Minutes for the October 3, 2002 Board of Directors Meeting

Oct 15 16:23 UTC 2002

(I sincerely apologize for the length of time it has taken me to post 
these)

Attending: Flem*, Mary*, Bhelliom, Mooncat*, Sun/Ashke, STeve*, Aruba*, 
Other* and MDW* (* indicates Board Member)

1. Meeting began at 7:32 pm

2 'Can't seem to come up with a reort'

3. As of 10-3 were were +$298 and down $548. This is the 6th month in a 
row that Grex has been down. 
  Two other items- back-up tapes were purchased and we received $10 
from Cafe Press.

Tangent- CoLo- look into? There was discussion regarding looking into 
concrete details/information on the co-location possibility. It seemed 
that finding out real facts regarding the possibility (location, access 
times, price, etc.) were better than vagueries.

This led to beginning a discussion of Agenda ITem 5- talk about 
Centrex, question of who has a copy of the contract- STeve says that he 
has a copy somewhere. It is believed that the contract is for seven 
years, through October (or possibly July) of this year. We will need to 
review our options regarding renewing the contract or changing it.

Back to Agenda ITem 3- we have 82 members

Back to Agenda Item 5- How many phone lines can we drop at this time to 
maintain the Centrex contract? Safely, 1 line.

4. Moving on to Agenda ITem 4, there is still a question of what to do 
with the remaining items from the last 'Grex Store'. Suggestions: Sell 
them (t-shirts) as pillows (sew arms, neck and bottom shut and stuff 
them), put them up for bid in the auction, write off on Financial 
Report as a loss? The general consensus, basically, is that the stock 
is worth just about nothing, this was discussed at some length.
 The board declared the Grex Store obsolete and entrusts Bhelliom with 
the stock and grants her leeway in pricing so we can get rid of it.

5. Cut phone lines? Continuing conversation on how many phone lines we 
can cut. 
Motion: We drop one public phone line, assuming this will not 
negatively affect our Centrex Contract. Proposed by Aruba, seconded by 
STeve. Vote- 7 in favor, 0 against, 0 abstaining

6. Publicity- nothing

7. Technical- things mostly uneventful, some problems- abuse from users-
 some automated ISP trying to connect over and over again to a locked 
account. M-Net had an abusive user that got into their send-mail and 
forged mass mailings to Grex. Aside- bhelliom requests access to the 
Grex Store e-mail alias, Marcus will se that up. - Scott performed a 
back-up. 

Re: Nezt Grex- Remmers and SRW have been working on one of the new 
potential machines.

8. Next Meeting: Wednesday November 13th, 7:30 pm

9. New Business- Board member behind on his dues (taken care of at this 
point in time).

STeve- begins discussion of the 'Grex doldrums' and queries as to what 
we can do about it. Can we do a combination of online and in person 
rational meetings to discuss what people want from grex, what problems 
they have, etc. Discussion about putting together some sort of survey 
to initiate the meetings.STeve said that he would enter an item on this 
topic to get the ball rolling.

Additional discussion on whether or not Grex should remove or restrict 
shell access. If restricted- who decides who gets access and how is 
that permission given. No conclusion reached at this time on this 
matter.

10: Meeting ended at 8:43 pm

response 2 of 53:

Oct 15 18:09 UTC 2002

Sort of an intangible sense that Grex is lacking in appeal and needs nwe 
ways to generate interest.

As an aside, I don't know how valuable it is for Grex to put a lot of 
effort into trying to stay relevant beyond maintaining a certain limit to 
our distance behind the curve of technological advance.  

As an organization, we really are not much more than the people of whom 
we consist.  The technology is merely the medium, but is relevant because 
it is the medium which draws us together in this particular way.  Beyond 
the contributions of the individual members, and those other things we as 
a group decide to do, there doesn't seem to be much to be done, 
practically speaking.

response 4 of 53:

Oct 15 20:32 UTC 2002

I can say with certainty that Grex would be less valuable to me if I no
longer had shell access.  I don't want to say that I'd stop being a member
if it were taken away (that sounds too much like a threat) but I would be
less inclined to renew.

response 6 of 53:

Oct 15 21:35 UTC 2002

although I dont use it, I have to agree that getting rid of shell 
access seems like a bad idea. isnt one of the really nice things about 
grex is that it offers free shell access?

response 8 of 53:

Oct 15 22:20 UTC 2002

   I am working on an item explainging my thughts on the 'doldrums', and
some ideas for how we can deal with it.
   Without going into huge detail here at the moment (I'm at work), I
don't want Grex to not offer shell access, but I do begin to wonder if
we need to make it non-automatic.  Grex staff time is really geting
soaked up in dealing with things like eggdroppings and all the stupid
little things that vandals do, and I wonder if we might be able to 
cut that down some by making the offering of shell access something
that isn't automatic.  Please read that I DO NOT want to stop giving
it out--thats one of the things that makes Grex what it is.  But at
the same time it *is* a huge drain on Grex staff time, dealing with
pesky idiots.  I'm not sure that an alternative can be worked out, 
and given the choice between no shell access at all and our imperfect
system, I'll take the imperfect system.

   Anyway, I have to get back to dealing with a sick laptop.  I hope
to enter all my thoughts this weekend.

response 10 of 53:

Oct 16 03:39 UTC 2002

Yuck.

response 12 of 53:

Oct 16 16:53 UTC 2002

It actually doesn't sound like a bad idea.  In fact, I would make it
automatic.  By default, dump users into a menu based shell, but provide
an option to switch to ``normal'' shell access.  However, don't do it
automatically; instead, collect the requests and do it in batch at 3am
or something.  The shell menu system doesn't have to be bullet-proof;
it can be written as a script.  The idea here is not to provide a water
tight container for new users, but just to raise the bar for script
kiddies who only want to try and compile eggdrop.  I'm guessing that
typically, if these guys can't get instant gratification, they split
and never come back.

response 14 of 53:

Oct 17 02:03 UTC 2002

Re #10, #13:  So the status quo is just fine?  The idea here was to 
examine ways to improve it...

response 16 of 53:

Oct 18 19:36 UTC 2002

I wrote most of a reponse and then realized that I was just writing out
at greater length what prp wrote above:
 
Would it be more acceptable if there was some sort of permission process
for using inbound FTP, as opposed to getting permission to use the 
shell account?  This might really whack down on the number of people 
bringing in vandal tools and large software packages, especially 
if there is also a throttle on maximum e-mail size.
 
This might even be a temporary measure to buy staff some time to 
work on the FTP file-size throttle which I've heard STeve propose.

response 18 of 53:

Oct 19 01:22 UTC 2002

Lynx is real popular for doing just that.

response 20 of 53:

Oct 19 16:38 UTC 2002

Good point.

The Google search I just did is not very encouraging to egghead wanabes,
but the one I did yesterday is.  If only I could remember what it was. 

response 22 of 53:

Oct 21 13:36 UTC 2002

I don't see how anyone could read Agora and come to the conclusion that
Grex isn't vital.  It was a while before I even realized there were
conferences other than Agora, when I came here.

response 24 of 53:

Oct 21 17:19 UTC 2002

Richard lives in his own little world, gull.  But it's okay.  They know 
him there.