|
|
| Author |
Message |
jp2
|
|
Grexian Membership Classes
| 
Jan 22 04:39 UTC 2002 |
This item has been erased.
|
| 20 responses total. |
gelinas
|
|
response 1 of 20:
|
Jan 22 04:46 UTC 2002 |
I think the price of membership is too low to make differentiation worthwhile.
|
davel
|
|
response 2 of 20:
|
Jan 22 14:12 UTC 2002 |
I'd say there are also philosophical reasons that Grex has avoided anything
of the kind. The perks of net access are part of membership only partly as
an encouragement to join for people (like me) who don't have a real ISP.
Practical considerations have actually been more important.
|
gull
|
|
response 3 of 20:
|
Jan 22 14:31 UTC 2002 |
I think since the marginal cost of providing 'net access to members is
probably pretty low, there'd be no reasonable difference in price
between a 'member' and 'citizen' class.
|
other
|
|
response 4 of 20:
|
Jan 22 18:01 UTC 2002 |
What would be the point?
We'd still need to authenticate individuals just to make sure the
governance system wasn't being manipulated, and the only reason we ONLY
provide the internet access functions to paid members is because they're
the only users who ARE authenticated.
In other words, what Joe said. (#1)
|
jp2
|
|
response 5 of 20:
|
Jan 22 18:41 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
|
krj
|
|
response 6 of 20:
|
Jan 22 19:06 UTC 2002 |
Actually, it's more that the "internet services," such that they are,
accreted themselves to the Grex "membership" through the twists and turns
of history -- in particular by making the ID requirement solve
both the grex-voter-ID issue and the network-security issue,
and also through long-ago concerns that we'd be be swamped if we
opened IRC for wide use.
It's been proposed in the past that Grex allow it's paltry "network
services" to be accessed by people who ID to us but who aren't members.
But I don't think anyone thinks the work involved is worth it.
What problem does the low-cost Arbornet "Citizenship" solve?
How many people have bought "citizenships," currently, or historically?
(Careful, that's a trick question! :) )
|
jp2
|
|
response 7 of 20:
|
Jan 22 19:24 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
|
aruba
|
|
response 8 of 20:
|
Jan 22 19:32 UTC 2002 |
Could someone explain the M-Net system?
|
jp2
|
|
response 9 of 20:
|
Jan 22 19:49 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
|
krj
|
|
response 10 of 20:
|
Jan 22 20:00 UTC 2002 |
This may not be completely accurate, since M-net is revising its "support"
command and currently it won't display "membership levels." And they've
changed things recently. Off the top of my head...
M-net packages its membership offerings as "Patronships" and "Citizenships."
Patrons pay $75 or $80/year (recently lowered from $100) and they
get various goodies such as more disk space and outbound net services.
Historically Patronships were marketed to people who wanted extra
phone line access to the system, and later they were sold as a sort of
budget ISP in the mid-1990s, pre-Web; there's a strong element of
fee-for-service there that they have never been able to escape.
(It's probably worth noting for the newcomers that the Grex membership
system was intended to contrast with the M-net fee-for-service system.
In 1991 and 1992, Grex *had* no Internet services.
If Grex was going to be really fundamentalist about its founding
principals, it would probably wipe out the outbound network stuff
all together. As I wrote, history crept in and glommed the network
stuff onto the existing Grex membership.)
M-net used to offer a lower-priced "Membership" class with slightly
less access to telephone lines and disk space, for $50/year,
but this was recently abolished. This category was created by
public demand back in the dialup days, but I guess demand for it
faded as demand for "increased access" to M-net faded.
A few years back, it was decided to try to expand the pool of people
participating in system governance. The "citizen" group was created
at a rate of $15/year, and "citizens" get nothing except the ability
to run and vote in Arbornet elections.
|
krj
|
|
response 11 of 20:
|
Jan 22 20:01 UTC 2002 |
(resp:9 slipped in and is much more economical.)
|
krj
|
|
response 12 of 20:
|
Jan 22 20:07 UTC 2002 |
um, revision of above:... In 1991 and 1992, Grex *had* no Internet
services, and Grex membership never gave anyone extra modems to
dial into, so the original Grex membership was functionally
equivalent to today's Arbornet Citizenship. If Grex was going to
be really fundamentalist about its founding principles...
|
krj
|
|
response 13 of 20:
|
Jan 22 20:20 UTC 2002 |
M-net/Arbornet currently has 36 Citizens. Nonetheless, I consider
the Citizen offering a failure, because only three of those people
paid for their own Citizenship. All the rest were bought by
one user who bought 33 two-year citizenships as a way of donating
a large amount of money to M-net. So yeah, the Citizen class has
expanded the pool of voters over on M-net; but now the dominant
pool of voters is a group of people who couldn't even be bothered to
give money to the system themselves, and I don't think that's good.
|
jp2
|
|
response 14 of 20:
|
Jan 22 20:26 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
|
krj
|
|
response 15 of 20:
|
Jan 22 20:30 UTC 2002 |
(I'll move debugging of the "support" command over to M-net.)
|
keesan
|
|
response 16 of 20:
|
Jan 22 21:36 UTC 2002 |
Re 13 - was this user perhaps running for office?
|
krj
|
|
response 17 of 20:
|
Jan 22 21:52 UTC 2002 |
No, there should be no inference of shadiness here;
it was draven, and he made a huge donation to M-net in thanks for
teaching him valuable skills leading to a techie job.
(Yay draven!)
And the idea was to rope most of the active BBS participants
into the small M-net governance pool, either as candidates or voters,
and in the short term it mostly worked.
(One might argue that $15 citizenship-voters would make it easier
to stack an election; but that argument doesn't hold up because
Grex already allows 3 month members to vote, for an outlay of $18.
The difference is trivial.)
|
jmsaul
|
|
response 18 of 20:
|
Jan 23 02:28 UTC 2002 |
No, draven wasn't running for office. In fact, he declined a nomination.
|
mdw
|
|
response 19 of 20:
|
Jan 24 00:06 UTC 2002 |
At the time grex was founded, m-net had a complicated 3-tier membership
system, with increased access for more money. I think this created 2
problems on m-net: selfishness, and a future growth problem. The
selfishness, and the reasons for that are pretty self-evident. The
future growth problem was that, as computers got faster and the internet
made dial-in connections a thing of the past, the whole funding basis
was going to evaporate. Actually, that's pretty self-evident today as
well.
By eliminating most of the extra perks, we made membership in grex much
more a thing one would do for the good of the community, and I think on
the whole this has worked. We wanted people to see grex as a community,
not as an ISP, so while we never enjoyed the fantastic income m-net had
for a few years, we have a solid and committed membership today. By not
creating a preferential access arrangement to phones, we were able to
migrate much more naturally over to the internet, and were never in a
position where we were discriminating in any material way against
visitors. I don't know how much more fundementalist than this you can
get.
|
steve
|
|
response 20 of 20:
|
Jan 25 02:33 UTC 2002 |
How wonderfully said.
|