The board had mentioned a while back about having a "town hall" meeting, but that would generally only be for those who can come in person. So, to fill in that gap, we thought it would be good to have an item that will stay around as agora get rolled. So, here it is. What we want to do is get opinions about how Grex can move forward, what we can do to encourage more people to use it, and what we want Grex to provide in terms of services or applications. Some of these questions have come up in other items, but we'd like to pull them all into here and develop a plan for Grex to move beyond where it is today. Now that we've had 6 months or more to try to get Grex going again, it is time to see what else we can do beyond making it more stable and reliable and adding more staff to take care of issues in a timely manner.357 responses total.
What is happening with the two phone lines?
One of them will be discontinued.
And we'll monitor the remaining one to see how much it gets used.
BTW, Board meeting minutes, which document this decision on phone lines are available in the coop conference in item 279.
I want Grex to attract new members, which it is not doing and has not been doing since the validation patch was put in eliminating a fully open newuser. Today's internet has far too many things to do for most people to have the patience to wait around for some staff member to 'validate' them and confer that they are good enough to participate here. The validation patch should be removed and then Grex needs to discuss ways it can publicize itself and attract more people here. Grex needs to use some of its funds to let people know its around and its cool. I recall some years ago Grex used to sponsor a movie night at one of the outdoor movie things they had in A2, even gave out keychains or pins or something there one year. Grex can also better publicize itself through youtube, facebook, twitter .etc
set up an IRC server set up a newsgroup server set up a gopher server these retro services will attract the only people who really care about unix places like this anyway. Hippy nerds chowing down on granola and trail mix.
re #6 I would only be for IRC if people are forced to telnet to port 6669 and use it manually..none of that remote mIrc or BitchX GUI client stuff. Newsgroup and IRC is all about p2p file xfer anymore...waste of bandwidth.
Maybe gopher will make a comeback? Hmmm... The idea of a retro system has been tossed around a bit. It is one way to go and one thing we can continue to do (text conferencing, for example). We could do more retro things, of course. Along this line, installing more programming languages, debuggers, databases, and other apps that can be run or used at the command line might attract some new users (even if they aren't "retro"). GUI apps tend to use too many system resources for a small multi-user system. Perhaps if we got a better system... Becoming a member of Grex gets you access to more features, like outgoing access. BitchX and ircII are available, for example, if you are a verified (not validated) member. These are command line programs. I don't know that being only a retro system will attract a large community of new users willing to become members, though. We're more likely to attract new users with newer means of communication or at least a fresher interface to the conferences and email. And of course, we'd need a more open new user policy than what we have now. The latter assumes the system can be set up so that juvenile twits don't cause frequent issues. Being destructive is so much easier than being constructive... Not everyone wants to use Facebook or Myspace or Twitter.
the towonhall idea is a goo done and if we could get non-local partipsipation it wold be even better. the meeting wold hae to be a tad more controlled/discipliend than just a ppl-ftf-gathering thogh. woth tonsters confernce call facility, and one of my amps, the assemble multitude could partipsipate from .. oh,,,, paki/afgh/engl/japan or wherever. thoughts?
Grex needs to start allowing graphics in its conferencing posts. Everyone who blogs or conferences these days uses pictures and such. In addition backtalk needs to be changed to start allowing posts to be edited. In most other places you post on the internet, you are given the chance to retroactively edit your entries at least for a short period after posting if you choose. Here you make a typo or a mistake in a post you have to delete the whole thing.
Allowing graphics in the conferences? Well, I guess 4chan.org is pretty popular too.
Sadly, "/b/ isn't your personal army." /g/, however, can promise users to break new ground in raid organization and allow libertarian militias to roam > Here at Grex, Everybody Gets Their Own Personal Army [of One]
Ow sh*t I forgot the ;-)
I like the idea of editing posts. If we had someone who could change backtalk reliably, we'd be in business for that as long as there were no policy reason against editing (I'd assume if each user owns their own responses such that they could delete them, they should also be able to edit them). I've seen on some systems where a note is added to the post to indicate when it was edited so that readers know it has been changed. I'm not sure about the graphics. It would be neat in some respects, but as soon as someone starts posting images that will get Grex in trouble with the law, then we'd need to start moderating responses, which doesn't sound good.
Can you already link to images at other sites?
Obviously, you can cut and paste links to other sites in a conference response but the conferencing software doesn't interpret those links to, say, display an image.
re #14 I like the idea of editing posts. That's called CENSORSHIP.
The only issue I can see with allowing users to edit their previous posts is that sooner or later some troublemaker is going to go edit it their posts in such a way as to make it seem like responses to the original post were in response to the original post. I might enter an item entitled 'HOw many joints have you smoked this year?' and most everyone will say zero. Then I could change it to 'How many times have you had sex this year?' har har. But people could make others look dumb. The only solution would be to cut and paste the original post into the response which opens up a whole nuther can of worms.
Hmm...editing your own words? I guess deleting your response is censorship then? Censorship is done by others to your words, not by you to your own words (unless you want to call it self-censorship, but as the owner of your own words you can do what you want with them). What should we do then? Put back all the posts that people deleted because they were owner?
re 17: Maybe some of us like censorship you hippy!
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See? I need to edit #21. I guess I should delete it and enter it again. What a pain.
The thing is, if you can delete your own response and enter it again in edited form, then you've well...edited it. Why not make that one step instead of two?
When you do it that way, it is very clear which responses occurred before the edit and which after.
re #20 Once the censors are allow then all tha twill be left ar Roman tax cllecorsz!
editing can be allowed for a short time after posting (say an hour or two) and after that the only way left would be to delete and re-enter.
wb sholmes ... good #26 . bu ti;d limit the edit capability until there is anohter repsonse following .... following resp might refer to prev and then alowng edit of prev WoulD lead to endless confusion.
re #26 Yeah many boards that are out there let people edit posts for up to an hour or two after the post was made. I know that when Backtalk was first installed that Janc, who wrote it, said the edit function was in the program, that he wanted to have it as a function, but that staff objected to its use on grex just as they had objected years earlier to having an edit function with picospan which clearly could have been done. It seems the objection was that it would give too much power to the trolls. If grex was like a newspaper, well once the newspaper is printed you can't edit an article that is in it. When you hit 'enter' you are in effect publishing your post just like an article. I think giving posters a window of time to edit their posts is not going to empower trolls.
Another thing that could be done to get more users to Grex is a web-based party/chat program. I'm one of the few left on here who remembers when the 'Party' program, Grex's chat program, was a vital part of Grex. It used to be a place where people gathered day and night to interact in real time. Unfortunately grex's party program is not used anymore because it is only accessible via telnet or dial-in and nobody telnets or dials in anymore. It is now a useless program. I want to see a web based chat program. This is nothing that hasn't been discussed before. One could have been put in back when backtalk was installed as part of the programming. But again then staff objected it would bring too much traffic to grex and anybody who wanted to chat could telnet or dial in and use the old program. Times have changed. You either take a chance on these things or whats the point of continuing? I would love to see a web-based chat service on Grex. I believe that when Party died on Grex it hastened the dying of Grex altogether.
bellstar is a trip,I wish his ass would come back to m-net
What I had suggested for editing was that a note could be added to the post to show that it had been edited (e.g. when the last edit occurred, as multiple edits would be possible in the time window). Thus the objection to not knowing a post had been edited can be worked around. Allowing a period of time for edits is also a reasonable idea. That would allow people to take care of typos. Later the only choice would be to delete the entire response. Or at least, that's one way we could implement editing. Encouraging trolls? How about encouraging participation? How about we try some ideas and see how they work? Right now we're just coasting along and griping. Web-based chat sounds interesting to me, as well. I don't think we are as bound by bandwidth or system resource issues as we were 10 years ago. As always, aside from having a clear idea of how we'd want that to work, we'd also need someone to implement it. If we are fortunate enough to attract many new users, we can talk about improving the hardware to support applications that are using significant system resources. Try to find ways to make things work. Don't try so hard to shoot down ideas.
just need to a bbs that uses php...vbulletin or some shit like that
There's modifying our current bbs and there's switching to something else. Both should be considered, I think. In the short term we might need to go with modifications to backtalk, but if we had someone with the expertise to install and set up a new conferencing system, we'd have a better chance of trying that out. Anyway, it sounds like something we could experiment with, if only to see how it looks and operates, and how much maintenance is involved.
(NB: grex's users, not its staff, have objected to the editing of posts and other 'improvements.')
Users or members? And just objections or a member vote? How many did not object?
It was not a vote. There has been extensive discussion of the matter over the years. Richard remembers "the staff" objecting, and I remember just about everyone objecting. No big deal. The question is, "What do people want to do _now_?"
I have a feeling a lot of these improvements will not be as bad as some people think, especially since we really don't have much participation in the conferences and we're holding new users back with a validation requirement (and probably chasing many away before they ever give Grex a real try). Something like editing responses could be implemented and tried out and if it is a huge issue (which I doubt), it could be taken back out (or turned off) later. It perhaps could be made optional in the user's setup if they object to it so much. It says a lot about the Grex users that they refuse to even try. This situation has chased more than one user away. If we decide to cater to a small group of vocal users who want to keep things as they were in the past we potentially lose the opportunity to gain new users looking for something other than a bbs from 20 years ago. One option would be to present the old interface to those who want it and a different interface to those who want something newer in terms of features and appearance. I don't know how possible that is given our current programming resources, but it's something to consider.
Or cyberspace communications could start a second (fresh) system for conferencing. It would live in the cloud and not be encumbered by old software and old rules. This version would remain and we could see how it goes for both of them.
resp:37 One thing I would ask for if responses are allowed to be edited would be for the ability to use blockquote tags in order to quote things I am responding to.
once this cirle jerk circus stops spinning then grex is dead. we have the same people debating the same topic over and over. with no clear winner. I say offer some cool ass php games like facebook does. keep the shell for those granfathered in and attact other users with the sort of games facebook does. 80% of facebook revenue is either directly or indirectly connected to games. my first suggestion is "kill the neo-commies" I can code it if you can support it.
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level 1 outwit with the dull and slow faggot called richard level 2 show slynne for the shallow thinker she is level 3 make the neurotic sindi put you on her ignore list level 4 make a jackass out of brooke level 5 beat the one dimensional rcurl in a debate level 6 make tod stop trolling for a second and get all serious and shit level 7 fuck with bellstar
level 8 get the whole ann arbor circle jerk circus in an uproar level 9 make marcvh do a google search level 10 defend the hero cross against all comers level 11 make nharmon address you personly level 12 flame fatass steve and ugly glenda for never participating in a system they desire to control
**BONUS LEVEL** level 13 make the antigrex twinkie post in agora
Re 38: If that would help Grex financially and in terms of its mission, it'd be worth discussing. It sounds a lot like throwing in the towel on the one community idea, though. Unfortunately, it may be the best way to move Grex forward when significant change is required. Re 39: That sounds reasonable to me. It would probably just be an indent of the quoted text with a couple blank lines, but it would help a lot to differentiate quote from response. A simple tag could indicate start and end of the quote. Of course, once you add tags like that you might as well just be running a more modern bbs which supports such things, including editing. Re 40: Debate is generally a good thing. But endless debate without conclusion and not changing with changing times will kill Grex. Given that a lot of people (as evidenced by Facebook) want to play games this might be something we can do to gain users. For example, Grexburg! We've always offered text-based games so it's not like games are forbidden. We still need to encourage communication and discussion as part of our main mission. (It may be that some people who come here to play games will become involved in other activities on on Grex.) However, using a game to defame other users won't help Grex (legally or otherwise) even if it is done humorously. For those of you who are not members, but want Grex to do or not do something, why are you not members? What would convince you to become a member?
I don't have a strong view on things like games or editing responses, although I can't really imagine us competing with Facebook in this area. The reason I'm not a member is because I don't really see "lack of money" as being one of Grex's main problems. Maybe I'm mistaken in that belief, but there it is.
And the financial aspect of membership is the least important.
Right now, that may be true since we need members to help influence policy and vote in board elections. But we didn't have enough members to do that in the last election. We can't in good conscience continue to avoid our by-laws in order to have elections. Yet, this does not seem to be enough of a reason for people to become members. And for those who see finance as the deciding reason not to become a member, how small a bank balance is enough for you to become a member? One point that should be obvious here is that we need members no matter what our bank balance, so that's why it's important we know what will increase our membership.
Right; if we can't get members, then it becomes painfully obvious that the membership can no longer support the corporation.
You've got to provide an organization that is worthy of buying membership into and a product worth supporting. Right now Grex has money but the board has shown an unwillingness, indeed a near total apathy, towards the idea of investing those funds into a make or break overhaul that would either work or not work.
The board is a group of people who have generously volunteered to help (note the word "help") keep the system viable. They are working with not a lot of money, almost no staff, and a group of users who are unwilling to consider any change unless it meets their personal preference regardless of the bigger picture. It's sad, really. Go to your room, Richard, until you can come out and apologize to those willing to be your pinata. Or get on the board yourself and show us how it should be done.
*historic event* I agree with mary
I don't know how much money Grex has now, but I quit being a member because it had a big bankroll and nothing on which to spend money. The only purpose for contributing money to Grex under those circumstances is because you don't want to have it yourself. I think Grex still has plenty of money for any conceivable need over quite a few years. If it has a need for more money, I will send a check. Grex is valuable to me, and I will support it as needed. I haven't voted because I am not a member and so not eligible. I did vote a half year ago when longtime users such as myself were invited to do so. As for a vision for the future, I like Grex now. I won't use it if it becomes anything like Facebook, because I don't enjoy Facebook. And if I did, I would spend time there. I agree that Grex needs a stronger user base and isn't going to get one by remaining as it is. I haven't thought of any changes to the user interface or functionality which would bring more users in, while retaining what I like about it now. I think a lot of what has driven many people away has been the willingness and ability of conversation snipers such as zulu and lar to disrupt discussions. I think they will eventually drive me away, too, which is why I think it's a reason why others have left. Grex has held to it's choice to be "free speech", which really means to retain such as those at the expense of others who would be more community minded. People who won't tolerate that kind of stuff leave, and so the snipers become more and more prominent. If that problem had been solved years ago, I think Grex would be a lot more stable now, and a lot more interesting. I don't know if it's too late and I don't think those remaining want to change the Grex philosophy of doing business, anyway.
I have one of these idiots on my ignore list, and generally choose to ignore most comments by the other. Try doing the same.
If we were to invest everything we have in a new system (which is what it would take given some of the staff's suggestions), we'd be without funds to operate. It is also prudent to keep some money as back up in the event of a shortfall in funds or an increase in expenses, thus not all of the money we have is available for a new system. So we'll come up short if we try to do that. It has been suggested to run a fund-raiser for a new system, which I think is fine. But we need to to have a clear idea of what we want to do with that new system (which is what this item is intended for).
It sounds like it might be a good idea for the board to consider lowering the cost of membership.
Re 57: yeah, that's on my list of ideas, too. Other similar systems have lower rates, so to be competitive, we might want to lower the cost. Then it wouldn't prove as much a barrier to those who feel Grex has a huge pile of cash (which I would argue it doesn't unless you feel like limping along like we are now, with few members, old equipment, etc. in which case we have about a year or so to go).
I can't speak for others but one reason I havent sent in membership money is that, due to bad financial habits on my part, I have been paying off some debt. That process has left me with little extra money. I have never really considered grex a charity so I don't include it in my charitable giving budget. I'll have all that debt paid off in a couple of months but I will still be short of money because I have been putting off some house projects that I will need to save up for. I am talking several thousand dollars of house projects so my spending is going to be in reduced mode for a few more years. Basically my perception is that grex needs the money less than I do. But if it were a smaller amount (say $30/year), it would be much easier for me to just include it as an entertainment expense.
re #52 see this is one of the problems. You suggest ideas here and people get defensive. Grex has thousands of dollars in the bank and yet was down for more than a month this past December because it took that long to get the board to meet and authorize a hundred bucks to purchase new hardware. It also didn't help that even though there multiple staff members, there was only one apparently who knew the old code well enough to be of any use fixing it. Poor STeve got bashed for taking so long fixing things when other staff members didn't want to touch Grex with a ten foot pole. At least one board member (Cross) said he wanted Grex to go away. So don't sit here and get defensive when you've got a Grex that is a shell of what it once was and expect people to call those serving on the staff saints. Hey I've volunteered places and I've never looked at the fact that I was donating my own time as an excuse to be above all criticism.
FWIW, the biggest reason I don't want to be on the board is the attitude towards board members that guys like richard have. I just don't feel like being anyone's punching bag.
Yep.
Then you shouldn't be on the board. Being a board member of any organization means taking responsibility.
(whoosh)
In fact one of the reasons Grex is in the position it is now, is because one board member, who was the treasurer, Aruba, became inactive. Didn't say anything, didn't do anything. Dropped off the radar for a year. No treasurer's reports, no notices about memberships. How could grex maintain memberships when the treasurer wasn't around to remind anyone what their status was? So suddenly its the end of last year and Grex has no members. Pretty lousy situation right? But if you'd listen to Mary and Slynne you'd get the idea that those who use and value grex should shut up and not say anything because those who didn't do what they said they'd do, what the position asked to be done, should be above criticism because they volunteered. This is not the way it should work. We can't work together to make a better Grex unless there's a common goal and those who accept responsibilities and titles to represent the other users work towards those goals. Sometimes I wonder if some serve on the board simply because it looks good on a resume to say you were a sitting board member of an organization.
When you are ready to serve on the board richard, people might take your criticism more seriously. As it stands, it is doing more harm than good.
So you are saying that the only people who can criticize board members who are other board members. I use this board, I value this board. Why that isn't enough to be able to offer my own two cents about whats wrong here I don't get? Slynne you are soundly horribly elitist.
Think about it. I've offered half a dozen suggestions here in this item asking for such, to slynne's zero suggestions and mary's zero. They aren't offering new ideas, they are criticizing those who dare to say anything. This is another example of grex's board and staff being way too insulated and cliquish, which has been an ongoing problem here for years. This is why its the same people serving over and over. Why should any well meaning outsiders want to serve on the board when all you get is apathy and thin skin.
There is a difference between offering constructive ideas and berating others for not doing the work you also are unwilling to do.
I was assuming there were others who could do the work. I don't live in Ann Arbor and I am not a CS tech person. One can criticize the performance of invidividuals while not putting oneself up as the best person to do the job. Hell I criticize the President sometimes and I don't put myself up as the one who should step in and do the job.
This item was entered to ask 'how do we move forward'? What can be done to make Grex better? I answered the question. I gave material suggestions such as adding use of graphics, but I also gave non- material suggestions like addressing the apathy of the group which is evidenced by the likewise apathy of board and staff. slynne and mary offer NO new suggestions and attempt to swerve the discussion away from what can be done to improve grex, by slamming me for daring suggest that this growing apathy among some present/past board/staff members may or may not have been part of what has led to the current problem. I'm trying to contribute. I'm offering honest answers to the question the poster of this item asked. I don't know why mary and slynne even posted in this item other than to slam me. If they don't have a clue as to how to help grex at this point, or if they think participation on board or staff should put them above criticism, they should admit it and not serve on board or staff anymore. Posting here also simply to slam one of the fewer users actively participating for daring to suggest anything or criticize anything about grex is not constructive.
It would be different if there were a lot of people who wanted to be on the board. People can be critical of the POTUS because even with all of the criticism, there still are a lot of people willing to do the job. That isn't the case here. Instead you are beating up the only people willing to do *any* work because they arent willing to do enough work to satisfy you. That makes people less likely to contribute. I appreciate constructive posts. But being overly critical of the few people willing to do any work is not constructive. It is especially annoying when it comes from someone not willing to actually contribute in any meaningful way. Not to say that your suggestions aren't meaningful but trust me, grex has never been short of people willing to tell everyone what should be done. grex is short of people willing to do anything. You do not need to be in Ann Arbor to serve on the board. You need time and a phone.
I contribute in the ways that I can. I don't think I'd get elected to the board even if I did run, nor do I possess the expertise in cs to properly participate in many of the conversations. I also have explicitly declined in the past to become a paying member because I object to a financial transaction being a required criteria for membership and to validation being required. One should be able to earn a membership through conference participation. Activity is a measurable value. I don't have anything against giving money, but there was a time grex had many users from around the world here and some could not pay money to exchange rate issues or could not or would not validate themselves. Grex offered free anonymous access but you can't be a member free and anonymously. I think the board's intransigence on these matters has been issue. However now that membership rules have been waived left and right I guess its not such an issue.
I wonder if all this animosity of discussion would happen if we all were speaking face to face? Perhaps, but I kind of doubt it would go on for long. I certainly don't appreciate being called apathetic or inflexible. It sure doesn't make me want to work harder or listen/read more attentively. Our goal is generally to build a consensus before acting, which is difficult to do at this time especially with objections to any idea. The Board can pass policies without asking the users but we try not to do that, so that's one reason for this item. Things like major policy changes and strategy development often have no obvious answer and require much discussion before the best course can be chosen. So, the sooner we get to respectfully and constructively discussing what we can do, the better. I don't find some of the comments very constructive or very explanatory. For example, what does a "make or break overhaul" mean here (resp 51)? What is entailed? How much does it cost? Etc. Just saying we need an overhaul isn't constructive. But what an overhaul means to you, with examples, might be helpful and influence our decisions. As to blaming people for what they didn't do last year, and 5 week outages last year, move on. What's done is done and we've done what we can do to not have it happen again at least in terms of outages. Yes it's important to understand how we got where we are, but blame is not constructive. You'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar. Let's move forward. I do appreciate the ideas. It would be helpful if they did not often appear as criticisms. Putting people on the defensive is not the best way to get a fair evaluation of your ideas. And just tossing an idea out there isn't the end of it because you need to potentially add to what you said before people understand what you mean. You may even be asked to compromise or modify your idea! But that's the risk you take when you start talking.
I'm sincere about the retro system approach. I'm all about text based multi user systems. I try to ignore the static in this item at the personal attacks level.
re #74 thank you kent, I hear where you are coming from.
Ok, thanks, Richard.
Re #69: "There is a difference between offering constructive ideas and berating others for not doing the work you also are unwilling to do." You mean, we shouldn't criticize our president and congresspeople unless we are willing to do the jobs ourselves? Tell that to the Tea Party..... I take the opposite position. It is the duty of members to criticize the leaders of the organization for not doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. It may not cause improvement, but not doing so will definitely not cause improvements.
I'm really behind in this item, and catching up. This may get long. resp:10: graphics are disabled? editing of responses is disabled? was there a technical or some other reason for doing this? I'm not positive about graphics, but certainly editing of responses requires no recompilation of backtalk, it's a variable setting. That would take almost nothing to make work; I consider it broken for it to be disabled. resp:15: You can link to other sites easily. Just paste a URL, it'll get clickified. HTML is also enabled, so you can create your own link if necessary. resp:18: Modified responses are clearly identified. see: m-net's backtalk implementation. resp:26: that's not technically possible with backtalk, and quite frankly is lame.
tonster I think graphics were left disabled when backtalk was installed due to bandwidth concerns. It would be nice to for instance be able to embed a link to some cool youtube clip in an item rather than just pasting a url.
bandwidth concerns? was grex on dialup at the time or something? almost all images I would imagine would be hosted offsite (like embedded links to youtube videos), so that seems odd to me. I would certainly hope we weren't concerned about that at provide.
Our volunteer staff are not paid politicians. So, feel free to dump on 'em all you want but don't be surprised when they don't come back for more. It's happened with staff and we're well on our way to having it happen with the remainder of our volunteers. To be frank - we've got our share of selfish people here with a sense of entitlement. They are not interested in being team players, in give and take, in being constructive and volunteering to help. Mostly, they're just sitting back and waiting for someone (else) to turn off the lights. Sad.
Would there be any interest in discussing a second Grex? I'm suggesting a system in the cloud, on different software, with a whole different look and rules that look nothing like what we have now. Cyberspace Inc. would administrate this system and pay the hosting fee. The board would call the shots on how it looks and acts getting input from the users. This would be a place for discussions - no hardware or software futzing, no attached email, no linked party, etc. Radical for us? You bet. Too little too late? Maybe. Worth the try?
Re 83: It seems to me we have two "camps" on Grex: those who want the system to retain its "retro" feel (text conferencing, command line, etc.) and those who want to see Grex modernize the interfaces to the conferences and add more features, perhaps add blogging and other applications that a lot of people expect of a more modern system. Both groups have valid preferences. And this may be why we do not have a consensus about what Grex should do. Having a second system would mean trying something to see how it works in practice rather than arguing ideas to death and doing nothing new. I kind of like that idea, if we can't try new ideas on this system without objections. But it would also mean splitting our attention in terms of finances and staff resources. Though who knows? Maybe a newer system would interest some staff more than this one? Certainly staff interest in maintaining the system is important. What do others think?
I think you don't have enough users for one system,,,much less two
The idea is to attract new users.
and a second system would compete with facebook,myspace and the host of other social networking sites...how?
We wouldn't be trying to compete. Think of this as an experiment. We'd kind of make it up as we go along. Sounds like a fun to me.
resp:83;resp:84: What are we paying provide now to host grex? resp:87: it's a valid question.
"Sounds like a fun to me." Sounds like work to me...who is going to do it and how much money are you willing to invest in the experiment?
I'll certainly help and would be willing to chip-in for start-up costs.
i'm broke because I gave all of my money to precious m-net <raspy golem voice> "ohhhh my precioussssss"
I think that is a good idea, mary. I would certainly be willing to participate and contribute towards such a project.
shut the fuck up...you were just whining about bills and housing projects as the reason you haven't paid member dues. Just what the FUCK are you willing to contribute? Your profound wisdom and knowledge? LOL!
Participation and contributions may be made in other than monetary ways. Indeed, we need participation and the efforts of volunteers to make the system work, so I think it's great that Lynne would be willing to help.
in light of her previous posts about being a BOD member and her financial situition..just what is she supposed to "contribute"
Ideas, knowledge, history of Grex, comments on how to improve the system, etc. We don't know, but if there are tasks that need doing, she might be able to help. How about reviewing the Grex web pages and pointing out where they need improvement or have non-working links? Something like that just takes time and the ability to use a web browser.
resp:96 Money wise, I can contribute money. My earlier point was not that I don't have money to contribute but that when it seems like grex has lots of money, it falls down the priority ladder such that I might choose other ways to spend my money. But I am also willing to put in some time towards a project of setting up a bbs out in the cloud. Mary has been suggesting that for a long time and I think it is a good enough suggestion that I am willing to donate some time to it.
Money works, too. We need the participation as a member though, which is why adjusting the cost of membership might make sense. My point is that there are ways to participate and contribute, even if you aren't a computer programmer or system administrator. Anything that makes the system a better place to visit is much appreciated. We used to have "helpers" who would help new users. That seems to have gone by the wayside (as the number of users dropped). Even being reasonable in the conferences is a big help. At one point I had permission to install Figlet fonts in the font directory. That was just a matter of checking the files, copying them to the right place, and letting people know they were there. There are some new Figlet fonts out there since the last time I added one.
IFRC the term/idea 'nextgrex' has been tossed around in the past. I guess the idea of a Grex 2.0 or new version is something worth considering. It falls in line my previously mentioned suggestions about Grex moving to be more or completely web interactive. I don't think Grex needs email anymore or to offer file storage.
Email, file storage, unix tools, party and Grex conferencing wouldn't be part of any change I'm suggesting. Everything you know and love about Grex stays the same. What I am suggesting is fairly radical for us. We'll look around and find conferencing software that is (at a minimum) able to thread discussion, remember what a user has read, and allow a user to forget threads. It should give administrators control over who is able to read content and, secondarily, who can respond in discussions. It would be nice to have control over whether the content is indexed or search engine isolated. Administrators should have the tools to remove content and there should be a switch that would allow/disallow contributors to edit their own words. And all of this should be easy enough to do that a non-techie could moderate. The administrators would be the Board, initially. Maybe forever. I'd suggest the Board make all the decisions on this system after gathering input from Grex users. No democracy. No formal voting process. They would use their best judgement and be willing to see what works and what doesn't and make changes as needed. It would be an experiment. I have no idea how it would go but I'd love to see it tried.
Not obvious in the above is that I'd hope this would NOT be on hardware owned by Cyberspace Communications. It should be somewhere affordable, where we'd have a contract for service and the expectation of a reasonably fast connection and reliable uptime.
As far as e-mail, the Board did discuss this and essentially agrees except that users may need to send e-mail to staff on the system. If we had a way to do that and not have outside e-mail we'd probably shut off outside mail in a heartbeat. But from what I heard at the meeting, sendmail doesn't set up quite like that--it wants to send e-mail off site if it's addressed that way. Perhaps with some tricky set up it could be made to work, but it sounds to me like the main issue is technical not a lack of wanting to do it.
Good organizations do experiment. It's how they discover new ways of doing things when they are on the downswing. Doing what you've always done when it clearly isn't working is a recipe for reaching oblivion sooner rather than later. One caveat though is not to stray too far from your core strengths and don't get hung up on fads. I don't think we'll give up on communication and conferencing, for example, because that's in our mission. Not every experiment will be successful, but if we learn from what we try, whether it worked or not, we may be able to pull out of this tail spin. The other thing to remember about trying new things is that if they don't work, quite often you can back out the change and go back to what you had before (for example, if it is computer software). Membership fees can be changed up and down, too. Not trying at all is what will do us in.
re #101 mary said: "It should give administrators control over who is able to read content and, secondarily, who can respond in discussions" why? I thought the idea from the beginning was for grex to be free and open access and unmoderated. even the fw's here don't do real moderating. what this sounds like is closed conferencing, where the administrators choose who can post and what they can post. This is inconsistent with grex's mission IMO.
instead of compteting with facebook it woudl be good to use facebook for publicity. People can update t heir facebook status with things like "xyz partied at grex" , "abc derailed one discussion on agora"....
resp:101: I'm not sure I can even pick out the worst idea you made in that post; I don't think I can agree with any of it. Why does the Board get unilateral control over everyone's content? Why can people make a statement, and not correct it? Why do you feel the board needs to have all control of the direction of Grex, while the membership (who, I don't know, pays to keep Grex in existance?) has no say. Not to mention I see no mention at all of staff input, and I'm assuming you'll want us to implement this monstrosity! I also would have to say removing unix, file system space, party, ability to compile programs, etc, pretty much removes what grex is. I don't think it's at all the grex we know and love at that point. It's just another message board. resp:103: Why do people keep bringing up sendmail? I've said several times now grex does not run sendmail. Even if it did, to say that it's not possible to run email and only have a subset of users have the ability to receive email is ridiculous. It's absolutely possible with postfix, and I'd say it's almost certainly possible with sendmail and pretty much every other email software on the planet. Firewall rules and other unix utilities can prevent users from attempting to send mail from the system. For that matter, we could just host grex.org email on google apps if we wanted to (or on my system as previously suggested) and have only the accounts we need forwarding to their destination. resp:105: I haven't agreed with much you've said lately, Richard, but I think you're right on here. I strongly disagree with the idea that once I complete a post, I cannot modify and can only delete it and enter it again. That's ridiculous. I can agree to a certain extent that certain conferences should/can be fishbowled and left for only certain people to post/respond, but removing the ability to modify your responses is just wrong.
I guess you had to be at the last Board meeting. I may have misheard but sendmail was mentioned, perhaps in a different context. The result was, no one there felt it was possible (or knew if it was possible). Anyway, if it is possible to do, let's talk about it at the next Board meeting and decide if it's the way we want to go. Thanks.
I don't think I'm going to turn Tony into a fan of this idea, but still, I'll correct some obvious misunderstandings in his reps: 107. This is about experimenting with a new, secondary online community. Cyberspace Communications would be the parent. None of it would apply to Grex. If you didn't get an account and log in to the new system your life would be unchanged. Whew! ;-) The reason I'd put the Board in charge is that it would afford some accountability for the decisions. They are elected. Too, having a small group administrate would allow for changes to made reasonably quickly. "Try this and if it doesn't work we'll turn it off" kind of things. Again, it's an experiment. I am asking a lot of our volunteer Board here - they'd be be setting themselves up for heaps of criticism and simultaneously have to work together as a group. Not easy stuff. My (no doubt) incomplete list of necessary switches would be part of trying out new approaches to old problems. Allowing folks to edit their own responses is something we don't, maybe can't do now. It should be possible for a test tube community to go that route if the admins want to try it and see how it goes. That was just one example of on/off features we should be able to easily tweak. I'm thinking this project wouldn't require any staff involvement. None. It would be an "out of the box" online project. At least that's what I'm hoping we do because we don't have available staff to do otherwise. The few we have should see to Grex's needs.
accountability lol
resp:109: As I stated above, we CAN easily allow people to modify their own responses. It's wrong to have it setup to not allow this. A modified response clearly shows that it has been modified (a header is added that says 'last modified on x date'), so no one can pass off that it's their original text. I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for getting a third party hosted conferencing system. It seems like it'd be better to 'own our own content' so to speak.
"Third party" gets it off of our old, Provide-housed hardware and eliminates the need for staff setup and maintenance. The downside, in part, is that the interface will be new with a learning curve. And change sucks.
Tony, if you're looking for user support allowing folks to edit their responses on Grex, I'm there. I see room for abuse, to be sure, but that's true of just about everything, and I'd like to see it tried.
That last was entered by a user who has zero skills when it comes to proof reading.
As long as I can easily cut and paste other people's responses into mine so they can't edit them after I respond to them, I'll be happy.
Since you own the response, I'd expect you'd be in control of its contents, not others who have responses quoted. If they want to respond to your comment, they can in their own response. I don't know where the idea that editing implies others can edit your responses comes from but that's not what I'm envisoning.
That isnt what I mean. I don't like the idea of people editing their own responses if I have entered a reply to their response. However, if I cut and paste their response into mine, then they cannot do that. That is all I am concerned about.
resp:117: you used m-net for a long time, slynne. when was that ever a problem there? I don't think I've ever seen that occur. We've never prevented people from modifying their responses on m-net.
and as I stated before, it's clear from the added 'response last modified' header that a response has been changed, so it should be pretty clear just based on that that a response to that response could have been altered in that way.
resp:112,resp:113: I still feel that doing that pretty much removes all of what is Grex. It becomes just another website at that point.
Right. If you cut and paste a response and they edit theirs, that will just show what you responded to. Feel free to editor yours if you want to make this clear.
(My response was to 119 and 117. If I could edit my response, I would have added this information to 121. Instead you get another response and have to figure out how this response relates).
resp:118 No. I don't think it is a problem there but it could be. It might be nice on Mnet if a way of cutting and pasting quotes were easier though. resp:121 Yep. That works for me although if we are adding new features, the blockquote tag feature makes such things easier. I am NOT against adding the ability to edit ones own responses at all. I just would like a way to more easily cut and past text in a way that makes it more clear that the text being cut and pasted isn't mine.
I don't understand why anyone should want to post-edit their responses. This conferencing thing is a conversation, and conversations can't be edited. If one wants to correct themselves in a conversation, they just do that with a new statement (response...). I see only confusion being engendered by users post-editing their responses.
I don't expect it will be a feature used very often and when it is used, it will most likely be used to correct typos. I doubt I'll do much editing other than typos myself.
Why bother? Many users currently correct their typos, if significant, in a subsequent response. It's not as if anything posted here is for the ages.
you can say that again
As long as you can /quote a user's previous post so it shows up in your post in a box, it shouldn't matter if they subsequently edit it. It wouldn't change the quote of their dialogue that you posted in your response.
resp:128 Exactly! That is why I think it would be nice if we also added something like blockquote tags to make it easier.
resp:124: I think it's unlikely someone would want to modify their posts much past about 5 minutes after they've written something, and usually to correct a typo. Either way, it may be similar to a conversation, but it's not the same.
I don't see why slynne is worried,her posts look just as stupid in context as out
How would this go? Say slynne entered a response in responding to something tod entered. In her response she copied tod's comment. tod comes back and some point and removes all of his posts. Do tod's words in slynne's response get immunity from deletion? I don't know why but I think this may come up. ;-)
See, I told you I couldn't proof read worth squat.
resp:132: tod's words in slynnes response would not be removed, nor should they. I doubt very much any software that allows quoting would have the ability to remove such things.
Yea, like if I entered an item about breastmilk then I couldn't go and erase what slynne duplicated from me in her own responses? Maybe you could setup privileged censorship commands for friends of grex board members so a few folks could go and do that while the rest can go eat a hat. What if I started an item about divorces and then said a bunch of things and later wanted the entire discussions removed. That would be the perfect example of an increased privilege erase command. Not that those things have ever happened before *COUGH*
Even in Confer days some people quoted entire items to keep them from being deleted by their owners. So this is quite an old issue. Although this seems like an interesting twist, it doesn't affect the editing discussion because this issue of quoted text could occur (and has) even without editing. This is getting into "business policy" territory rather than technical (although the BP might be implemented as a technical solution). One solution is to allow moderation due to the number of people and competing interests that might be involved. And of course, we don't like *COUGH* moderation.
Yep, making it clear that your ability to edit your words only extends to responses you have entered sounds like a good policy. I'd support giving users the ability to edit their responses in that case.
One thing to consider would be a time limit. One site I frequent allows editing but only for 90 minutes after the response is entered.
you lamers are so clusterfucked it's amusing
a time limit isn't possible with backtalk, so unless we switch conferencing systems that's off the table. I absolutely support editing of responses, as I've stated previously.
Why isn't it possible, Tony? We know the time the response was entered since that appears in the item response. Apparently if we turn on editing, we know the modification time (since it would go into a note added to the response). Can't those two times be compared and editing disallowed if the difference is more than some limit?
DAMN...what clusterfucks..just allow editing of posts and be done with it you petty motherfuckers
Why? Here's why
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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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