Is it time to close newuser to instant access? The internet is a big pool and we're an easy target for, essentially, the troubled who need to act out for attention. Is Grex going to survive if we do nothing and put all our hopes into ignoring such behavior? Is it time we look at making Grex read only until verified in some manner? There are many ways to put up a gate, some friendlier than others. I'm afraid I think it's time to try something new. Sad, but true. But things change and the internet and time have changed Grex's pool. How do others feel?299 responses total.
I agree.
Tough call. We do seem to have acquired a couple of genuinely sick kids, and I don't see them giving up anytime soon unless we can put some limits on them.
Why not try the usual tool of blocking their IP addresses before resorting to more drastic measures?
While the concept is anathema to the principles upon which Grex was founded, the alternative effectively reduces our security policy to a petty power struggle between admins and a determined pest.
I suggest that Grex do SOMETHING, pronto. Agora is a cesspool, and filtration cannot replace the discussion that's being driven off. By all means, let's start with IP blocks. We can talk about other measures while we watch the results.
While the concept is anathema to the principles upon which Grex was founded, Not necessarily. 'Free speech and free access' does not preclude forbidding access to those who would use Grex for nefarious purposes. That's why free societies still have prisons, to draw an analogy.
Russ slipped.
Great. First, one of your staff members deletes part of a file belonging to an item in coop, in order to prevent the item from being a "cesspool". Now, you guys want to ban rootshell. Fuckers.
How many new users do we get per day, on average?
I have mixed feelings about changing our new user policy. Obviously we have a problem but it seems a shame to change something so fundamental to what I see as Grex's philosophy. I am open to discussing it though.
In the case of the "determined pest," IP blocks have been shown to be useless: There are too many places on the Internet that do _not_ block outbound access to unidentified users.
The only option I see is to close newuser. However, I don't think it will work: the limits have to be published, so it's just a matter of waiting for the limit to expire, then it's back to business as usual.
Three years ago I wouldn't have said this, but I agree that something needs to be done and favor trying the least intrusive means possible as a first step. That might indeed by some proactive blocking of IP addresses used by chronic abusers. We need to keep in mind, I think, that the chronic abusers, althouh quite prolific, are *very few in number*, so hopefully not much action would be necessary. I'd like to keep newuser open if at all possible. Re #11: In the email world, blocking of open SMTP relays is now standard practice. Maybe we could borrow an idea from that. Would it be feasible for us to identify and block sites that allow outbound access to unidentified users? Does anyone maintain a list of these?
laston effe mccoy promisc flocker baga effe ttyp3 at Sun Mar 27 12:57:31 2005 from bsd.miki.eu.org mccoy ttyp2 at Sun Mar 27 13:49:25 2005 from bsd.miki.eu.org promisc ttyp1 at Sun Mar 27 13:38:37 2005 from bsd.miki.eu.org flocker ttypd at Sun Mar 27 15:19:10 2005 from gnook.org (on line) baga ttypb at Sun Mar 27 13:02:51 2005 from phenix.rootshell.be Doesn't look too difficult to cut off their access.
Loky phenix.rootshell.be Should there be some policy as to what is suitable cause for blocking? Do we ask members to vote on each address?
I'd suggest doing the following: 1. Close newuser immediately with the message we are having a system problem and as soon as it can be resolved newuser will be reopened. 2. Current abuser accounts are suspended. 3. Staff gets together as soon as possible to come to an agreement as to how best to block specific sites. 4. Newuser is reopened to test the fix and again closed it if blocking doesn't work. 5. With our actions we make a strong statement the party is over. Grex is, basically, unusable for a newuser who might decide check us out. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone give us a try. I wouldn't advertise for new users. So close newuser until we can say otherwise. Twit filters works, but in a limited way. Someone can run through newuser in about 60 seconds. A twit filter would need to be updated on a daily basis, at least. It's certainly not a practical solution for anyone new to Grex. And without new people we are hosed. It is time to get real agressive about the problem, in my opinion.
I don't find the newusers any more annoying than some of the garbage klg, rane and bap post. While the subject matter may vary, the insulting tone really does not. The level of discourse on grex had gone downhill long before the most recent juveniles showed up. Don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise. The collective users of grex have managed to ignore the "canadian wave" in the past, and after a few months, semi-substantive items were still posted. There's no reason it can't happen again. Develop thicker skin, folks.
Rane and klg don't keep mutating, so if you want they are easy to filter, and they are not intentionally posting things to annoy other people. How does the board decide who is abusing grex?
While I agree that rane, klg and bap don't use newuser to "mutate" I disagree that they don't post intentionally post to annoy (although I suspect each would instead prefer to be described as "provocative").
Notice the change in tone: It's only now that users are being judged to be "abusers" based on the CONTENT of their posts. A new and backwards step in Grex's history.
Much as I might disagree with much of what rcurl opines, I have never, ever witnessed him creating a nuisance item, a vulgar item, and item created for trolling purposes, even one particularly provocative. Even richard doesn't really do that. Individual posts in existing items do not rise to that level, IMO. The current batch of nincompoops are the system "vandals", those who would spraypaint your garage or the city park. That being said, if there are in fact any amount of legitimate, potentially valuable, newusers beging created on a regular basis, closing down newuser will almost certainly mean they would shrug their shoulders and never return. If newuser, in its current totally open form, were temporarily turned off, would some sort of e-mail request for a new account be any more reliable in establishing somebody "serious" out there re: wanting a grex account for actual positive contributions to "the community"?
Mary may find the Agora conference unusable, but other parts of Grex are getting along fine. From my personal perspective, party is doing about as well as it ever has. I agree with Kevin Albaugh above; closing "newuser" for any length of time is a bad idea. It wasn't that long ago that twenex, just to pick one example, was just another random newuser.
And maybe it won't be long until we can say he only USED to be just another random newuser.
CANADIAN TIDAL WAVE><<<<<< I guess my account is going to be suspended soon :(
I'm following this discussion closely, but have not yet formed an opinion. Please keep discussing.
who's going to have their accounts deleted /@!
I don't think I've ever seen Grex look as uninviting to newusers as it is right now. There is almost no useful discussion happening in agora. Mostly, it's just vile stuff from a few users who have taken over. Warning them off for a few days may be better than letting them in, right now. But that's just my opinion. There is certainly room for disagreement.
if you do this, the irritators will have won. HAH!
I would like to know exactly what conditions a user must meet before they are considered abusive enough to warrant account suspension under Mary Remmers's schema. I imagine I've certainly been abusive enough in the past, what with all the election fraud, Greek week nonsense, mass mailings, etc., but what about now? Certainly, I'm not "perfect", but I'm also certainly better than I used to be. Should my account be suspended? And what about if, as some doofuses continue to do, misunderstandings of who's behind which accounts occur? I'm often confused with naftee. If my account should be suspended, should his, even though he's been MUCH less abusive than me over the years? And what about the Brazillians? Presumably, them joining is what precipitated this discussion. If they should be suspended, should I also be suspended since it's so obvious that we're one in the same? What we need before we can do anything that will have any effect is some useful criteria for determining exactly which accounts should be suspended.
Slip.
The only one confused between scholar & naftee is the Sybil-like deficiency of what serves as your brain.
Interesting that you put this in here, Mary. I've been wondering the same thing. I am truly saddened to think along these lines, but the net has changed a great deal, and I'd have to agree that Grex doesn't look as inviting as it once did. There are the sociopathetic types around, and there are people who abuse Grex by sending out emails that cause problems etc. I think I could make the case that our new hardware, coupled with our vastly increased net pipe has caused some problems. I'm not sure what the best solution is, yet. If we close down newuser, I really want for people to be able to screen requests for accounts and create them. Offhand I don't know how possible that is, but it can certainly be done. A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with someone from India who'd just discovered Grex, and was playing around with the C compiler. Stopping that kind of person from accessing Grex would be very sad. Still, on the other hand we have individuals who confuse "free speech" with the ability to spew filth everywhere, and decry our goals and ideals when we attempt to do something about it. Something does have to be done, because otherwise Grex will have optimized for those who can stand the atmosphere.
How many users participate in Agora? Both as an absolute number, and a percentage of all Grex users?
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Take the blue ribbon of free speech off the website if you guys decide to go all CENSORSHIP with this non-profit. Otherwise, just make the twit filter capability a lil more user friendly and start an awareness campaign so people know how to use it. That way, you can pick and choose what responses you read without interfering with the posts of numbskulls. After all, I may not like what mary or russ post more than what I care mccoy posts(that's an example, mind you.)
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#36 of 37: by By the way, this item has been archived offsite so you cannot erase it. (scholar) on Mon, Mar 28, 2005 (18:56): Re. 33: 21432 is the number of accounts on Grex, according to /etc/passwd. Of course, there are probably a number of accounts owned by the same person and maybe even some accounts owned by more than one person and all that jazz. #37 of 37: by By the way, this item has been archived offsite so you cannot erase it. (scholar) on Mon, Mar 28, 2005 (19:08): The current Agora lists 327 participants. The same provisions applying to this number as to the last, we can see that only 1.5% of users ever bother with BBS. Presumably, FEWER than that amount will remain after Ms. Mary gets through with her purges (which are no doubt an attempt to replace her now misplaces menstruations. We can expect monthly fits.). Essentially, then, what is proposed is opressing a HUGE majority for the sake of a few jackasses.
(Note: After originally posting that response as scholar, I realized that, for the benefit of people who might have him on their twit filters, I really ought to post it under a relatively unfiltered account. I apologize for the clumsy way in which this was done, though I must note that Grex's own staff persistently make drastic technical errors (i.e., Joe Gelinas's assertion that posting /etc/passwd files constituted such a breach in security that it was an offense worthy of jongleurish censorship, i's inept ellision of user responses in a way which caused plentiful error messages, and, if you realyl want, I'll come up with more.).).
That's okay, The Censored. We recognize that you are merely attempting to be as courteous as possible, even to people undeserving of such courtesy.
There are about 8177 usernames which have been used to sign on during February and March.
And every single one of them has fucked your mother.
Braziliant! On a more serious note, another helpful stat would be to look at the donor base. I seem to recall that many of the names aruba lists as contributors are not names I see in agora. Thus it would appear that a substantial number of donors don't even care about agora. If the stats bear me out on this, then I think that would be further evidence that the grex "elite" has a severe case of "if I can't have fun I'm gonna take my ball and go home." This would also provide further support my view that grex is a personal playground for some, and a place where doing personal favors for favored persons is SOP. Just a hint folks: The least drastic solution is almost always the best, especially when there's no real consensus as to the problem itself.
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i fuck your mom for sentimental reasons
eww, dude. no-one has ever accused me of being unsentimental, but even i wouldn't go that far.
#44 was well-reasoned and well-written. For that reason I expect it will be ignored by the handwringing elite . . . .
"For that reason I expect it will be ignored by the handwringing elite . . . ." Well, that was a typically snarky addendum to an otherwise good conversation. It's been awhile since we discussed default twit filters for new users, but that might be a way to approach this. While the small number of vandals could keep creating new accounts, it would be fairly simple to keep a global twit file current enough. And of course we'd want to include an easy, prominent option to bypass that filter, for users interested in seeing all responses. Really what we should be doing is contacting the vandals' parents.
Yeah, I think a system twit filter might be an option to consider which is short of turning off newuser. As scott said, make it easy to opt in and out of.
Would staff determine who counts as a twit?
I show not but disdain to the idea of a global twitfilter. What better way for staff members to "off" people who have become out of sync with their ideology?
staff members supporting the censorship idea of a global filter should talk to Walter Cramer about deleting responses from the raw item files, and its merits.
It would be nice if the twit filters in Backtalk would filter out the headers of filtered responses as well as the text itself. I would be happy if the only evidence of a filtered response is a gap in the sequence of response numbers showing. Second choice would be to have the "View filtered response" link display the filter options page with that response added onto it. That way, people can edit their filters quickly and easily on the fly. Also, having the filter options among the default links/buttons at the bottom of every page would go a long way toward helping users make use of filters.
I guess I should not be surprised that some people find my responses offensive, but I do because I never attack the person, their family, or use vile and vulgar language in my responses. If you find my considered opinions offensive, then so be it. But if you can't see a difference between my discussions, and their vile filth, then you really need to go back to school. even so, something needs to be done.
So you admit that the issue is one of content. Frankly, I find the ignorance of youth far less offensive than the ignorance of someone your age. And don't wonder what I'm talking about, just go back and look at how quick you were to make rash statements in the banktrupcty item without any facts to back them up. Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one. And on grex there's often little distinction between the two.
re #50 I would not want to opt into someone else's interpretation of "annoying user". I think it would be nice to be able to just type in "ignore russ" if I wanted to not see his responses anymore in BBS. (using russ as an example only)
Two types of filters could be set up: i) A user-defined filter list, so if I wanted to ignore a, b, c I could ii) A global staff-defined or conf-admin defined list, defined by those respective person/s Which filter to employ, if any, would be up to the individual user (and should be configurable once on first entering BBS, and then re-configurable thereafter at the individual user's discretion).
Maybe newuser could set that by default if someone enters a birthdate that's after 1990.
Spooked slipped.
might as well have a universal ignore then , ignore xyz to ignore xyz on bbs , party ,telegram and talk requests.
Yeah, let's ignore all the Jews.
Re: #55. Whooo! You know, you really can't blame stupid people for being stupid. Unfortunately.
People who use twit filters are stupid. Unfortunately.
re #58 Maybe we could advocate throwing Catcher in the Rye into a bonfire, too.
I don't think you "got" it.
AHAHA THE POINT WAS THAT RUSS IS A PAEDOPHILE " AHAHAHA THAT"S OH GOD
No, it gives WORMS to ex girlfriends
The question came up earlier about how many people use the conferences,
or Agora in particular, as a proportion of the total Grex user base.
Mabye some tools already exist for generating relevant data, but I don't
know where to find them, so I wrote a couple of my own that might be
useful. I'm sure they can be improved on; any local shell script
hackers are welcome to have at 'em.
The following commands are in the directory ~remmers/bin:
confstats -number of items, responses, and distinct responders
in a conference
confusers -list number of responses by all or a selected set of
users in a conference (Regardless of what you're
thinking, the name "confusers" stands for "conference
users".)
at-least-10-logins-in-march
-a command with a silly name that displays the number
of users who logged into Grex at least 10 times during
March 2005.
To save you the trouble of running that last command, which takes some
time, I'll report that at this writing the number of users who logged in
at least 10 times in March is 947. (That might include a small number
of administrative accounts that aren't really people, but I don't think
that's significant.) I chose a threshhold of 10 because it's the first
2-digit number and also because there are a lot of people who go through
newuser to check out the system, log in only once or a handful of times,
and then never come back. So they're not really users. On the other
hand, if someone logs in 10 or more times, I think it's likely that
they've found something to do here.
So anyway, about 1000 real users, give or take a bit.
The "confstats" command gives you statistics on a conference. You have
to give the actual directory name of the conference as an argument, e.g.
"agora53" (for the current Agora) instead of "agora". The command
~remmers/bin/confstats agora52
(that would be winter agora) gives the output
# items: 259
# responses: 12960
# talkers: 170
The number of "talkers" is the number of distinct logins who entered at
least one response. It might be reasonable to subtract off people who
made only one or two responses, but I didn't do that. Estimating the
number of "readers" is problematic due to the fact that no central
records are kept of those, and it's possible to read anonymously.
Maybe this says that about 15% of active Grex users participate in
Agora. Maybe less, if you subtract off one-time-only responders.
Compare this to an Agora from 6 years ago:
~remmers/bin/confstats agora22
# items: 132
# responses: 9492
# talkers: 262
A telling comparison. Roughly half as many items 6 years ago, but
significantly higher average number of responses per item, and a whole
lot more people participating in the conversations. The base of Agora
participants appears to have shrunk significantly.
The "confusers" takes a conference and a list of login id's as arguments
and gives you the number of responses by each of those users in the
conference. Or if you just specify a conference, it lists responses by
all users in alphabetical order. Example for the current Agora:
~remmers/bin/confusers agora53 other remmers scott
18 other
8 remmers
20 scott
Because they're too long for a response, I've saved the all-users lists
in my web directory, sorted in descending order of number of responses.
http://cyberspace.org/~remmers/winter-agora.txt
http://cyberspace.org/~remmers/spring-agora.txt
Well, I hope somebody finds something useful to do with these tools in
terms of gauging where Grex is and where it's headed.
Respond, pass, forget, quit, or ? for more options? !last other other ttyq4 pcp05305840pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net Mon Mar 14 17:36 - 17:55 (00:19) other ftp pcp05305840pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net Sat Feb 12 03:37 - 03:37 (00:00) other ftp pcp05305840pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net Sat Feb 12 03:37 - 03:37 (00:00) other ttyp2 pcp05305840pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net Sat Feb 12 03:25 - 03:26 (00:01) wtmp begins Sun Dec 19 14:45 2004 OTHER has logged in only four times this month (and two of those were ftp sessions!), yet i don't think anyone would consider him an insignificant user. thus, logging in at least ten times a month doesn't seem like a very useful way of measuring who's a significant user and who's not.
It does appear that wtmp is not logging account usage via Backtalk. Remmers, how can your script account for those who are active users but who primarily (or nearly exclusively) use Grex to conference via http?
Hmm, weird. If I recall correctly, http logins *were* logged in wtmp on OldGrex, but you're right, they're not being logged now. I suspect that's a bug that needs to be fixed. If it's not in wtmp, then offhand I'm not sure where's the best place to get http login information. It's probably extractable from the httpd logs, but I suspect there's a simpler way, since the "laston" command knows about http logins even if "last" doesn't.
Wow - thanks for these new tools, John!
thanks, john!
Did you take into account the multiple personalities?
That then begs the question, if wtmp is NOT logging use of accounts by Backtalk, then will accounts be reaped after three months of http-only access?
Thanks for those tools, John.
Re. 75: that's not actually beggint the question. begging the question is when an answer to a question is obviously not adequate because it just pushes the question one step back. the thing with the elephants holding up earth is the standard example. what's holding up the earth? an elephant. what's holding up the elephant? another elephant. this last answer is begging the question.
What! tod beat me for number of responses in spring agora ?! that can't be! http://cyberspace.org/~remmers/spring-agora.txt is not in alphabetical order, by the way
Re #74: Nope, too subjective and difficult to automate.
Re #75: Good question. I don't know the answer.
Re #78: Right. The "confusers" command outputs in alphabetical order,
so I piped the output through "sort" to get descending numeric:
confusers | sort -nr
ah, whoops. didn't read that. thanks.
Instead of closing newuser, why not just close the conferences. Make all the conferences read only for new users, and if a newuser wants to join a conference for posting purposes, he/she has to be approved by one of the fairwitness(es). The fairwitnesses would then also have the ability to grant a user posting access or deny a user posting access to that particular conference. I think if these certain abusive users could no longer post right away with each new login, that it would be a reasonable deterrent. As has been pointed out, it is only the conferences that the abuse is most noticeable on. I would hate to see newuser close when we get so many users from around the world who get new logins and come on to party, particularly late at night. Grex has been getting new users from russia, china, mexico, and many other countries who they would not get if newuser closed. Also as a further deterrent, I suggest that the time has come for grex to stop offering offsite email, at least to non members. There was a time when the free email service was badly needed, but it is not anymore. Grex devotes too many resources now to processing mass emailings and these abusive users use email to mailbomb other grexers (I personally received over 8,000 emails from another grex user in less than thirty minutes a couple of weeks ago, from one of these grex users who was trying to be a pain in the ass) Take away automatic email priviledges and automatic posting priviledges, and you would solve your problem. These users would probably go away.
remove the ribbon.
further, if say newuser "xyzy" requests to join the agora conference, couldn't it be set up the agora fw can run a program that automatically looks up the ip that xyzy is using and sees if it is used by other users? This could be a basis for denying xyzy posting privs or granting posting privs
Another option might be to modify the newuser program so that it requires each prospective newuser to supply an offsite email address. This is what other automated newuser progs, like the one ezboard uses, do. ezboard requires an offsite email address and will only issue one new login per each email address. Right now a user can easily create ten or a hundred different logins on grex, but if to do so, he had to first create ten or a hundred different offsite email addresses, it could be a deterrent. Require an offsite email address and then set up newuser to it doesn't validate a new login until it gets a confirmation response from that offsite email address.
Re: #82 I agree with you, the ribbon should go. It should have gone over a year ago if interpret it to mean we detest censorship more than we honor friendship. We have always filtered for the type of users we attract. Mostly, this filtering has been by pretty broad strokes. In the beginning we filtered for geeks because you had to be pretty geeky to figure out the hardware and software back in the mid-eighties. Then we filtered for those who like free-wheeling, in-your-face type discussions, by avoiding censorship. We filtered for a bigger pool of users when we opened up to the Internet and Backtalk went live. And we filtered for those with more time on their hands than is healthy when we let the system get deadly slow for a very long time. Open newuser filters yet again, for better and worse. Whatever we do we're making choices about the type of community we attract. It may be a passive type of selection, but we're selecting just the same. Are we happy with the status quo? I'm hearing yes from a whole lot of users. Which is what I'd expect to a large degree, they're here because we filtered for them. And I guess if our selection process will leave us with a pool of users who will support Grex, both financially and in terms of attracting new users, well, then all is well, and nothing should be changed. I guess the question I'd like folks to consider is this. If Grex is like it is, one year from now, do you still think you'll be here?
Re: #84 Interesting suggestions, Richard.
i will always be with you, mary.
re #85 Re: #82 I agree with you, the ribbon should go. It should have gone over a year ago if interpret it to mean we detest censorship more than we honor friendship. I choose my friends carefully. Being a Grex user doesn't automatically open the door to such a concept nor would being a friend give someone the right to censor items I've responded and had discussions in. Sorry, but my friendships are not conditioned with censorship autonomy.
And I agree with you, Todd. But the membership voted otherwise and we, those who disagreed, need to get over that specific episode and move on. It can't always go my/your/our way.
Some of these issues could also be addressed by more aggressive fair witnessing in the main confs. Agora has had next to no moderation or fairwitnessing in recent years other than re-starting the conf. I'd like to see Agora add two or three more fairwitnesses and adopt a much more active and responsible moderation of the conference. Any items entered for twit purposes, such as entering portions of party logs for no reason, should be killed as soon as a fw sees them. Not frozen. Not left out there like an open sore, but killed outright. These folks get off on posting items because they know the items will stay out there. If those items start disappearing almost as soon as they enter them, they will get discouraged from doing so. Active fairwitnesses with the abilities (which they currently have) to kill bad items and restrict posting privs of twit users (which they should have), would improve things. Grex needs to start insisting on more active fairwitnessing IMO
Gawd, that sounds awful. Is that really how other systems are dealing with the same problem? I kinda doubt it. I think I'm leaning toward supporting a system-wide twit filter, maintained by staff, with the threshold for being on the list, quite high. By default the filter would be on but users could, of course, opt out and see it all. Could such a thing be effective with an open newuser? I understand it's still censorship. But when free speech becomes an anti-social attention getting device, well... There's the rub.
richard, like many of the GreXers who are not technically inclined, has not discovered the 'retire' command, and would therefore resort to killing items.
Re. 91: i can tell you from experience that it IS how other systems operate. chinet shut down new users right after i made my first post.
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what ! scholar! what did you post on chinet ?
Well, not that a grex "insider" has agreed the ribbon should go, I hope it its removal wiil be placed on the board agenda for the next meeting.
ryan: no point in staying here when everyone is on my filter list ---- ryan leaving (Mar 31 21:16) Re. 95: I don't know! I forget! Itw as years ago!
I've read the EFF's page on the Blue Ribbon. I do not agree that the removal of some items from grex's conferences is in any way a violation of "free speech" or an instance of "censorship." Therefore, i do not see any reason to remove the EFF's Blue Ribbon.
I'd like to see us try something like slashdot's rating system. It's complicated, but if enough people participate in rating users, we could deprecate most of the noise quickly.
Would it help, Richard, if users were not allowed to send more than maybe 25 mails per hour? Or more than 1MB per hour?
I think a /. type rating system requires a critical mass of users we no longer have.
Re #98: Read a little closer, junior. While I suspect you're hiding behind the hypocritical notion that grex is private and therefore you can continue to "support" anti-censorship by the government while doing privately the very thing you criticize, in fact the EEF is involved in the anonymity issue as well. Go to http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/ This link is found on the EEF's *censorship* Blue Ribbon page. That page also links to http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/cyberslapp.php Historical revisionist bap may also want to visit those pages so he can lose his massive ignorance about the role of anonymous speech in the history of America. I won't hold my breath, though. LOSE THE RIBBON!
Moreover, the twits could create multiple accounts voting off everyone but themself/ves.
re #93 & 94 I think the best solutions are technical solutions that allow people to filter out the annoying vandals. I totally agree. The best way to deal with the boobs is to shut them out of your viewing at your discretion. FW's shouldn't waste time censoring nor should they feel 'entitled' to censor entire items unless criminal content is the cause.
Must confess that I don't follow the logic of #102 at all. The item deletions of last year, unfortunate though I believe they were, had nothing to do with the issue of anonymity. Suppose I have a blog and exert editorial control over comments that readers enter - e.g. moderate them, or remove off-topic comments, or remove ad hominem attacks, or don't allow anonymous comments, or whatever. Does that mean that I don't support free speech and am morally enjoined from displaying the EFF blue ribbon? I don't think so, and I doubt that the EFF thinks so either. I'll remind folks that in the aftermath of last year's item deletions, a policy *was* passed by the members that addresses the issue of when items may be deleted. It's arguably not a perfect policy, but in my opinion if the policy had been in place in January of 2004, the item deletions that took place then would have been in violation. So it's not as if the Grex membership didn't see a problem with the deletions and refused to take steps to prevent a recurrence. You can read the policy here: http://www.grex.org/grexdoc/archives/votes/vote17 That said, I don't think that fairwitnesses should be given expanded duties or powers for content control over what they have now. I think that'd be an instance of the "cure" being worse than the disease. I'd like to see a technical solution that helps users control their environment here to the degree that they want to, is not too labor-intensive, and mostly runs itself. I think that's a harder problem than it might appear at first glance. I'm mulling it over but don't really have any ideas to present at the moment.
re #105 remmers said: "I'd like to see a technical solution that helps users control their environment here to the degree that they want to, is not too labor-intensive, and mostly runs itself." But see the problem isn't with the current regular users, we can deal with this stuff or tolerate it. The problem is with new users, people who come to grex for the first time, look at agora full of bs posts and they don't participate. They leave. Even if everybody has a twit filter, the twittified posts are still out there and new users still see the twittified posts. The idea is that the conference needs to be cleaned up so that new users, not regular users but NEW users, don't come here and see those posts. My feeling is that the only way to do that is to remove the posts. If a newuser comes here and sees fifteen dozen censored posts that he can't read, he is going to wonder what is going on. Grex needs to be concerned with what sort of environment is presented to outsiders, how clean do grex's main conferences look to outsiders. It is an important consideration and not something a system wide twit filter is going to solve entirely. I simply think the time has passed where these confs can be essentially unmoderated. It is a nice ideal but we don't live in a perfect world and people won't come here and participate in the confs if those confs look cluttered and uncontrolled.
re #105 http://www.grex.org/grexdoc/archives/votes/vote17 I'd like to see this policy amended to include that any posts containing homophobic or racist slang for no good purpose will be removed, and any posts reprinting party logs for no good purpose will be removed as a rule
re #106 But see the problem isn't with the current regular users, we can deal with this stuff or tolerate it. The problem is with new users, people who come to grex for the first time, look at agora full of bs posts and they don't participate. They leave. Even if everybody has a twit filter, the twittified posts are still out there and new users still see the twittified posts. The idea is that the conference needs to be cleaned up so that new users, not regular users but NEW users, don't come here and see those posts. That is censorship. Go live in China if you don't like free speech.
re #107 I'd like to see this policy amended to include that any posts containing homophobic or racist slang for no good purpose will be removed, and any posts reprinting party logs for no good purpose will be removed as a rule I'd like to see you get married, enjoy some Richard Pryor videos, and go serve 2 stretches as a cook in the Army but we can't have everything.
tod, we don't live in a perfect world and grex can't be perfect. I think grex's conferences, at least agora, are in a deplorable state at the moment. would you rather see users driven away and grex's agora become an oasis of meaningless drivel as opposed to having the least little bit of censorship? I think you are applying too broad a standard for censorship. It is one thing to censor one's opinions, it is quite another to censor meanspirited foul mouthed crap. Grex should be taking care of its confs, not running them on autopilot and watching them die
> FW's shouldn't feel 'entitled' to censor entire items > unless criminal content is the cause. I don't agree that this is the only reason for which FW's could / should retire or delete items.
re #110 would you rather see users driven away and grex's agora become an oasis of meaningless drivel as opposed to having the least little bit of censorship? "little bit of censorship"? How do you regulate such a thing when you begin restricting and infringing on the freedom to read and speak everyone's expressions? Your desire for a false sense of security in gaining new users ignores the current user and membership's desire for unmitigated discussions. I would not feel comfortable giving the right of censorship to the staff. Grex has already proven that it does not care to restore discussions and instead prefers to diguise its censorship as favoritism for "friends."
staff already HAS the right of censorship. It has censored items in the past. It will no doubt censor items in the future. I had an item censored in agora over a year ago, not by a fw but by staff (specifically marcus watts), because I had copied over a portion of an mnet item into a grex item during a discussion of who owns copyright on posts. Grex is not publicly owned, it is a PRIVATE corporation, owned by its membership. So posting on grex is not like speaking on a sidewalk, it is like posting to a privately owned bulletin board. Grex posting is a PRIVILEDGE, it is not a right. Certain users have repeatedly abused that priviledge. I am saying that the board/staff of grex have the right to not condone that. If they want to insist on more moderation of the confs, or add a few more restrictions on posts that won't be tolerated, that is their right and prerogative. You have the right to join Grex and vote against the board members who do this if you want. My feeling is that the users of Grex are so beholded to the idea of having no rules and no censorship that they bully the board/staff into not taking care of Grex, or more specifically, its conferences, at all. I think that nothing is wrong with Grex requiring a few basic standards of behaviour in exchange for the priviledge of posting here. Such as 1. don't re-post party transcripts in a conference without the permissions of the other people involved in that chat. people should be able to chat on Party to the small group of people on Party at that time, without being concerned that anything they say might be cut and pasted, their words taken entirely out of context, and posted into Agora or some other conference. Why should Grex tolerate this? 2. grex need not tolerate somebody posting an item on grex just to call another person a vulgar term for homosexual, or a vulgar term for the female anatomy or such. Requiring a little taste and decorum does not equal censorship. Censorship would be disallowing a topic altogether. I'd be against a systemwide twit filter because even some users who are twits can learn to post reasonable posts. People can grow up. It happens. Look at Ryan, he's a good quality member and poster now, because he has gotten older, but he was a little kid once years back who used to have heat with staff. People change. I'd rather have moderators enforcing a few common sense rules, than have filter upon filter upon filter. It doesn't look good to have all these filtered posts, and I think some of the people pushing this are techies who are searching for a technical solution for what ISN'T a technical problem. The more filters you put up the more you encourage people to try and find ways around them. I'm saying deal with the issue rather than continually trying to block the issue and pretend it doesn't exist.
re #113 You have the right to join Grex and vote against the board members who do this if you want. I am/have been a member, ran for Board, and do vote on these issues. I'm here discussing it right now, too. I do not agree that staff has carte blanche censorship rights.
It isn't a matter of staff having "rights", its a matter of staff having no restrictions. I am not aware of the board having many set rules for staff. valerie mates was staff and she removed all of her past posts, and deleted entire items that she had created, because nobody told her she couldn't do it. If staff does not have explicit restrictions against doing something, they have implied carte blanche rights to do it. It is up to the board to reign in staff if it is deemed necessary. But it is not a matter of "rights", everybody has privileges here, nobody has any "rights" here. This is a private system supplied by its members for open public use.
Re #105: If you don't understand the logic, go to the EFF site and maybe it will be clearer. The EFF equates censorship with restrictions on free speech. It also mentions that the ability to remain anonymous is also a worthwhile goal that not only furthers free speech but also has a deep historical tradition in the birth of the US. Your example of a blog is a private matter that would not be tolerated if done by the government. As a private citizen you are free to do so. I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy in claiming to support preventing government censorship while doing so privately. That is not a legal argument, it is a moral one. Comprende? Lose the ribbon; ya'll are hypocrites.
#116 cyklone, grex is under no obligation to meet any "moral" standard. Grex can be hypocritical if it pleases to do so. Nobody has any rights here. If you want the priviledge of posting here, you should be willing to accept any rules grex imposes
How does "accept any rules grex imposes" mesh with your previous contention that people who don't like the rules ought to stand up to them?
re #117 From the 501c3 application: "Grex provides a wide range of services to the community that further the mission of Cyberspace Communications: " line 2 states "2. A simple registration process enables users coming in from either the dial-in lines or the Internet to create Grex accounts for themselves. This process is designed to be as barrier-free as possible, encouraging the widest possible range of users to access our system. Users are not required to pay any fees, nor are they required to give any information about themselves. Accounts are created immediately and there is no delay in gaining access...." "...Our open registration policy also supports our educational mission." line 4 further states "..Our broader educational mission is served by providing and maintaining these discussion forums where the content is entirely generated by the users. The wide range of users attracted by our open access policy ensures a wide range of knowledge and opinion. On-line forums are very effective in drawing people with diverse backgrounds into shared discussions..." I don't see the word CENSORSHIP in there. I see "wide range of knowledge and opinion." Are you saying Grex should ditch it's 501c3 status?
I think filters are a very bad idea, as they can confuse and leave uninformed a user who has already questionable intelligence. Consider user ryan, a person who matches the above criterion. Read very carefully what user naftee wrote, and what he wrote immediately afterwards (he has a filter that prevents him reading what user naftee writes): ---- naftee joining (Apr 1 20:06) naftee: whoops naftee: i think i filled up /var :( naftee: ---- naftee leaving (Apr 1 20:07) munkey: nice ryan: ryan: hmm ryan: var is full ---- tod leaving (Apr 1 20:13)
Re #117: Yes, Richard, I already know grex fails in the moral standards department. Your honesty is refreshing inasmuch is you implicitly recognize in your statement that the Blue Ribbon is not fit to be displayed on Grex. If others would be as enlightened as you, and recognize grex for what it is, a personal playground for the favored few, the removal of the Blue Ribbon would not even be subject to debate. Lose the Ribbon!
who shot the sherrif f
I agree. Let's ditch the blue ribbon. Call a spade a spade.
But first we have to call the deputy.
I've never agreed that the removal of the items was "censorship." You were not prevented from saying what you wanted to say. You were not punished for saying what you wanted to say. What you said simply was not preserved. That happens.
So that means if the police were to burn down your house tonight, you'd shrug your shoulders and say you weren't being punished. What you had simply was not preserved. That happens.
Yeah, Gelinas is a textbook case of "cognitive dissonance" where a person refuses to perceive that which contradicts his preconceived notion of the world. Even though we've patiently explained it to him, he continues to play word cames to avoid facing reality. BTW, thanks for your honesty, cross. You're one of the few people I still admire on grex for their integrity. If you in fact did what the Brazilians accused you of doing, it was no worse than what trex would have done on mnet. I have no beef with that.
I dont know. I dont think it is hypocritical to support free speech in the sense that one doesn t want the government to infringe it while at the same time not promoting it in one's personal life. There are certain things I wouldn't allow someone to say in my home and I think it is perfectly reasonable for me to delete comments on my blog. But I wouldn't want the government telling me what could or could not be posted on the internet. As far as the business with a staff member deleting items on grex. Well. I disagreed with that for the most part although I believe she would have been within her rights to delete all of her own posts and those of people willing to have their posts deleted (which would have effectively accomplished the same thing but without all the sticky issues). I certainly saw it as staff abuse but since the person resigned from staff, there wasn't much for the organization to do. The thing is that although I didn't like what happened, I also believe that one of the nice things about grex is that issues can go to a membership vote. Sometimes the vote doesn't turn out the way I would like but I feel strongly that it is important to respect the outcomes. I do wonder what the EFF would say about this. Perhaps we should ask them if they would like us to keep the ribbon or not.
According to /---------------------------------------------------------------------\ | http://www.eff.org/Misc/Graphics/Icons/BlueRibbon/README.blueribbon | \---------------------------------------------------------------------/ "All internet users are strongly encouraged to place a blue ribbon graphic on their servers, such as the ones available here, with a link to the URL mentioned below." As far as I can see, the EFF doesn't have particular rules for who should display the ribbon and who shouldn't. They'd like everyone to do it.
I'll bet the KKK would love a nice graphic on Grex, also.
"Its just a ribbon..it doesn't MEAN anything" heh
Re. 129: It hardly seems to me that it is fair to read one sentence of a document and take that as the totality of the document, especially when it results in the distortion you have made. Sentences like "A blue ribbon is chosen as the symbol for the preservation of basic civil rights in the electronic world" certainly established that the act of displaying the blue ribbon is an act in support of the ideology of free speech. It seems to me queer and possibly disingenuous that someone could claim that the only free speech worth preserving is that which is not suppressed by a particular entity, though I imagine some will claim that they simply object to free speech quashed by governments. This, however, seems to debase any real significance of the blue ribbon. If we release ourselves of any motivation to preserve free speech on Grex, what could the blue ribbon possibly stand for? We lose any possibility of local significance, which is the only type we can actually effect.
who cares about the freakin' ribbon! the ribbon isn't the issue here. the issue is what to do about users abusing the conferences. I think closing newuser would be really bad, as it would discourage new users from coming here and grex NEEDS new users for its survival. Filters are only good until people find ways around them, and with open newuser people will find ways around them. So its a no win proposition with closing new user OR imposing new filters. Neither will work. Therefore what other options would grex have except to more closely moderate the conferences. I don't think requiring good behaviour equates to censorship. You aren't repressing ideas if you are saying, 'we want you to call a gay person a "homosexual" and not use the word 'faggot' or any other words we might find demeaning. You aren't repressing ideas if you say, 'we want you to not flame a person in a conf for the sake of flaming a person' You aren't repressing ideas if you say 'for the sake of those involved in chats, we request that you don't re-post chat transcripts in Agora or other conferences' You CAN in fact continue to uphold the ideals of free speech and an open exhange of ideas AND at the same time require some concepts of decent behaviour that would make the conferences more enjoyable and readable for all. If Grex's conferencing environment is to survive as anything worth reading, grex can't filter left and right, it needs to take care of the conferences more directly.
Richard, if you'd take a minute to untie your panties, you would realize you're confusing and combining two separate issues. Issue #1: How should grex deal with "problem" users, new or otherwise? Issue #2: IF grex chooses a method inconsistent with the values symbolized by the Blue Ribbon, should the ribbon be removed from grex? My position on #1 is that the problem is not that great, and that lesser solutions are preferable to more drastic solutions. You and others obviously disagree. My position on #2: Since you and others seem to be hell-bent on adopting more drastic "solutions" all I ask is that you recognize such solutions are inconsitent with the principles represented by the blue ribbon, and it should therefore be removed from grex. Capiche?
I disagree that such solutions are inconsistent with blue ribbon principles. Grex is not repressing ideas or telling people what to say. Grex has free speech and would continue to have, even with these suggestions. Grex can go on proudly wearing the blue ribbon
Nice try, but the EEF disagrees with you. Here, I'll post it again for the memory-impaired: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/ Assuming you have a high-school level ability to comprehend the written word, you should admit now the EEF considers ANONYMOUS speech to be fundamental part of free speech. You, OTOH, want to bar anonymous speech. You can't have both. Pick the lady or the tiger.
I don't want to bar anonymous speech. I am against closing newuser. Requiring a code of behaviour for posters IS NOT barring anonymous speech. In no way am I saying that anybody must reveal who they are.
I stand corrected. I had you confused with others who want to ID all new users. However, when I reviewed your posts, it is clear that you want to restrict the content of speech. That is the very ESSENCE of censorship, so if you position is adopted by grex, it would be hypocritical to allow the blue ribbon to remain.
richard believes in a "closed" private BBS and an "open" public newuser. It's very strange.
cyklone, I think you are flat wrong, and here's why: I think there is a
practical limit to the reasonable upholding of the principles of free speech by
private organizations. When a business (either for profit or not) declares
itself to uphold those principles, it must be assumed that it will not and
*cannot* do so without compromise. To deny that is to expect that an
organization will allow any and all speech content by any persons, even if that
content leads directly to the failure of the organization itself. To do that
would not be an effective way of supporting the principle of free speech,
because it would allow a small number of determined pests to destroy any
organization which pursues an uncompromising policy supporting free speech.
Therefore, in practice, it is not only perfectly acceptable, but desirable for
non-governmental organizations to limit abuses of free speech in order to
preserve their own ability to further support free speech. This sounds rather
Orwellian if you don't actually think about it, but if you do think about it,
you'll realize that
* it is pretty basic, and
* it necessarily introduces uncertainty because of the variability of
interpretation of the reasonable extent of free speech that an
organization can support without letting itself be threatened by it.
The conclusions:
* Grex not only has the right, but it has a responsibility to its
stakeholders to place some limits on abuses of its free and open forums.
* Minimally limiting abuses of free speech is absolutely not antithetical
to the concept of free speech, but is necessary to prevent the spiral to
oblivion that results from allowing tyrannical abusers unrestricted
ability to poison the well of public discourse.
* The Devil is in the details when it comes to deciding what constitutes
'reasonable limits on free speech.'
I only want to require good behaviour, I am not suggesting that anyone be prevented from speaking their mind on any topic. Nothing on the EFF page says anything that says sites shouldn't or couldn't require that. It says "display the Blue Ribbon to support the essential human right of free speech, a fundamental building block of free society" If your interpretation is that there should never be any rules, that good and ethical behaviour can't be required by host sites in exchange for use of their services, then I think your interpretations are WAY too broad.
re #139, naftee I didn't say I the "bbs" should be closed/private, I said the organization that sponsors it is a private organization. Big difference. you seem to think that your free speech rights mean that this private organization can't or shouldn't be able to take steps to protect its hardware, software and other assets from user abuse. That is wrong.
Re #141: I have never said that free speech is entirely without limits. The common example on line is posting credit card numbers without the knowledge of the cardowner. So don't bring red herrings into this. I am objecting to your "good behavior" standard since I have yet to see it articulated in any way that would avoid abuse by the "good behavior" censors. Maybe you should think about some standards rather than general principles. Re #140: That was actually the best argument I've heard so far. It doesn't make me "flat wrong" however. First of all, the solution must fit the problem. In order to craft a proper solution, the problem must first be fairly assessed. Just because some on grex scream the sky is falling doesn't make it so. Grex has survived waves of twits before without implementing drastic measures, and I remain unconvinced that the passage of time won't do the same in this case. At the very least, a one or two month wait to see what happens is not going to result in the downfall of grex. In addition, I have already endorsed twit filters as the lesser evil that furthers the goals you describe. What I'm seeing from many on grex, however, is an attitude of "let's not even waste our time with that idea, we need to move on to more drastic measures." Rejecting an untested moderate proposal while pushing more extreme ideas is the hallmark of fanaticism. Even more to the point, at least a portion of that filter proposal has ALREADY been tested and proven successful! The same goes for temporary IP blocks. Those who want to go further are extremists, and I don't believe the blue ribbon is justified when it is associated with such extremism. While the arguments you make would be persuasive if the ultimate existence of grex was at stake, I don't see that as the case. Right now the attitude seems more like "we must trample on free speech to preserve our playground the way we like it and want it forever to remain."
What would have to be the state of things for you to agree Grex is in trouble and it's "ultimate existence" is at stake? Would you be looking at the number of those willing to financially support Grex? The number of users sustaining interesting discussion? Do you think it's possible to wait so long to act that nobody will be left to care what happens?
(Mary hums M-Net's theme song while waiting for an answer...) ;-)
Closing newuser does not necessarily mean that we have to verify anyone who runs it. It just means that there might be a waiting period before one has access to the systems. This would theoretically prevent someone with a splatted account from immediately running newuser. Anonymity can still be preserved. I am still not convinced that closing newuser is the best way to handle this issue. I think we already know that ip blocking wont work. I *really* dont like the idea of moderating anyone's words. I wonder if it is possible to give item authors more control over individual items. Like giving them fw powers over any item they author? This would involve a huge shift in policy, I know. And it would allow item authors to censor responses in items they create. But since any user would be free to enter another item that they control, it would not be an abridgement of free speech. Obviously this is not something that could apply to any items already in existance since part of what would make a scheme like this work would be for anyone responding to an item to know that their words are under the control of the item's author. Any item author who ends up abusing this power would soon find people reluctant to respond to any items they author. I dont suppose that is something that is technically possible?
re 142 Read your response #113 " So posting on grex is not like speaking on a sidewalk, it is like posting to a privately owned bulletin board. Grex posting is a PRIVILEDGE, it is not a right. " You're saying right here that the BBS is private. But the strange thing is why you believe that the newuser command should not be reserved as a private command reserved for priviledged users. What do you expect new people to do on this "public" system which really isn't public at all ?
Re #144: Off the top of my head, no, I haven't thought of any particular metrics to monitor. However, I can say that mnet has survived fine, and until grex nears that level I don't see any cause for concern. As far as I know, mnet also grants trex a great deal of leeway to IP block disruptive users. It seems to work out fine.
Some months ago, Rex banned all of Sympatico, by far Canada's largest ISP, in favour of getting rid of me. Now, I use the system openly, but Sympatico is still banned, at least for the most part; I have accidentally found one or two addresses that appear to never have been subject to the ban.
Richard would make any homophobic or xenophobic remarks automatic grounds for removal from BBS. While those comments are distasteful at best, this *is* censorship. If we adopt such policies, we no longer support free speech. As it is, we've already crossed the line too far.
Having fairwitnesses moderate content, as a solution to Grex's declining agora state is not only ethically concerning, but in reality is impractical. It is a no-goer - simple! (FWIW, I have not read agora in years - thought it was bad enough back then...) The flexible solution, which can solve the problem for both existing users AND new users is one I described in this item somewhere back there - 2 sets of filters: 1) User-defined conf/party/write filters: Complete flexibility on who to ignore, if anyone, is at the discretion of each individual user. 2) Staff-defined conf/party/write filters: Staff may maintain a global list of troublesome identities, and only if a user wants to block communication with these people shall they employ this list. NEW USERS can have the option to enable this by default, thus largely filtering most of the junk from their eyes from day one. Both can be employed if a user chooses, AND if a user wants to "hear" from someone potentially blocked in set 2 by staff (but still keep the others filtered) then that should be possible, also - for example, like the .yeswrite (if I recall correctly) functionality with the orville write program. Finally, the filters should be able to be turned on/off/modified at anytime at each individual user's discretion. This solution is both flexible to each individual user, and is technically not that brain-intensive to implement (will require a few changes to the bbs/party/write). In the case of bbs the changes will only be possible in fronttalk because we do not have code to picospan - though, I guess we could implement some paging front-end filter capabilities (in fact, some users already have coded their own, I think).
I'm hoping for something a little more interesting than survival.
Mary slipped in
agora' still pretty bad :(
ouch i just poked my middle finger with a very sharp pencil
Mary, if want grex to more than survive, then the userbase needs to come to an agreement what it means to both "survive" and do "more than survive." Frankly, I'm not even sure such a consesus exists at this time as to what those terms mean here. And until there is a better understanding of those terms, many of the proposed actions are premature. Undertand also that the options some seem to favor (perhaps even you, based on what I've read) are antithetical to free speech, and the ribbon should therefore be removed. You can try to create your own G-rated Algonquin roundtable, and limit the seats and topics of conversation, for all I care. Just don't pretend it's anything more. It's the lady or the tiger, your pick.
G-UNIT
Re resp:129 on the EFF Ribbon: Indeed. The EFF wants everyone to display the ribbon, and it *is* their ribbon after all. Hmm... a lot of responses since my #102 or whatever number it was. All of which ignore the fact that I, hypocrite though I may be, pointed out that as a result of the item deletions of last year, the Grex membership, hypocrites or otherwise, *did* adopt a policy restricting item deletion. http://www.grex.org/grexdoc/archives/votes/vote17
I'm glad about that, though it does nothing to restore the words that were stolen from me and the public. So in a narrow sense, I consider those who voted for the no-deletion proposal yet also voted not to restore the vandalized items to be hypocrites doing personal favors for favored persons. Putting that aside, though, my accusations of hypocrisy are now directed at those who wish to implement policies that (a) restrict anonymous speech and/or (b) seek to control the content of posts beyond the generally accepted "no credit card numbers" type of standard.
Man, more than 150 responses accumulated in just a few days.
If we wanted to make the twits invisible to the average new user,
we could do it. It requires no changes to Picospan, because the
file and response formats are known and easily manipulated. This
is all we would have to do:
1.) Add a question to newuser, suggesting the use of a filter
and allowing them to opt out.
2.) Add simple utility commands to turn filters on and off, and
manage the user's personal twit list (including exceptions
to the global twit list).
3.) When the filter is active, add it to the pager chain to
remove responses by users on the global and personal twit list.
4.) When BBS is run and the filter is active, auto-forget new items
entered by twits in selected conferences (especially agora).
There are already several filters suitable for #3, #2 should be
rather simple, #1 can't be overly difficult either, and #4 would
take a few hours of script-hacking for a novice like me (for Picospan).
And let nobody claim that any such thing is "censorship". Slashdot
is one of the most free-wheeling fora in the world, yet anyone who
wants to post anonymously (as opposed to pseudonymously) is invisible
to the majority of the user base by the default settings. Anyone who
likes to troll, flame or post off-topic will rapidly find their
account's default score down in "invisible by default" territory,
the equivalent of a system-wide twit list. You can wade through the
dreck if you want to, but the defaults recognize that most do not.
Grex is big enough to need filters and more intelligence in the defaults.
I don't think anyone has suggested that a good voluntary filter system is censorship.
A global twit list would have to be maintained by the system, and wouldn't be as "voluntary" as it might; most users are going to use it as-is. But as long as you can modify or discard it, it's not censorship.
Exactly. <BTW, good response to Natey H. in agora today, Russ>
I'm leaning in favor of a system-wide staff-maintained twit filter, plus a more user-friendly individually customizable twit filter.
This response has been erased.
slashdot is lame, and I can't imagine why us GreXers should care how it operates.
Is there any question about what should be on the system-wide filter?
That would be at staff's discretion... however, like I pointed out earlier: - Each individual user would have the choice to apply or not utilise staff's system-wide filter; - And, if they apply the staff system-wide filter, a user should still be able to override communication with a certain user on that list... e.g. staff system-wide filter has users a, f, o, y, z to be filtered I want to apply the staff system-wide filter, but I still want communication with user y - thus, from that a, f, o, z would be filtered out for me Moreover, if I do not want the staff system-wide filter at all, either from day one or at a later time, I can disenable it easily for me. Furthermore, I may choose to maintain my own filter as well - thus, say I had personally filtered users a, b, m, y, z the union of the two sets would be a, b, f, m, o, y, z and I would hear nothing in terms of communications from them. Is that understandable? This is technically not a huge task.
Decision of who is a twit should be made by vote.
re #133 Don't be gay
Nope, asking users to vote on who is filtered would take way too much time. I'm not even sure staff has the time to maintain such a feature and stay ahead of newuser. But it would be a good place to start. I'd support a system-wide, default on, staff maintained twit filter. I will predict there will be a bit of a backlash with twits using newuser to protest such a thing. It's not going to give us immediate relief. But it's a start.
Actually, I think the filter should be available as an opt-in system, at least for existing users. Place a message in newuser explaining that grex comes in two flavors: obnoxious, offensive and sometimes even off-topic, and also a filtered, peaceful, less disruptive version. Explain how to toggle on the filter. Then let the newuser wade in and make up their own mind.
I really don't understand why people think that filters are going to work. Looking at the history of the people currently in my mental list of twits (I don't use a filter otherwise), these are people who have no problem creating many accounts very quickly if they feel they're not being heard. As soon as they discover that they're on the system twit filter, they'll just create a new account to get around it. We'd do just as well locking and/or deleting their accounts. While such an action would have different consequences with respect to what those users were capable of, as far as the issue of polution in BBS goes, it's not going to do any good. It seems to me that the only solution is to place any new users on some sort of provisional twit-like status until they've shown themselves not to be twits. At that point, you might as well restrict newuser.
I don't want any other soul on this system to "cleanse" my reading process by censorship. I prefer censorship be a process left to my own choices. Richard obviously feels strongly about homophobic slang and I can respect his decision to block such things from his terminal but it doesn't mean he should be allowed a system-wide ban on the more abrasive postings. If staff or the membership feel compelled to start implement systemwide censorship at their own discretion and it impedes my viewing or responding to postings then we're going to get into some real 501c3 games in the near future.
You really don't read so good, do you, tod? *EVERY* suggestion I've seen is for any "system-wide" filter to be user-choosable: If you don't want to use it, then don't.
re #175 You really don't read so good, do you, tod? *EVERY* suggestion I've seen So you think re #141 is about the user having a choice on posting/reading? Why don't you take that tape out of your sock drawer and restore the parenting conference like a good staff volunteer instead of obfuscating the topic? "The wide range of users attracted by our open access policy ensures a wide range of knowledge and opinion. On-line forums are very effective in drawing people with diverse backgrounds into shared discussions." http://www.grex.o rg/local/grex/501c3.html Lose the blue ribbon, hypocrites. You're not practicing open discussion from diverse backgrounds with your blatant censorships.
Re. 171: If there's a system-wide filter, I can practically guarantee there will be more of a problem. Think about it: right now, the few people who want to filter do. For the most part, the twits don't seem to care about this and keep the same names. Thus, the people who filter don't have much of a problem and neither do the twits and everyone's happy. However, when you disrupt this balance by makiing filtering the DEFAULT, and thus making it impossible for twits to be heard, you're going to GREATLY increase the incentive to CHANGE NAMES MORE FREQUENTLY> Thus, you're basically going to end up with an entire BBS filled with a group of people complaining about how they don't want to be able to read another group of people yet can. Seriously. I can't imagine it not happening.
If it were possible, I would suggest that during startup of any piece of grex software where twit filtering were engaged, that a kind of "warning" message were displayed to that effect. The purpose would be to remind people that they were not being shown all responses, which might at certain times lead them to adjust their filter.
Maybe backtalk could have a button to turn the twit filter on and off?
Re: 173 It's a start. I too predict it won't be the end of the problem, but it's a start and we go from there. In the end, we'll probably have to throttle back our open newuser some. But maybe I'm wrong. Hope so, at least.
I think "censorship" would be preventing somebody from being able to post because of what they posted. If someone posts an item purely to say the word "faggot" over and over, I see nothing wrong with removing that item, so long as that person is not prevented from posting it. He can post that item a hundred times and fw's can remove it a hundred times. Asking users to use a little courtesy when they post is not the same thing as preventing them from posting whatever they think. There IS such a thing as acceptable moderation, or censorship if you want to call it that, and by "acceptable" it only means requiring/requesting that you say what you want to say using proper words. I don't think it makes grex look good at all when new users come here and read agora and see it full of derogatory hateful slang. Agora needs to be READABLE for people to want to keep coming back and reading it. Right now it is not that readable and no filter is going to fix that
If I'm FW, I can deem anything derogatory by my own interpretations. That is called censorship, chief.
Richard obviously has no clue what "censorship" means as that term is commonly used in America. On his planet, the KKK can print thousands of newspapers and the government can scoop them up and burn them immediately thereafter.
re #181 I think "censorship" would be preventing somebody from being able to post because of what they posted. Censorship: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
cyklone, you are still not understanding what Grex is. Grex is NOT a city sidewalk. Grex is a PRIVATE organization. do you know what the word PRIVATE means? It means that the public does not own grex. If the public owned grex, THEN such censorship would be wrong. But inasmuch as grex-- cyberspace communications inc.-- is a PRIVATE organization that offers something for the public to use, it has the right to place rules on how the public uses it. You might consider defacating on a public bus "freedom of expression" but that doesn't mean that it is censorship if you are not allowed to take a public crap! There are acceptable rules in this society for use of public facilities, let alone public facilities run by private companies. tod, okay it is censorship in the loosest sense, but I think it is acceptable so long as you are only prohibiting the use of certain words, and not the expression of any ideas
The New York Times is a private company that puts out a newspaper for the public and prints letters to the editor. If you send a letter to the editor to the Times with the word "faggot" or "fuck" in it, they might print that letter, but they will edit those words out. Because the majority of their customers do not want to see those words in print. Likewise the vast majority of grexers do not want to see words like "faggot" or "nigger" or "kike" or whatever. It makes grex a much less pleasant reading experience. It is in the interest of Grx for the conferences to be as pleasant a reading experience as possible because Grex wants people to come back again and again. As a private organization, just like the Times, Grex thus has the right to acceptable moderation of what it publishes
Richard, you obviously have a problem with terminology. Yes, as a LEGAL matter GOVERNMENT censorship is illegal and PRIVATE censorship is permitted. This has been generally accepted knowledge on grex for quite some time. However, censorship is still censorship, and it is hypocritical to claim to oppose government censorship while supporting private censorship. You also have a problem with analogies. Grex is NOT the equivalent of the New York Times. The NYT is clearly set up to publish only those views, stories and letters approved or authorized by its owners. Grex has not previously adopted that business model. Of course, you and some others seem hellbent on heading in that direction. However, that is NOT what grex was originally founded to be.
One of the key things you're missing in that analogy is that the New York Times warns you before you write to them that they reserve the right to edit your letter to the editor for content or clarity. I don't recall any such warning appearing in newuser. Further, people writing a letter to the editor don't necessarily know that it will be published in whole, or in part. On BBS's, there is an expectation that what you post will be seen by all.
Good points.
re #185 Grex is a PRIVATE organization. You're saying that Cyberspace is subject to excise taxes under Chapter 42? You mean like a 509 instead of a 501? Please elaborate. This is intriguing.
re #188 good point, I would say that prior to grex instituting such a policy, it should make it clear in newuser that: "grex is owned by cyberspace communications inc., a private company run by the users of grex, and the board of cyberspace communications reserves the right to make a few basic rules as to the content of posts and enforce those rules. Such rules would be limited to excessive flaming and excessive use of derogatory language"
cyklone said: " censorship is still censorship, and it is hypocritical to claim to oppose government censorship while supporting private censorship. " No it is not, because public censorship and private censorship are two different thigns. You can in fact be against public censorship, and at the same time say that if someone is in your house, they can refrain from saying certain things or leave. Because your house is YOUR domain and you make the rules there. Cyberspace Communications provides Grex, for any user to use, but it is their house and they can make rules here if they want. It is not, absolutely not, hypocritical to be against public censorship and at the same time accept private establishments making private rules. Grex will never prohibit you from expressing an idea, so it does not censor, not in the broadest sense. If Grex says, "please use different words to express those sentiments" that is more moderation than censorship.
I've skipped past a great deal of what was said in this item. I presume there are 4 or 5 points, repeated 20 tuimes each, and so I probably picked up those. I'll say this, I don't recommend Grex to people any more. I don't have many friends who would be interested in wading through it in order to try to carry on a conversation. Occasionally, interesting discussion still occurs here, but it's not the norm. I've been around long enough to find it worthwhile to try to ferret it out. I don't expect many others to want to do that. I'll probably remain here as long as several others do so. And those several others will probably do the same, until Grex degenerates to the stage the old Arbornet system was at. (It had 5 total users when it merged with M-Net.) Honestly, I think it's too late for Grex, just as it's too late for M- Net. What it is, is what it's going to remain. When there were 100 members, and 1000 users, it could have tried to find a path of being a reasonable system for reasonable people, but the users aren't there any more. They're not coming back. They left for a reason. Their skins were too thin, their stomachs too weak, or their taste too refined for what Grex has become. Many came here because they went through the same process on M-Net. I'd like to think Grex could recover some day, but I'd like to think M- Net could, too. I just don't see it happening.
grex is dying because the conferences are being neglected. suggest taking care of the conferences, cleaning up some, shutting down others, moderating others, and you get accused of violating grex's high moral standards. Grex can't be "holier than thou" and survive. Grex needs to make itself a place that would be attractive to a wide variety of new users. Right now there are new users who join party and chat, but they go to the conferences and see a bunch of crap and say why bother, and then they will only ever chat here and not conference. grex isn't working. It is drowning in a sea of crap posts, just like mnet did. mnet is a shell of its former self now, most of its confs are devoid of intelligent exchange. mnet seems to exist now solely for the purpose of a half a dozen or so users to roll in the mud with each other. Grex doesn't need to let itself go in that direction but it is, because all these purists come here and say grex can't change without being hypocritical. That Grex has staked out such a high moral ground that it can't be anything different. I disagree with that. Grex can change, and that change can't be more filters and more programs to block user access. The change has to be more directly taking care of grex's conferences. either that or shut down the conferences and go to a complete blogosphere where grex hosts nothing but blogs, where the person whose blog it is woudl do all the moderating
re 191 Dude. So you're saying that GreX currently does NOT have a policy which makes it equivalent to the New York Times. This directly contradicts what you insinuate in resp:186.
I am no longer seeing any crap in agora. My twit filter works fine and I have not even had to add any names to it for a couple of days. .cfonce - feel free to copy the last paragraph. I do occasionally have to hit the Enter key (using picospan) to get past items where nobody but a twit posted and it would be nice to eliminate that but I can live with it.
where's the last paragraph ?!
I liked other's post in #140. It *does* sound Orwellian to say that some limits on free speech are required to preserve free speech, but it also seems true. I wonder - if we combined a system twit filter with IP-blocking within newuser, if that wouldn't make a big difference. There can't be an infinite number of sites which allow anonymous telnetting. After a few rounds of accounts being created, put on the twit filter and their IP addresses put in the newuser filter, wouldn't the twits start to run out of places to create accounts from? Someone who's worked on the IP blocks in the past can perhaps enlightn me. I suggest creation of a position, whose sole job is to maintain the system twit filter. (Maybe it should be a panel of 3 people, so there are some checks and balances - but it can't be too many people, because they have to move fast.) I wouldn't want any one person to hold the job for too long; it should rotate around.
I don't think it's Orwellian at all to limit behavior to allow freedom for everyone. All of society does that. It's not "freedom" to allow cell phones and loud talking in the movie theater. It ruins the experience for everyone. On Grex, we allow a few twits to run rampant and ruin the items and conferences for everyone. I agree with Sindi; twit filters greatly help me to use the conferences. New users don't know how to use them, though. They're not going to be impressed by the unfiltered Grex as it is now. I'm for a more usable, user-friendly Grex, even at the cost of free- form, lowest common denominator, no rules "freedom". I don't think it's freedom at all to let garbage overrun all else.
I enjoy the autonomy of the personal twit filter. My only recommendation to aid new users would be to offer them the names of staff people that currently use the twit filter and let the new users pick and choose which one they'd like to copy/edit.
I very much disagree with the statement in resp:187: "it is hypocritical to claim to oppose government censorship while supporting private censorship." But I suppose that is something best saved for another item. This item is about what is best for Grex. I am not sure what the answer is. There is something special about having a forum where all may speak. But, it turns out that once you have such a place, enough people will abuse it that it essentially becomes useless. I have noticed in the blog world, each individual who keeps a blog has the ability to control the content (including comments) on their blogs and that has gone a long way to keep twits from trashing things too much. It still happens but it seems more rare. Maybe the answer for grex is to get into the whole blog mindset. Twit filters and ip blocks for bbs and author control (even over another's responses) in some sort of blog section.
I hate blogs. They are extensions of vanity press. If people start removing responses from their items that they don't like then we're going to have some serious issues.
Really? I suspect that if that sort of policy were in place, people who dont like the idea of having their posts deleted will refrain from responding to those items. The important thing is to make sure any blog section of grex has clear policies. I know that not everyone likes blogs which is why I wouldnt suggest that grex *only* have blogs although I dont see a problem with allowing authors to control items. As for blogs, I like them. One of the main reasons I like mine is that it gives me control over posts. I can delete posts (which I have done although very rarely). I can disallow annonymous posts (which i have never done) or I can turn off the comments altogether (which I have done recently).
How is a new user supposed to be able to choose a twit filter? The new users we sign up prefer not to make choices. Let the filter be on by default. It is pretty obvious who the major twits are. I could live with a couple of other annoying posters that are on my filter because they can't spell.
re #203 The serious issues I'm referring to are the entire charter of Cyberspace.
re 201 I suppose you agree with the fact that the police should not be armed, but the citizens should be allowed to carry guns ?
statement, not fact
twit filters only work once you have them set up. The problem that needs to be considered is new user, who run newuser, get an account and read confs knowing nothing about twit filters or who the twits are that need to be filtered. They aren't going to stay around long enough to learn all of that. They will just leave. Then you end up with a grex that is not growing or evolving, because only the same users-- the ones who know how to use twit filters and who the twits are-- stay around as regulars. I just don't think filters are any kind of long term answer.
What about splitting agora? Have two conferences, one that is unprotected and one that is protected. Default new users to reading the protected version but being unable to post to it until whatever criteria are decided on have been met.
resp:5 The entire character of Cyberspace is changing no matter what. All we can do is maybe control the direction in which it changes.
Perhaps you need to address the newuser issue rather than the content of existing users? Recruit some palatable participants if you think it is a problem. The minute you start talking about a "private system" and picking and choosing the members then you can just go scrap article 6 of Cyberspace's incorporation (especially section 5.) I honestly don't see how a blog could fit into computer "conferencing" if each "blog" has a squelch button held by each author. That' is not conferencing; that is dictation.
When a newuser first sees the general conference, they get to see the first and last item only. It's a hello meant to not overwhelm. It's then their choice whether to read the rest of the items, or not. This wasn't seen as censorship all these years, but rather a way not forcing newbies to read it all, in order. A default filter does about the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. It gives them a sample of the system then offers them choices. I think what's really got some people itchy here is that they see filters going mainstream. More people will be going that direction, by *their choice* and maybe, just maybe, people with a lot to say but not much worth reading, won't be making the cut.
I mean. If everything were up to me we would 1) maintain a completely free and open newuser 2) not allow anyone to delete another's posts under any circumstances 3) have all the really interesting users continue to post. 4) have lots of of new people coming along and staying because they find the place really interesting 5) have the users love the system so much that they really want to keep supporting it financially. The problem might be that sticking to #1 and #2 might pretty much mean giving up on #3, #4, and #5.
FWIW, I have tried my darndest to recruit people to grex. My hope was that if there were even just 4 or 5 new interesting people, it might make a big difference. I have specifically told around 30 people I know online to check out grex. Not one of them liked it.
I've recruited at least one person!
re #214 It's not our fault you're boring! ;)
I also think that eliminating offsite email would help a good deal, because many of these folks get all these extra logins for no other reason than to have extra email addresses. If they cant get extra addresses, they might not bother to run newuser so often. There really is no reason for Grex to still be in the offsite email business anymore, there are too many other places offering free email who do it better.
re #217 I would agree to limiting e-mail to members.
I send mail to lots of nonmembers who are using grex, including some curious students just passing through who have questions about grex that I cannot explain in a telegram. Limiting email to members would be as bad a limiting bbs to members.
keesan, I was suggesting limiting OFFSITE email to members. Everyone who has a grex login would still have email, but only those who are members would be able to send email offsite. Everyone would still be able to send email to other grexers at their grex emails.
I'm all for priviledged SMTP access.
We signed up several people with grex who had never used email and wanted to try it out. Are you suggesting grex no longer serve this purpose, providing a free way to learn about the internet? Email is what got me here in the first place.
I think the e-mail discussion is a separate issue. I see this discussion as being what to do about the conferences, which are the core of Grex.
Then most of grex's users never get to the core and just use email.
That could be. I don't see them as interfering with those of us who use the conferences, so I don't mind at all. Maybe someday they'll join us.
> I would agree to limiting e-mail to members. I would *not*, until there were evidence showing that there are no more people in the Ann Arbor community who have no ability to access "cyberspace" other than via the dial-up to grex and using their grex e-mail account. Perhaps there are indeed none, but I have no evidence yet. Plus there is no real evidence that having free grex e-mail is a detriment to grex overall. But I digress...
Well, how about *this* alternative for newusers: Instead of having a twit filter, to screen out the twits, how about having an "anti-twit" filter, whose members are proven to consistently contribute positively to discussions? Newusers as a default (or an option) could start with only being shown responses from the civilized grex users, to get a good impression of the place. Yes, I know, picospan doesn't implement this. But I bet that fronttalk / backtalk *could*, if there were a groundswell of support... :-)
"...only from civilized grex users..." Now *I'm* getting itchy. ;-)
OK, how about "house broken"? ;-)
My twit filter still works well. I had to add another another twit yesterday and I still see items without real responses.
The problem is that the TWITS don't know how often they are filtered or how many people have them filtered. They post and see their messages displayed and that is enough to keep them posting. So these filters don't discourage the activity, they just allow other users to pretend the activity, the problem, doesn't exist. Which isn't a solution at all.
re #231 Why would you discourage someone's postings? Stop trying to censor.
If you have a twit filter, do you care if the twits keep posting? The only problem they cause is when you have to read people's responses to them.
ahaha
HEY I WANT TO KNOW WILL CLOSING NEWUSER STOP GREX FROM CRASHING FOR WEEKS AT A TIME
keesan, you should care if the twits keep posting because it is how the board looks that dictates whether new users decide to participate. These new users, who won't know about twit filters or automatically know who the twits are, will just run away. for grex to grow, to attract new users, it must deal with its twit users, and not just put up filters so they don't have to read the twit users posts. I repeat that filters are not a solution, filters do NOT solve the problem. filters are a way of ignoring the problem.
re #236 Maybe you should be asking yourself what the mission of grex is rather than worrying about perception to the unannointed.
How exactly does Richard know which twits are driving away newusers? How should grex define a "newuser-driving-away twit"?
i'm a newuser deriving twit
Maybe a newuser survey: Welcome Aboard! Please let us know which of us annoys you the most. Thanks! -The Staff
"Grex is dedicated to providing the blandest newuser experience possible, in hopes you will give us money. If you have a problem with a user, please send email to our Beginner's Assistance Program (BAP) @ cyberspace.org"
If all new users were offered the twit filter as a default, how would twits drive them away unless other users kept responding to them?
I really think that if Grex begins sponsoring censorship (private, whatever), that we will be creating more problems than we will be solving. First of all, I believe that such censorship will escalate from filtering profanity, to filtering speech because the staff person does not agree. And I say this because every other BBS, web forum, etc. that has attempted to do so, ends up becoming a closed system of only those people who think like the sysadmin. How long before we start deciding that someone needs to be filtered just because we don't agree with the political slant of his/her message? I feel that this part of Grex is not broken, and that it borders going against everything Grex stands for.
Isn't Grex pretty much already like that? It's a small, insular community of people who think largely the same way.
Well Dan, that may be so, but those few with different points of view are able to express them here. I think that would change if system-wide filtering were enabled. So I guess it depends on what side of the fence you think you are on. If you think your opinion is largely the same as everyone else on Grex, you probably don't have anything to worry about when it comes to filtering.
grex already has censorship. you can't edit your own posts. grex won't allow it. that is in and of itself a form of control. grex's fairwitnesses have the /kill and /freeze command to remove completely any item or freeze any item, not just their own. grex has censorship in its own way. The fact is that it is impossible in this day and age to run a place like grex and not have censorship. I think tod should stop preaching about 'no censorship' unless he personally wants to pay grex's legal bills when grex gets sued for NOT having enough controls on posts, and unless he's willing to pay grex's hardware bills the next time some twit user damages a drive by overloading it with useless text. Grex is a private organization offering a public service, and it is responsible for grex to take steps to protect itself and to maintain a strong product that people will want to use. If new users come here and see boards that will look like a mess unless they use all kinds of filters, they will not come back. Is that what Tod wants? I
the next time you see a drive that's damaged because it was filled to capacity with useless text, e-mail me. thisdayislong@gmail.com
The twits I thought we were talking about filtering out are not posting opinions or content, just strings of obscenity, or 50 copies of Plato, intended specifically to be annoying and waste people's time. I think everyone could easily agree on who to put on this list. You can then personally add people whose opinions you don't want to read, or whose spelling errors drive you crazy. I have only three of those on my list, but two lines of vandal logins (probably traceable to 2 or 3 real individuals).
I don't express opinions on Grex or make spelling errors, and I don't just enter obscenity or 50 copies of plato, yet I'm on your twit list bakers dozen+ times.
All my comments are both witty and funny. Anyone who filters me is missing out, guy.
i think you're neat.
keesan said: "I think everyone could easily agree on who to put on this list. You can then personally add people whose opinions you don't want to read, or whose spelling errors drive you crazy. I have only three of those on my list, but two lines of vandal logins (probably traceable to 2 or 3 real individuals)." That helps you and me and other regulars. The problem is that it doesn't help new users coming here for the first time. The objective neesd to be how can we keep grex's conferences looking clean and readable so that people coming here for the first time want to come back? Filters just aren't the answer for that
keesan filters you, happyboy :(
"The twits I thought we were talking about filtering out are not posting opinions or content, just strings of obscenity, or 50 copies of Plato, intended specifically to be annoying and waste people's time." Who gets to decide what is opinion/content, and what is just strings of obscenity? And who gets to decide the difference between playing devils' advocate, and wasting other people's time? All I am saying, is that it won't stop at filtering people abusing the system. Censorship will expand to include any dissenting opinion. In the beginning, there will be excuses..."I'm not banning scholar because of his dissenting opinion, but rather the manner he expressed it"...and in the end it'll be "what? advocating microsoft windows??? he must be a troll". It should provide for an interesting ride, thats for sure.
nobody is advocating BANNING anybody. I am against the closing of newuser. All I'm saying is that the fairwitness ought to have the flexibility, in fact does have the flexibility, to look at an item and decide whether that item is appropriate and fits in with the subject matter of the conference. If somebody enters Plato's Republic in the Sports conference, it doesn't need to stay there. It is not sports. Create a "Useless" conference and let fw's move any inappropriate item over to that conf. this isn't banning users, it is just saying that the fw's are going to start taking care of the conferences they are supposed to be taking care of. Once twit users see that their most twittified posts are not going to stay up in the conferences, and will invariably get moved to the Useless conference, they will stop posting. Because few people will read the Useless conference. That is not censorship because nobody is preventing them from posting. It is saying that an fw can and should decide whether a post is appropriate for a particular conference. This isn't unusual, this is the way the vast majority of the boards that I use on the 'net actually operate. You can't have subject appropriate boards on the 'net without having moderators who make some effort to keep the boards "on subject" In Agora, which is a general conf, you can simply say that all subjects are appropriate but that the fw's have the discretion to decide that certain posts are more appropriate for OTHER confs. An fw should be able to move/link a post out of that conf into any other appropriate conf.
Great! Then we get fw wars where one fw moves/links a posting that he/she feels doesn't belong in his/her conf to a different conf. That conf's fw feels that it is better elsewhere or back in the first conf and links/moves to back. FWs currently cannot move/link posting from their conf to another, they can only link from another conf to theirs. As a fw, I would not want another fw dumping the garbage from their conf into mine without my say so.
Hot Potato Ping Pong!
re #243 How long before we start deciding that someone needs to be filtered just because we don't agree with the political slant of his/her message? That's what happened in the parenting conference with items about breastfeeding. Of course, those that sided with the abuser will lie about it because they will never allow those items to be restored to prove it.
This is absolute madness. Maybe we should just constitute "free speach zones" on Grex so that you people aren't offended by differing opinions.
I must state that I will (within all legal limits) attempt to disturb any attempts at censorship obn Grex.
The funny thing is that, ultimately, no one's actually going to do anything, so all people are doing right now is talking about a bunch of things that have about 0% chance of getting implemented. So, who cares?
We should add this discussion as an addendum to Plato's Republic.
All these "slippery slope" arguments are so timersome. The first time you do one thing that is in the problem space of another, you're just naturally on the road to doing the other. Because you're quite clearly infantile and unable to discern X from Y. Puh-leeze. I don't know if there *is* any good answer to the twits, but not doing something which might be effective just because it seems like some kind of censorship and so perforce will lead to all other manner of censorship is crapola.
Maybe. But the probability of anyone actually getting off their ass and doing anything is slim to none.
re #264 I disagree. I bet there is at least one person on staff that has censored individuals without much notice other than from the victim.
r253: that's ok, i really don't read her stuff either
she's too much of a nun.
Probably, but I doubt anyone is going to go to the effort to implement anything more advanced than the crude censorship capabilities we have now.
re #267 I would hate to see the effort wasted when there are more fruitful projects like enterprise wide spam filter defaults.
Sometimes the little kid who goes from person to person at a party repeating "Booger!" is actually more entertaining than the partygoers themselves. I would be very reluctant to send that little kid out of the room and am usually sorry to see it happen. On the other hand, you couldn't really call it "censorship" to do so, could you?
booger. i haven't used that word since second grade
AHAH GUYS DID YOU KNOWONE TIME THERE WAS A FAMOUS EUROPEAN FAMILY NAMED THE FUGGERS
If everyone agreed who the "little kid" is then you'd have a point but everyone on Grex has different definitions for twit.
The main problem is that the little kid generally isn't capable of appreciating the distinction that, althoug doing something once will elicit attention and might even be funny, doing the same thing a hundred more times will not be funny. Simpsons writers struggle with this issue all the time -- when you have a bit which is essentially the same thing repeated over and over (e.g. "Will you take us to Mount Slashmore?") how many times does it remain funny? It's not a simple curve. At first it's a bit funny, then after you repeat it three or four times it loses its funniness. But after seven or ten times, if you time it right, it gets funny again. The key is to have proper timing such that: - It gets funny again (something little kids are unlikely to be able to do properly) - You stop doing it when it's funny again, rather than continuing on to the point where it's tiresome
THANSK MARC!!
THANKS< TOD
I think funniness will inevitably decay to 0 as repetitions approach infinity. Perhaps, as Marc pointed out, not monotonically. After many years of the current twits, any entertainment value they provided is long gone.
I believe your bounding assumptions to be incorrect. I am quite convinced that with enough repetition something can have negative funniness, actually sucking the enjoyment out of surrounding comments.
MD! WHERE YOU BEEN?
Re #277: Quite so.
Workin, Barry. When I try to log on to Grex lately, in ain't there. But you know you have reached bottom when you have to fucking TELNET in.
another surrender to the backtalk craze :(
re280: :) good to see you anyhow, eh?
Who owns newuser? Is it open source software, or did Grex license it from someone?
i 0wn you, nharmon
Bring it, tough guy.
no thanks; i try to stay away from gay people
Marcus Watts wrote it. I don't know what license it's under.
I'm not sure about the license either, but evidently we can modify the software. Jan made some changes to get newuser to run under OpenBSD. (Jan also wrote the web version of newuser.)
I'm not sure there's much of a point in modifying newuser. Why wouldn't we just take xnew, which seems like a much newer piece of code, and use that?
"Newer" doesn't necessarily mean "better", but still, it's a good idea
to consider alternatives to the software you're currently using.
I'm not familiar with xnew, but when I went to the xnew home page at
http://www.xenos.net/software/xnew/, here's the first thing I saw:
NOTE: Xnew is NO LONGER being maintained or supported. It works
fine, but the code is not being developed and the author does not
use it anymore. This page is being kept available for historical
purposes and in case the code may be useful to others.
So if we decided to use it, looks like we'd be the ones who'd have to
maintain it. In the interest of lightening staff workload, a product
that somebody else maintains might be better.
There doesn't appear to be one. However, I downloaded xnew and looked at it. First, it appears to be better written. Second, it's about a third of the code size of Marcus's newuser. Third, it's somewhat scriptable. Fourth, since we already have to maintain newuser, and no one but Marcus knows really how it works and Marcus doesn't appear to be involved with Grex anymore, it probably makes sense to switch to something less byzantine.
re #291 I would say that "newer" is "better" in this case. I've never been one to appreciate 3 times the amount of code with poor documentation. Why re-invent the wheel when xnew is out there.
Exactly.
mary shows her true colors as usual. While pretending to enjoy an open forum she harbors the desire to shut down newuser therby sentencing grex to stagnation. She would love it if the only voices heard belonged to those she agreed with.
You know if Mary and the rest of the Grex founders were as pro-censorship as you are assuming them to be there never would have been a Grex with an open newuser policy.
Yea, and there never would be such a flurry of staff open recruitment... Oh wait...
Actually, though I disagree with Mary on lots of things, I have to say that to her credit, she was one of the people who seriously questioned the deleting of the jep/valerie items and supported their restoration. I'd hardly call her a censor.
If it weren't for Mary, there could have been a shooting rampage at New Center.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
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