45 new of 71 responses total.
Do we need to add a level of shyness here, call it "very", that hides your comments from both anonymous readers and robots, change shy "y" so it only hides comments from robots, then make the "y" everyone's default (except change the current "y" crowd to "very") as the experiment begins? I think that many people says things in our conferences that they might not want to share (via Google) with someone like an employer...
Sounds like shy is broken. Permission issue probably. I need to look at that. "shy y" means that your responses won't be visible to anonymous readers, including bots. "shy n" returns you to normal. Yes, it's retro-active. If you are on the shy list, all your past and future responses are hidden. I'm not sure Walter's suggestion is practical. It's hard to tell bots from other anonymous readers. I'd have to base it on the User Agent string sent by the browser/bot and there are an awful lot of browser/bots out there.
I wish shy were pro-active :(
Re 28: permissions may be a problem, but the immediate problem seems to be the specified path. /home/janc doesn't seem to exist.
So, all the instances of polytwerp calling me a paedophile will be googlable? great.
Yea, "Rick Root" will show up with paedophile on google
lolz
I'm in favor of the idea. IIRC, minutes have always been searchable. I'd like to see it start with an Agora restart, or with a conference that volunteers (by vote within the conference and an agreeable fw). I think it needs a member vote however, especially if we are experimenting with Agora. Ric's comments started some ideas in my mind. It seems that we might have some users who are willing to be members of a conf that has a somewhat more active fw than is traditional, leaning toward a "moderator" level of involvement. Could we have an experimental conference lead the way? One that was clearly intended to be a public Web conversation pit, and inteneded as a marketing tool for Grex?
btw, if you're going to publish conferences, you should place google ads on the pages - at least for people who are not logged in. Could be a nice source of revenue if the item threads are indexed well by google.
I agree that this is a big enough change that putting it to a member vote is a good idea. I also *really* like the idea of putting google ads on the pages although I dont know if anyone else would agree
I would consider google ads or any ads in the same category as school vending machines and I would be willing to pay higher dues to avoid it even though it does not affect me personally since I don't access grex by web.
Google ads are dangerous and could link people to spyware sites
I suppose people who wished to hide their identity even beyond what is already in place could just create pseudos for themselves, using newuser. Oh wait...
Grex could always start requiring a National ID.
Do Google ads pay only for click-throughs, or based on impressions (times served)?
I think they pay for click-throughs but I am not sure. I think polygon uses them on his site.
Google pays per click. I have google ads on my blog and some other pages, I've made about $210 in the last month or so. Polygon uses them too.
I think ads are things for which the Grex world is not prepared.
Don't speak rashly. If it's possible to only place the ads on pages displayed to users who are not logged in, then Grex can benefit from google indexing of items, without affecting any current user of grex. Google text ads are unobtrusive, and surprisingly effective - much more so than banner ads, because the google text ads are usually relevant to the page they're being displayed on. Without displaying them to users who are logged in, they would only be effective if grex items showed up in Google or other search engines. If the conferences were well indexed, I could see that revenue leading to anywhere from $3 - $20/month, again, without impacking users who are already logged in. Who knows, maybe more. Certain items could lead to higher ad rates. Enter an item and have a discussion about Misothelioma, and you'll probably get $5 or so for every ad that's clicked on! Heck, turn on the ads for grex users, and encourage grexers to click on the ads. Grex users know that clicking on the ads would support Grex. I'd do it.
Google ads would be effective on Grexers? Are you thinking of selling Dr.Demento boxsets and Dr.Who mugs?
I would much rather pay more per month instead of going commercial.
How much more?
I'd pay if there were no ID rule.
You can naftee. You can pay without being a member.
re 46 - not necessarily, but when someone google searches something, and views an item on grex, they may click on one of the content-appropriate text ads in search of more information on the same topic. If you're going to make conferences google-able, you might as well take advantage of the extra hits (if any). I mean, those people coming in via search engines to specific items are going to be looking for information, not Grex. They may stick around or not if they're intrigued enough, but not likely. To most people it probably wouldn't be any different from any other message board or mailing list archive out there.
If conferences are going to be on google then make sure everyone knows first.
Can we like, purge all conferences before putting them on Google?
Is this the chase-your-own-tail item?
re 50 I can, but I won't pay until the ID rule is rescinded.
Re: #55. You do know this isn't Grex's rule. It's Michigan's rule...
re #56 Cite that reference.
what tod said
MCL 450.2413: "The officer or agent having charge of the shareholder or membership records of a corporation shall make and certify a complete list of the shareholders or members entitled to vote at a shareholders' or members' meeting or any adjournment thereof. The list shall: (a) Be arranged alphabetically within each class with the address of each member or shareholder and the number of shares held by each shareholder." Grex has to verify your address in order to comply with this rule. This why a personal check, showing your address, is sufficient. http://www.legislature.mi.gov/mileg.asp?page=getObject&objName=mcl-450-2413
re resp:47, resp:48: Membership rates have been the same for all of Grex's existence. If Grex needs the money, I'd be willing to see the membership rate double. If Grex already receives all the money it needs, then I see no reason to use ads to generate revenue. How about some discussion on how much money Grex needs, what it would buy, and what it is needed for?
(1) I wouldn't be opposed to having the current Agora be open to Google. I don't want to see other conferences mass restarted. (I thought past Agoras were not available via Backtalk anyway? But I haven't looked.) (2) I wouldn't be opposed to experimenting with Google text ads. They are not intrusive and pay surprisingly well. However, Grex's financial needs are modest (especially now that we're not paying Pumpkin rent), and we do have 60+ paying members. Arguably, it's not necessary to go looking for ad revenue.
Re #61: Any conference that's still online at all is available via
Backtalk. This includes all the Agoras except for a few of the early
ones when we had a lot less disk; they were taken offline to free up space.
I've been taking a sabbatical from Coop for the last month and just
encountered this item.
Some history: Anonymous conference reading was authorized by member
vote in 1997. The discussion is in the coop9 conference, item 55, (for
Backtalk readers, the link is item:coop9,55) and was *very* contentious.
Quite an interesting read, eight years later. The motion itself does
not mention indexing by search engines, so I suppose one could say that
there's no official policy one way or the other on that. However, the
Backtalk developers (Jan Wolter, and also Steve Weiss at the time) made
it clear that if the proposal passed, the implementation would exclude
search engines, so I think members had that in mind when they voted.
I hope that the benefit of eight years' experience has helped put the
issue of anonymous reading in better perspective than it was in 1997.
I voted for the proposal because I saw it as a way of increasing
Grex's visibility on the web, and thus helping to attract new users, by
allowing people to sample Grex without committing to an account. I
don't think we have statistics on how much actual benefit anonymous
reading has been in that regard, but I think it's fair to say that none
of the dire consequences envisioned eight years ago have come to pass.
Allowing anonymous reading but requiring registration to post is common
practice in web forums, so Grex certainly isn't doing anything unusual here.
The web is a big and noisy place - much more so than in 1997. In
general I'm in favor of things that increase Grex's visibility and help
drive traffic - and hence users - to us. One of the best ways to do
that is to open up to search engine indexing, so I'm for it. Anybody
who doesn't want their own responses indexed can opt out via the "shy"
option.
One caveat: Sites that allow posting for free, and whose content is
indexed by search engines and permits posting of links, tend to attract
spammers. The fact that posting requires registration protects us from
spam to an extent, but since registration can be anonymous it doesn't
protect us perfectly. There's a protection that the major search
engines actually support (rel="nofollow" on the anchor tag, for HTML
techophiles) that tends to discourage spamming for reasons I won't get
into here. Nonetheless, conference spam might be something we'd have to
figure out how to deal with if we open up conferences to search engines.
Re advertising: Does the fact that we're a 501(c)3 non-profit restrict
what we can do? (Just asking; I don't know the answer.) In any case,
I'd be opposed to subjecting registered users to ads, even the
unobtrusive Google ones. As for anonymous readers - dunno. I'll have
to ponder Rick's idea.
I believe we need to get a certain percentage of our income from donations in order to maintain our 501(c)3 status. I want to say it's 33%, but I could be way off.
I do not like the idea of chasing ad revenues just because we can. I don't see a need for more money for Grex. I don't see what we would use more money for if we had it. Aside from future upgrades and paying the monthly Internet bills, we don't have expenses, do we? What do we *want*? Give me that first, then let's discuss raising more money. Is there anything Grex wants money for? Paid staff? Advertising? A bigger faster computer or better Internet connection? What? If we needed more money, I'd be more willing to increase membership amounts than advertise. But I think we're fine right now.
Is Grex in trouble financially?
We have $100 per month in recurring expenses, and $3000 in the bank. I don't think we're in trouble financially.
your estimate is way off, jeep
I don't think it is.
Our fixed expenses are around $150.00 a month right now.
Right - John, our two monthly expenses are $100 for colocation and about $45 for phone lines. Plus a few other miscellaneous things that occur only once a year. I think Grex is in much better shape financially than it was before we moved. I'm not too worried about it right now. I'd always like to see more members, but at our current level I think we'll be operating in the black. (Note - I haven't figured this out rigorously, and don't have time to do so right now.) So I guess I agree with jep. Let's talk about how people would like to improve Grex, and if we get a sense that it will take money to do so, then talk about raising it.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
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