Grex Oldcoop Conference

Item 153: Just asking

Entered by jp2 on Sun Mar 14 06:15:02 2004:

So let me get this straight.  The staff refused to do the right thing and did
not restore the vandalized items because their was a vote.  But when there
is a proposed vote on the Canadians, they decide to ignore that.  I really
want to know, is there an honest fellow among you?
39 responses total.

#1 of 39 by gelinas on Sun Mar 14 06:16:00 2004:

As I said in party, you wouldn't recognise honesty if it kicked your bloody
arse across the Potomac, jp2.


#2 of 39 by jp2 on Sun Mar 14 06:23:30 2004:

This response has been erased.



#3 of 39 by tsty on Sun Mar 14 06:45:15 2004:

support for bush increases ..... 


#4 of 39 by gelinas on Sun Mar 14 06:49:05 2004:

The difference between the two situations is that the items could be
restored at any time, should that be what the membership wanted, but not
removed again, should _that_ be what the membership wanted, while the
vandals canNOT be cleaned up after later but can be restored at any time;
the damage they did, if left for 24 days (two weeks for discussion and
then ten days of votiing) would be beyond repair.  But if the membership
wants the damage restored, I'll quite willingly put it back.  (Of course,
I'd then resign from the staff and board, because grex would no longer
be manageable or useable.)

Your dishonesty lies in *knowing* this (you are too smart not to have
realised it on your own) but pretending _not_ to be able to see it.


#5 of 39 by atlantic on Sun Mar 14 14:55:30 2004:

You know for a fact that it's against section 4.a. of the bylaws, gelinas.


#6 of 39 by atlantic on Sun Mar 14 14:59:40 2004:

You also know for a fact that you've repeatedly said you rely on what more
experience staff members say, becasuse you're too incompetent to figure it
out for yourself.  You also know remmers has said this:

 #52 of 157: by John H. Remmers (remmers) on Mon, Mar  1, 2004 (12:09):
  Of course not.  And I'd hope that Grex staff would take reasonable
  steps to correct any damage, intentional or otherwise, inflicted by
  anyone, staff or not.  In fact, the staff does that all the time,
  mopping up after users who fill up the disk or do other harmful
  stuff.

  Having a staff member do a baddie like that took us by surprise.
  I'd like to think that the staff would have ultimately decided to
  do the right thing by way of correction.  But remember that you are
  the person who decided to move right away to a member vote, effectively
  taking the decision out of the staff's hands.

Ah HA!  remmers, who's much more experience than you, knows Grex doesn't take
action on pending member initiatives.  Why did you lie?


#7 of 39 by twenex on Sun Mar 14 15:02:00 2004:

That could have been directed at any staff member, including the new ex-staff
cross and valerie. Where is your proof?


#8 of 39 by atlantic on Sun Mar 14 15:20:33 2004:

"But remember that you are the person who decided to move right away to a
member vote, effectively taking the decision out of the staff's hands." is
quite easily distilled to a general statement, and everything you say is quite
quickly distilled to moronic.


#9 of 39 by md on Sun Mar 14 15:34:35 2004:

Why is anybody posting responses to these people?  You realize you're 
part of the problem if you do, right?  

Here's a clue: You don't have to act on or even think about anything 
posted by jp2, polytarp or their pseudos.  There will be no 
consequences whatever if you simply forget all their items and put them 
on your twit list.  Really.  I promise.  If you want to sic some 
investigators on them and get them in legal trouble, that's another 
matter.  But if that's really what you're doing, you should know that 
engaging in any dialog with them at all is only going to weaken your 
case.


#10 of 39 by atlantic on Sun Mar 14 15:49:28 2004:

People posting serious and grave concerns isn't a problem, md.


#11 of 39 by md on Sun Mar 14 15:52:52 2004:

Didn't say it was.  ;-)


#12 of 39 by jp2 on Sun Mar 14 16:28:52 2004:

This response has been erased.



#13 of 39 by salad on Sun Mar 14 16:45:28 2004:

(According to user atlantic, he's not even capable of handling UNIX!  System
being unuseable. SUURE).


#14 of 39 by tod on Sun Mar 14 17:15:17 2004:

This response has been erased.



#15 of 39 by gelinas on Sun Mar 14 17:52:46 2004:

Try reading the statement in context.


#16 of 39 by remmers on Sun Mar 14 18:09:17 2004:

Right.  The quote from me above is definitely out of context.  Reading a
bit further down it that item, there's this:
 
-- BEGIN QUOTE

 #129:62 by Kevin Albaugh (albaugh) on Tue, Mar  2, 2004 (14:20)
  While I can possibly buy the notion that once the motion was made staff was
  reticent to act on their own, I think the major reason for inaction is that
  this situation had never come up before, and it wasn't clear exactly what
  should be done or how & who to do it.  If jp2 had known that the staff were
  ending deliberation once the motion was made, he could have said something
  like "the staff is free to do what it would have done had the motion not been
  made", and that to me would not have resulted in any inappropriate action
  having been taken.  I.e. if the staff already had a policy of restoring
  mistakenly deleted items, then they would have proceded to do so, regardless
  of any motion being made to do so (and in fact not requiring such a motion).
  
  This all goes under the category of "live and learn".
 
 ----
 #129:63 by saladman (salad) on Tue, Mar  2, 2004 (17:54)
  Yeah, learn that GreX sucks.
  
 
 ----
 #129:64 by Joseph M Saul (jmsaul) on Tue, Mar  2, 2004 (21:37)
  So... the next time this happens, all that's necessary to prevent staff
 action
  to restore the items is for some random member to make a proposal in Coop?
  
  Are you sure that's the way you want it to work?
 
 ----
 #129:65 by John H. Remmers (remmers) on Wed, Mar  3, 2004 (06:30)
  No, I hardly think we'd want it to work that way.  Kevin's #62 is
  pretty close to my own thinking.

-- END QUOTE

That is, if there's a policy in place, merely entering a proposal to
change it doesn't suspend it.  Problem with the item deletions was that
there wasn't a policy already in place.


#17 of 39 by salad on Sun Mar 14 18:21:03 2004:

There was no policy in place for dealing with vandals?  Great!  Well, jp2 has 
now entered one.  You should thank him.


#18 of 39 by jp2 on Sun Mar 14 21:16:13 2004:

This response has been erased.



#19 of 39 by twenex on Sun Mar 14 21:16:30 2004:

Yes.


#20 of 39 by jp2 on Sun Mar 14 22:42:45 2004:

This response has been erased.



#21 of 39 by atlantic on Sun Mar 14 23:01:53 2004:

We all know Grex mettes out punishment without and regard to morality,
jp2.


#22 of 39 by salad on Mon Mar 15 04:57:03 2004:

Right, it punishes them by saying that they support free speech, and then
deleting items en masse behind their back.


#23 of 39 by gelinas on Mon Mar 15 05:17:08 2004:

#18 is an interesting question.  The page

        http://cyberspace.org/local/grex/policy.html

answers some of it, and the pages

        http://cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/grex-principles
and
        http://cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/grex-limits

offer more information.  Another good page to look at is

        http://cyberspace.org/faq.html

In general, password files help crackers find usable loginids, which
provide targets.  This is why many system administrators disabled the
SMTP VRFY and EXPN commands.  In recent years, they've also taken to
disabling finger, for the same reason.

There is no good reason to post a password file anywhere in bbs, and it's
only possible use is to crackers.  So I remove it.

Locking accounts is done to stop ongoing abuse, to prevent recurrence,
and to inspire the account owner to contact staff.  An acknowledgement of
the error and an agreement to not repeat it (and not to find new errors
to perpetrate) is usually sufficient to get the account unlocked.


#24 of 39 by atlantic on Mon Mar 15 05:39:31 2004:

The strategies "many system administrators" (name one.) take to prevent
"crackers" are, of course, only applicable to closed systems.  Anyone
who's going to be running around "cracking" Grex is going to be able to
get its usable IDs real easy.

There were VERY good reasons for posting the password file, and, even if
there weren't, things don't need reasons to exist.

Locking accounts in this case isn't going to prevent abuse in this case
because there was none.


#25 of 39 by jp2 on Mon Mar 15 11:42:47 2004:

This response has been erased.



#26 of 39 by salad on Mon Mar 15 17:06:08 2004:

re 23 I've had several accounts locked in the past, and _EVERY TIME_ that I've
contacted staff, they've either said diddly to me on why they did it, or blamed
it on polytarp.


#27 of 39 by albaugh on Mon Mar 15 19:29:47 2004:

Let's try to make this simple for you #%^&#%-heads, shall we:  grex is showing
that it is run in a fairly reasonable matter, with some things carried out
seat of the pants, some by rule of thumb, some by hard & fast policy.
Reasonable grexers accept this, are happy for generally reasonable people
(staff) to make value judgments.  Unreasonable people (you know who you are)
simply try to waste a lot of everyone's time by engaging in these tiresome
"meta" discussions instead of "true" grexing.

Whine all you want to, bay at the moon in frustration.  Nobody cares that your
accounts are getting canceled - in fact they're quite pleased to see it
happen.  Type away if it amuses you.  We just don't care.  And we're happy
the way things are run, thank you.

For perhaps the first time ever a staff went rogue.  But that has passed now,
and reasonable people have gotten over it.  You should try it sometime...


#28 of 39 by tod on Mon Mar 15 19:32:26 2004:

This response has been erased.



#29 of 39 by salad on Mon Mar 15 19:40:57 2004:

re 27
>For perhaps the first time ever a staff went rogue.  But that has passed now,
 and reasonable people have gotten over it.  You should try it sometime...

On that subject?  Never.  It was wrong, and it is still wrong.


#30 of 39 by twenex on Mon Mar 15 21:07:31 2004:

Well tod, i consider myself a thinker, and I agree with albaugh. In the
absence of supernatural abilities, one must do the best one can in the
circumstances. That necessarily entails some ad-hoc filling in of the blanks,
interpretation, and pragmatism.

On the complacency note, though, right on.


#31 of 39 by tod on Mon Mar 15 21:12:25 2004:

This response has been erased.



#32 of 39 by twenex on Mon Mar 15 21:21:46 2004:

Nor did I say that you were.


#33 of 39 by salad on Mon Mar 15 22:43:54 2004:

Some people consider him a twit for asking questions, though.


#34 of 39 by atlantic on Mon Mar 15 22:55:41 2004:

DON"T FEED THE TITS!


#35 of 39 by jp2 on Tue Mar 16 00:02:42 2004:

This response has been erased.



#36 of 39 by gelinas on Tue Mar 16 00:06:33 2004:

I was not aware that Kevin was on staff.


#37 of 39 by jp2 on Tue Mar 16 00:12:57 2004:

This response has been erased.



#38 of 39 by albaugh on Tue Mar 16 21:41:10 2004:

Yeah, don't confuse me with that "evil" staff!  :-)  (I'm not worthy...)


#39 of 39 by jesuit on Wed May 17 02:14:59 2006:

TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE


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