group, or hanging in some space that used by other such groups. Why couldn't Grex be that for virtual communities? Personally, I wish it was more of a draw for hacker types who are interested in neat technology stuff. I see SDF as being something like that, and wonder why we're different. I suspect that, at least in part, historically the Grex community has been so focused on making *one* coherent community versus fostering many using different software, etc, on the same machine. This is what many people think is meant when Grex says something like, "we're a conferencing system" versus, "we're a public access Unix system" or just, "we're a public system." Even the name implies a singular community.
I'd very much like to see Grex continue to exist on familiar software. If
staff were available to rewrite it - cool! But I don't see that happening,
alas.
I'm thinking about an experimental system (I'll call it The Ark for now) that
would exist as a Google group. I've been playing with it for a few weeks now
and here is a partial good news / bad news list:
Good News:
Free
No technical staff needed
It's cloud-based and independent of our hardware, software and Provide
A Google email account is not required
Discussions thread
Clean, intuitive look and feel (subjective, I know)
User "Pages" feature allows users to create personal web pages
A "Files" section allows members to upload individual files to share with
the group - this includes photos Group membership can be public or private
There is a administrative choice to allow content to be indexable Comments
can be read directly, through individual emails, as a daily digest, or RSS
Users can delete their own posts
Bad News:
It's not Backtalk and folks would have to suffer a learning curve
It seems to be designed for optimal use via email
When reading directly (not email) posts seem to take a while to update as
read Groups membership requires a Google account (but not Google email)
It's not Backtalk!
I'm sure there are many more issues (good and bad) than what I'm listing here.
Again, the idea here is it would be an experiment, taking volunteers from this
community and trying out different access, setting and delivery modes. We'll
learn a lot as we go along.
Here is a Google groups site set-up a few months ago that I've been using to
test things out:
http://groups.google.com/group/grextalk
At the moment it's set to let anyone read it but you must be a member to post.
Membership must be okayed by a moderator. Until today it was open to all and
it had collected a fair amount of spam. I deleted most of it but left a few
so that those on the board who want to futz with it could do so. Let me know
and I'll include you as a manager so you can see the available choices. This
Grex Talk group will not be morphing into The Ark. If the board decides to
try this it will be with a fresh start.
Foobar formatting. Sorry.
Dan makes some good points, especially regarding programming and the flexibility of applications that can be gained through programming. Instead of bemoaning the fact that we don't have people who can do the necessary programming (or anything else on Grex), why don't we see if there are those who can? It'll take some enthusiasm and some imagination and some time but it's not impossible. And it's not a bad thing if you can keep your "comfort food" while others get a newer interface, unless you feel like you need deny others their satisfaction. Grex has forgotten the innovative and inventive spirit and enthusiasm that got it going in the first place. Refuse to change with the times and get left behind. Not all change is good (remember New Coke?), but a total lack of change is generally the death of an organization, especially when technology and society move away from what the organization is doing (like Blockbuster). Grex should not be the buggywhip manufacturer of the Internet (though undoubtedly some people still use buggywhips) if it hopes to revive itself. It's not too late to remember.
re #316 I think grex has forgotten the communal spirit in which it was founded. MNet had started as this liberal idealistic place, but then it was bought by this guy who needed to see a return on his investment and made business decisions. Grex was started by disaffected MNet users who wanted to be part of a community in which everyone could have an equal stake, where one person didn't own it. Where everything was shared and the objectives were the common good, an internet community that users could be part of and where nobody was more important than anyone else. Grex was seemingly intended as a microexample of what society itself could be if people worked together. What has happened is that the communal idea, of grex as a community where the users collectively build something that is a whole of all of its parts and everyone shares of what it becomes, has been overrun by those with a libertarian ethic. With all the freedoms it offered, Grex has ended up becoming not the bastion for liberal idealism and community that was intended, but rather a haven instead for those who don't want a community, who don't care about a community. The idealistic liberals and progressives who founded this place and used to post here have been replaced by libertarians and conservatives, those whose basic idea of community is not to have one but to be left alone. Somewhere along the line Grex ceased being a community, and the great idea behind its founding was lost. Now its a place where right wingers, libertarians and trolls, none of whom have or had any desire to see Grex grow or thrive as a community, but all of whom can take advantage of Grex's lack of moderation and censorship, are most of whats left. Grex was a great idea once. But that was a then. Now its just like an old ship that lost most of its crew a long time ago and because it was built sturdily and still sails, and hasn't sunk yet, pirates who couldn't give damn of what it was built for are content to sail it around until it sinks.
My point would be that Grex does not need to be one idea that has run its course. With some innovation and creativity, it might become a new community, using what it has learned from the past nearly 20 years. But, as Richard points out, it can't be a thriving community with people who don't care. We need enthusiasm for meaningful, purposeful change and doing things to help.
LOL...too little too late. gelinas is right...grex won't last the year
So you are unwilling to help?
look,it's over. Times have changes it's time to move on. Or take tonsters offer and let him set grex up like m-net. Our dues are like 15 bucks a year and we never go down. thanks tony
Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! The dues are in the by-laws so it would take a by-law change to modify those. Not impossible, but would need enough voters. Considering we have money in the bank and need members more, it would make some sense to lower the dues as long as we could still pay for operations and improvements. Also, other similar services have lower dues, so from a competitive view, they should be lowered. For those who don't care about Grex succeeding, why are you still here?
Why don't we ask people to send in 3 months worth of dues? That's currently $18. According to our bylaws they will then be able to vote on a bylaw change to lower dues. The new, lower amount, could be made retroactive to, say, January 2010, so those that paid 3 months are now member for a year.
re #322 yes but it was also in the bylaws that you needed to be a current dues paying member to vote in elections and the board simply voted to ignore that part in December when it was apparent that almost nobody was a dues paying member at that point. The board simply decided that anybody who had ever been a member could vote. On the basis of that precedent, the board seems to be able to waive or ignore the bylaws as the need presents itself.
resp:324 I think that is a good idea
Re #322: "...the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"?
Rane. Don't walk...RUN... to the nearest movie rental place and rent the 1978 classic, "Animal House".
re #326 And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
Re 324, so that's an excuse to repeat the mistakes of the past? I don't find that a credible argument. Exceptional circumstances sometimes call for exceptional measures but not necessarily now. Honestly, if people won't pay for a membership, even the Board, we are in big trouble. I've encouraged the Board to pay up to be in line with the by-laws. We'll see how that goes. The idea of a 3 month membership that could be made retroactive into a yearly membership sounds like a good idea to me, if we can get the by-laws changed to allow that. It would even apply to the Board.
I like Mary's idea of moving the conferencing to a new platform. If this is done, wouldn't a benefit of it be that the corporate structure of grex-- which is to say 'cyberspace communications, inc." could finally be disolved? It is beyond obvious that whatever users are left here are not really enough to support a corporation and there aren't any other non profit activities going on that this corporation supports.
Except I wasn't suggesting moving anything. Everything here would continue as it otherwise would. A second system would not look or behave anything like this one. It would be quite different, actually. Or at least that's my hope.
If the bylaws are changed to change the dues, I recommend that the bylaws simply give the Board the authority to set the dues. It is rather unusual for bylaws to give specific financial specifications, like dues.
greedy cocksuckers...
I don't think dues should be asked for unless the board submits a plan for the future of grex. Right now as Grex's future looks bleak and nothing changes, you aren't making an argument for why this organization is worth supporting. Don't raise dues, or even ask for dues, until things get better. If Grex proves itself viable again there will be support for it, n the meantime its bills are minimal and it has money in the bank to last at least another year. I would suggest that doing anything about dues right now should in no way be a priority.
a busted clock is right twice a day and richard has the day's first
I want to be a voting member so I'm sending in $18. Now, if nobody else does I guess it's all going to pretty much go my way. ;-)
resp:336 I was thinking of getting 10 of my closest friend memberships as gifts and then starting a movement to remove certain items by membership vote just to see if I could get people to complain about it for the next ENTIRE decade!
I've paid my dues for 6 months so there's a couple of us members that can vote. Plus the couple other paid up members. We're on a roll! :-) I do like the idea of a 3 month membership. [Lynne slipped in...]
Have the two phone lines been dropped yet? I don't want to be paying for lines that nobody is using.
re# 337 you were "thinking" i doubt if it amouted to much re#339 stfu shopping cart girl,you pay nothing anyway
Re 339: see coop item 279 for the decision on this. I've been told that the request for one line to be dropped has been made to the phone company. I'm unsure if that has occurred yet. It's up to the phone company once the request has been made.
Something that seems to be missed here.... Grex is not just the BBS and party. Grex is a collection of things that includes those two, but they are not the sum of what Grex is. If the conferences are not used, that just means that that one part of the community is dying; that doesn't mean that Grex isn't used for other things (it is, all the time: people login to Grex for interactive use of Unix). In fact, I'd guess that this latter group outweighs the former by quite a bit now.
grex should also set a date where it will stop offering offsite email. you want offsite email? go to hotmail or gmail. at one point offering free email was a needed service but that was years ago. grex doesn't need to be in the email business at all now. re #342 grex was formed to be a community, not to be a place where assorted people can play around with unix.
So much for the "intellectual enrichment" aspect of Grex's principles, then. Learning about Unix is intellectual enrichment for some. The idea that Grex is about one or two things just isn't so, as Dan points out. Grex is different things to different people. Included in that is learning about Unix and about programming languages (hence conferences dedicated to those topics). A community does not need to go forward in lockstep, doing the same one or two things all the time. A community can be diverse in terms of interests, too. I'd like to see Grex offer more opportunities for people to get interested in Unix, programming, system administration, and application development in addition to improving the conferencing system and adding other ways for people to communicate.
So agree with Kent.
Re 332: yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Putting in specific numbers for the dues just makes it harder to change if we need to. While that may have been the orginal intent, times (and the economy) have changed and will continue to change. Re 334: The Board is working on a plan right now. This item was for getting some ideas of what people want to see, as input into a plan. Speak up if you have ideas that will help in planning what Grex should do going forward. But remember, that just saying Grex needs to improve or be better is not specific to what needs to be done. My idea of "better" may not be your idea of "better." [Obligatory Disclaimer: Ideas expressed in this item may be used by Grex for planning the future operations of the system and the organization. No guarantee is given that ANY idea given here will end up in a final plan for Grex going forward or influence Grex's operations, but it's likely some will.] Re 342: In regard to adding more tools for programming, I mentioned that in response 8 above, so this item has not been all about the BBS and party, though certainly those have been in the majority of comments. Anyway, I'm all for tools and information that could help people program and use Unix, including new languages, debuggers, etc. Maybe we could even do some tutorials on our web site?
Learning unix on grex I feel is outdated especially when you can get a decent linux/freebsd etc boxes for quite cheap. Dirt cheap if sindi helps. I doubt anyone would take the trouble to connect to grex just to practise his unix skills. But then again its what i think. The actual usage of grex maybe quite opposite.
m-net has plenty of students that use it to learn unix.just login and do a "w" and see what they are doing.haven't seen too much of that on grex
And, not everyone has the time, skills, or money (even though it's not all that expensive since an old computer will do) to put together a linux/*bsd box to play on. People quite often need to learn Unix for school or for work and would rather invest their time in aspects other than building a unix box. If we can make that learning process easier so much the better (and it's in line with our mission).
resp:344 Kent hits it so on the head here. resp:343 Whatever Grex was formed to be is only tangentially relevant at this point, in my opinion.
I get most of my mail at grex and might go away if the mail goes away. sdf has no spam filter.
yeah well let us know when you have upgraded to win95
Plus has the Ted Nugent intro, right?
confirmed today that the 2nd phn line is suppposed to be NOW disconnected. i ->reeeeally<- do not like their specific procedure however. regardless, it is axxomplished.
Did you try calling it? :)
hmmmmmmmmmmmm , intersting idea .. just did ... it stil answers with modem noises ... but (according to to the att rep, the billing will have stoppped as of the req date. we shall see .....
intercept msg ... no longer in servidce
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