valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:49:30 2004 Val val41 responses total.
One-entry-one-account seems reasonable. Making exceptions in the case of a person who has changed login id's seems reasonable too, by the same logic that we justify setting up a mail alias so that mail to the old address will still reach the person.
I don't agree with this, as should be obvious because I have two homepages. The one I have for personal use is the "Richard" one, but I also still have one under "Kerouac", which is my Jack Kerouac links page (maintained out of personal interest) Actually I think only the Kerouac one is listed when really the Richard one should be the one on the list, since I primarily publicize the other one in other places. But I know there are some people with more than one page listed, such as Jenna, who has both "Shade" and "Kitten" pages listed My two pages here are for different purposes and different topics...I dont see why theycouldnt both be listed , or shouldnt be, justbecause they are both under mynbame. Especially, sinceI could easily change the name on one of the logins so it *looks8 like they7 have different owners and get both listed. The whole policy is silly. Why can't if someone clicks "Richard", they get "richard Wallner has two homepages., choose one"? or something. Or if I click Valerie Mates, why cant I get prompted to choose whether I want the Valerie homepage or the Popcorn page?
Well, I think the answer to those "why" questions is that it would be a lot of work for the Webmasters to keep it straight which pages belonged to which humans. But then again, sounds like they're already do ing that. I don't know. The list of homepages is undoubtedly hit very frequently, right? And the bigger it gets, the more drain it is. But maybe that's a "drop-in-the-ocean". On the other hand should people with 12 accounts get listed 12 times if they want to?
I don't like to see a policy that says "one page for one human." "One page for one account" seems the better way to go.
I think you can do the "Richard Wallner has two pages...choose one" thing right now under the current policy. Just make that page yourself and have that be the page that the list points to. I don't see the problem with allowing multiple listings. Yes, the list gets longer, but it is probably already hopelessly huge. If size is the problem, there are better ways to deal with it (separate lists for different letters of the alphabet, or a searchable index, etc).
Ah, I had misunderstood the e-mail that I got on this. I had always done it as one page per *account*, not per person. I've knowingly done multiple listings for one person with different accounts. Sounds like I was violating existing policy the whole time I was Webmaster. >8) The current users' listing is 22kb in size, and it got 276 hits last week. Insignificant compared to mail, of course, but I'd hate to see the file get huge.
One of the things we might want to do is put that page on some other sytem, where it won't matter how often its gotten hit. Once the ISDN link is in place it might not matter, once again. I think people should be able to have more than one entry, given that different accounts might be for different projects or stuff. Lastly, given t hat we don't authenticate, I think we're likely already permitting this. We all know that 'valerie' and 'popcorn' are the same person. but do we know that 'axy' and 'rty' aren't the same person, having two listings? We don't. Its like psuedos--most people don't have the energy to make 5 alternate identities here. A few might, but that isn't the majority.
I manage five accounts here - four are for non-profit organizations and have homepages, and one is my personal account (with no homepage). This is what STeve is talking about in regard to "different projects and stuff". (I *hope* to get some of those non-profits to join....but I'd still be involved in the management of the accounts.)
We still have a human updating the page by hand, right? Such a policy may be useful to save on workload.
I think I missed a point here. I thought *all* accounts with a web page were listed. If they are publically accessible, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect this? I mean, if they are named index.html. Users could have 'secret' pages with other names.
To list all accounts with a web page, you would have to have a process that woudl look through 15,000 home directories for files called index.html, and then compile the list, doing whatever else it has to do to find whatever other information it uses, at some regular interval. It would be a resource hog, and there may be some people who don't want their pages listed.
The index of Grex Users' home pages is located at http://www.cyberspace.org/users.html It is maintained by hand. Rob Henderson first applied this rule when he maintained it. I continued it now that I do.. I agreed with Rob Henderson and supported this policy from the beginning. We encouraged anyone who was affected by this policy to raise the issue in co-op. No one did (until now). It was instituted to make caring for the web pages more manageable. It has been in effect for at least two years. We do not scan the list to eliminate duplicates or otherwise enforce it. I don't know how you can. We merely inform users with more than one account that they must choose which account to have listed in the index. It seems like a reasonable restriction to me, but I don't feel very strongly about it. It was not instituted to save bandwidth, by the way. That was never the issue at all.
And for those who think the file is small enough that adding a few lines won't matter, the last time I checked the error log, users.html was one of the most commonly *aborted* files on our server. (I.e. people start downloading it and then stop because it's taking to bloody long to get through our Net connection.)
It sounds to me like turning it into an alphabetical index would be worth it. Automating it might be worth it too (perhaps by having "mkhomepage" add it...)
Ooh ick. Do you have any idea how many people run mkhomepage once and never edit their page? How many prototype pages do you want listed? Frankly, I was embarassed by the number of people who wanted their prototypes listed on the page, never mind the ones who didn't...
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...and some persons are organizations...
Re#16: And how does she (do they) manage that?
<robh notes that he is NOT a webmaster any more, no matter what valerie or popcorn think, so his opinion means approximately diddly over squat>
You opinion means as much as anyone's.
I think that if people ask, we should list several pages if they want.
Sure, as long as it's a small finite integer.
(As opposed to a small infinite integer? >8)
A question for the folks who have done webmaster work: Why do people want multiple listings? When they ask for multiple listings, what kinds of things do they ask for?
It's always possible to manage many accounts. The only evidence you have that, say, chimaera is one of my accounts is my word, the Login 15 under the name (I number all my logins) and the fact that its listed as one of my logins in sarthe's plan (sarthe is also my login). I manage multiple logins fairly effectively and nobody's requiring me to verify that I'm different people. Certain people might have the motivation to tak advantage of this.
The impression I got from folks who wanted multiple listings was:
(a) They liked seeing their names on someone else's page, and
liked seeing several of their "names" even more
(pathetic, but true)
(b) They think that Grex is a huge system with millions of hits,
so being listed here guarantees that thousands of people will
see their pages (so far from true that it's pathetic)
(c) One listing was personal, others were for organizational accounts
(like rcurl)
As for A and B, I would hope that a little explaining will help these people understand the error of their ways. I don't see any problem with C.
Explaining the realities of Grex's popularity put off a few of the requests, but a fair number took the "it's free, so why not?" approach. Explaining that providing Web service isn't free for *us* didn't seem to work, either. (These are the same folks who thought that Grex could afford to provide 1-800 service because it's free. >8)
Hmmm...I've never actually responded to one of those 'get yourself a free homepage' ads...but perhaps a pointer in that direction?
If you can collect "free home page" URL's for us, that would be very handy. "Free e-mail" URL's would be convenient too.
Well, next time I run across one of them damn ads I'll send it your way
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A very common reason people want multiple listings is for offsite homepages. They want one for here, and one for hotmail, and one for AOL, and one for school, and... I'm against that. I have no problem listing an offsite page, but only if that's the only page for that login. (person, whatever) That said, while I am a webmaster, I've never added people to the users.html file. I've never gotten around to it.
Actually, while I was gone for a few days, I think Dan finally did add a few people to the list (subsequent to his disclaimer in resp:33. (Thanks, Dan) The users.html file got 300 hits in the last week. That's 43 hits per day. Not a lot. But it is big, though. Each hit results in 22.6Kb sent over the link. It may be time to break it up, as Marcus suggests.
Yep, I did finally get around to finding the users.html file and adding people to it.
policing farther than 'one login, one page' is not the sort of ransacking grex needs to further itself, imnsho.
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I think that makes perfect sense. The vast majority by far won't want that, but a few will. If someone askes for 147 pages, we can deal with that when the time comes.
Re #37: Define "oodles".
More than say, 5?
good number, 5, i support it.
You have several choices: