Grex cannot be allowed to disappear or be subsumed into a 'foreign' culture anymore than m-net can be allowed to disappear or be subsumed into a 'foreign' culture. Grex has, can, and will stand on its own cpu as it has in the past ... with incremental improvements. I will NEVER assist or approve of plunging an ax or axes into the heart of Grex, Cyberspace Communications, Inc. Yes, I have a mixed history with some of the personalities on Grex since that first Island Park meeting when I was riding motorcycles and answering phns at 764-HELP. But those were personality snits, not system survival situations. Rise above the snits, please. I also have an UNvarnished history supporting Grex in every way I could. And I have held lots of positions, including former board member. Now it seems that that time had come again and I can do this again. Home is where you create it. Grex is home to me and I am not alone. I would appreciate your vote for keeping Grex going. No reason exists (technically or financially) for just giving up and going away. I do have an idea or two to offer at the first board meeting after the election to expand our reach but this is not the time or place for them. Keeping the system up is the first and foremost situation to resolve. I will appreciate your vote to do so. Tia -cheerrzz,ts 734,817,1982 tsty@cyberspace.org35 responses total.
TS, why isn't your campaign statement visible in the vote program? This *is* the time and place to discuss what ideas you have to expand Grex. I've based my campaign to merge M-Net and Grex on there being no new ideas, and a declining user base. I think Grex is dissipating and won't survive much longer on it's own. (So will M-Net.) What do you have to stop that from happening? You could make me swap my own vote if you have ideas that will turn things around and will be here to make them work. I want Grex to survive, too. I don't have any ideas like that myself. I'm running to make a merger happen because I thought running and doing it was the only way it would happen, and that a merger is the best way to keep the Grex conferences around. I, personally, will lead Grex to make that happen if I can. I'll do my best. My best is going to be pretty good if the users think enough of me to vote me onto the Board. Grex doesn't need someone saying, "I have ideas". It needs the ideas, and someone to implement them. What can you do? What will you do, and when? Once again, I'll support you myself if your ideas are better than mine.
Why not hire a FB programmer to build an API from both systems? Merging two dying systems does what exactly? The few loyal folks on both systems wont let it die off.
You should probably ask that in my campaign item, Todd, since I think it is addressed to me. Maybe we'll wind up going to Facebook some day. I don't know. It's a different environment than I had envisioned. It's probably different than anything I would ever envision. On second thought, maybe it'd be better if I let TS answer it since it's in his campaign item. Sorry. I have no answer for that question.
i have notified the right people about my avaialble statement while recognizing that those people have other thgns to do and i expect tht it will show up in good time. in the meantine, i pposted it here asa separate item (some things you do are well worth imitating) and posted the command pointer in agora. and i followed the dirctions issued so it;s all good as far as i;m concerned. frankly, jep, your statemnt scared teh shiet out of me! so the FIRST ORDER of oour SURVIVAL is to ASSURE that independent survival. without that, nothing else matters and THAT is exactly what >I< stand for, first and foremost. others may disagree as is their wish, it is NOT mine! i also noticed that our election got posted on the m-b0x, understandably, since -they- may not want us! so they would have someting to say about it. i had to create a new login to post over there, but it worked. and i noticed that kite returned with (exxentially) my position. we three have known each other for (dare i saye it) DECADES and each of us credits each other for 'stuff.' but this 'stuff' about merger (even as a -thought-) goes far too far beyond the pale. but you are entitled. if it generates some progressive activities (on either system) then it;s all for the better. but i coould not, ever, support a combination. WE ARE SEPARATE AND unEQUAL AND BOTH SHOULD STAND INDEPENDENTLY. [sort of sorry for the yelling] ther is no technical nor financial pressure on grex nor on the m-b0x. we are both indebted to tonster and cross and kentn (among others - not leaving anyone out on purpose) for their persistance / assistance and motivation(s). let the election proceed apace and i want grex to remain independent.
please see beyond the personality snits ... they don;t count in reality.
You and I are not running against one another, TS. We're just promoting our ideas against each other's ideas. We're going to remain friends regardless of this election. I hope I will have other friends here, even amongst people who disagree with my viewpoint about merging with M-Net. I meant what I said in resp:1. Your ideas are needed now. If they are good, I will support them myself, and vote for you myself, and endorse you for the Board. But for me to do that, you have to show the ideas. And I have to think they will work. The time to debate them is now, so the membership can decide about them now, and base their vote on them.
resp:4 Why? And what does it mean to "stand independently"? Would it REALLY matter to any of the people who feel so passionately about Grex and M-Net being separate from one another if they were hosted on the same hardware? What do you define as Grex? What do you define as M-Net? Most of the people who seem to care care only about the BBS. If the data files for two BBS's live on the same physical machine and some group of people use one and others use the other, does it REALLY matter? Would anyone even be able to tell the difference? We could probably merge the systems today and no one would notice, aside from seeing more people logged in. As an aside: I don't support TS for the board. He doesn't do anything as (assistant) treasurer now, so I have little faith that he'll do anything on the board going forward. In fact, it was so bad that someone who donated money to Grex actually complained to PayPal to get their money back because they were never validated; others have been keeping track of such things since. Further, TS has proven himself difficult to work with. I don't see his being elected as working out all that well. He'll try to overreach and exert control over things he doesn't understand. I don't think he's a bad guy; he'd probably be a lot of fun to have a beer with, but I think that JEP would be better suited to being a board member.
it REALLY matter to any of the people who feel so passionately about Grex and M-Net being separate from one another if they were hosted on the same hardware? dude, STeve won't be able to blame crashes on RAM if you colocate ;)
Heh. Steve hasn't been involved in the day-to-day maintenance of Grex in years. He wasn't involved in the present hardware, and hasn't expressed any interest in the new hardware that we've been slowly working on. Similarly with Marcus Watts. Marcus hasn't even logged in in years; emails to him go ignored. I suppose both may consider themselves staff. Beats me. No one has "removed" them in any real sense, but just the same, neither does anything.
I don't see why Cyberspace, Inc can't be dissolved and Grex absorbed into Arbornet's fleet of online charitable offerings. Who's with me?
re resp:7: I'd like to see the ideas he mentioned, and his thoughts on how he would implement them. I'd like to see anyone's ideas. Dan, I appreciate your comments of support for my idea and for me as a contributor to the Board. I'll do the best I can for Grex if I am elected. I am just about solely concerned with conferencing. I don't pay a lot of attention to other activity. I will become aware of it before pushing for things that will affect it. Is there much activity by users other than BBSers which would be affected by a merger? Do you have any concerns about that?
How about Arbnornet is dissolved & M-Net absorbed into Cyberspace, Inc.? No reason why it can't go the other way as far as I know.
Okay. Go convince Arbornet to do that. I came here, to Grex, because it's Grex's time for an election and so that's where I started. It doesn't really matter to me where the effort is started. I don't think it's going to be a quick thing anyway. While I'd like it to happen in a few months, a year or two years seems more realistic to me. Over on M-Net, they are practically up in arms against the idea right now. It doesn't bother me. I've made all the same points there that I've made here. I can wait until they calm down and think things over, then pitch it again. I can also face failure in this election here on Grex. Merging is an idea, a new idea at that. If people think it's a terrible idea, they'll defeat it, and vote against me. I can pitch it here again, too. Maybe if it doesn't fly now, it'll get easier after people think about it for a year or two.
It could be just a bad idea....
re #12 How about Arbnornet is dissolved & M-Net absorbed into Cyberspace, Inc.? No reason why it can't go the other way as far as I know. Only if the Grex board promises to continue censoring items.
What censoring is the current Board doing? And what censoring is the Grex membership (via their votes on policies) doing? If Arbornet is not in favor of this so-called merger and is not willing or able to manage the assets it acquires, then I don't see how this is going to turn out as anything but bad for Grex/Cyberspace Inc.
If Arbornet is not in favor of this so-called merger and is not willing or able to manage the assets it acquires, then I don't see how this is going to turn out as anything but bad for Grex/Cyberspace Inc. That's what has me so curious as to why jep makes a platform of the idea Seems to me that fiduciary administration has been lacking and is a bigger concern...bank, po box, paypal, members logs, all of that jazz are out of whack at Arbornet. It was flat out dumped by the 2007 board. Not good for a 501c3's health, imo
re resp:14: I think it's an idea that could work, and help Grex. (And help M-Net, too.) I cannot do it on my own, and wouldn't if I could, not something like this. How could I know if there's support without suggesting it and pushing for it? Well, I've given it my best. Grexers know, they can see, that I can be pretty energetic for something worthwhile. I'll keep working on this, unless something changes, or unless I decide it can't happen, because it's worthwhile.
I think that the percentage of people who care about this vis-a-vis the total user populations of either Arbornet (read: M-Net) or Cyberspace (read: Grex) is vanishingly small. The people who care about the respective "culture" of either is also vanishingly small when taken as a percentage of total users. Most users come here for access to Unix and network resources; they have no desire -- at all -- to participate in the "community." My informal estimate is that >half of the revenue that was taken in this past year was for increased access level, not for membership in the "community." The vast, vast majority of users could care less whether they're using one machine or the other. Maybe JEP's idea is a bad one. But I think that most of the people who care really don't know what they are caring about. If everything were run on the same physical machine, most wouldn't notice. In fact, some folks have suggested running Grex on a virtual hosting provider; suppose that M-Net did the same and the two ended up on the same physical computer. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? Would anyone even know to notice? In short: none of this matters. People who speak of "preserving Grex" or "preserving M-Net" are entirely missing the point: there's nothing to preserve. The toxic nature of these communities killed themselves off years ago, what's left is the same dozen or so people writing the same things to each other again and again. I say put them on the same machine, officially deprecate the conferencing function, and work on getting new hacker blood involved; align with the maker movement and see what sort of interesting things people want to use Grex to build. Anything else is just a distraction.
Dan, not much of what you said matters to me at all. I'm here for the conferencing system. I'm certainly not going to be part of deprecating that but would like to try merging it with M-Net's conferencing system. I'm only aware of anything else even being here because you mentioned it a couple of times. I have nothing against such activities, but I don't know what it is that people are doing. I don't know what else is happening on M-Net besides the conferences, either.
Dan, you're boring jep.
Not at all but thank you for misrepresenting my position in your effort to establish you're at the forefront of whatever Grex decides, either way it goes. I don't know about the other activity that Dan mentioned. I just haven't heard a lot about it.
re #22 I made my decision and voted. I think everyone has made up their mind.
resp:20 Then you're one of the dozen or so people who are a tiny fraction of the active users of the system who care. Should we continue to cater to this tiny minority, or start worrying about problems relevant to the rest of the user base? Before, people have made the argument that the paying membership subsidized the rest of the users, so somehow mattered more, but I don't think this is the case anymore: my suspicion is that it's actually about break-even at this point. Note that deprecating the conferencing function does not mean disabling or deleting it; it just means de-emphasizing it in favor of other, higher priority things.
Nine people voted for the open Board of Directors seat. How many were from outside the conferencing system? In what way did they care about that? I don't know how to reach those people. I don't know how to communicate with them about the things they care about, and the things I care about. I don't have anything against them, but I don't know any way to receive information about their concerns than to speculate in a void, which I decline to do. Deprecate the conferencing system? To what end? In what way? Do you mean to turn control of Grex over to them? How is that going to work? It is what I care about. It is what the people I know care about.
Are there 9 people in bbs?
resp:25 I don't know. But I think that Joe Gelinas said how many were not members.
It's hard to jump on that bandwagon without a little more information, Dan.
resp:28 The information is there, I just don't have it to hand. Nor am I the definitive source.
thank you grex voters ... in agora (?48) are my first thought on how to raise the grex profile as well as attract more users. they are admittedly primative but i do believe they are in teh better direction than just standing still.
TS, can you enter a new item to discuss your ideas? It'd make it easier than sending everyone to another item when you're not sure what the item number is. Anyway, then there'd be a separate item, not one started for something else.
A facebook ad doesn't hurt so long as you make it obvious what you're peddling.
re 31 .. ummm, thought the point er to 48 was a separate item .... ?
TS, it turns out "item 48" is in a separate conference. How was anyone to know that?
oops, my bad --- even i didn;t recognize that i had NOT specified the right .cf. i;ll be more carefull inthe future.
You have several choices: