Minutes of the Grex Board of Directors Meeting of April 19, 2005

May 3 19:41 UTC 2005

Attending Board Members:  slynne, mary, dpc, polygon, vanloons (by 
iChat from India)

Non-Attending Board Members:  gelinas,bhoward

Attending Non-Board Members:  remmers, aruba

The April 19, 2005 meeting of the Grex Board of Directors was called to 
order by President slynne at 8:11 p.m. at the home of John and Mary 
Remmers, 19 Westbury Ct., Ann Arbor.

Treasurer's Report:
Assistant Treasurer Aruba reported that we are in the black for March.  
We took in $593 and spent $110.  The report is posted online.  We have 
received $100 so far in April.  There is no word from CoreCom; we 
assume here is no problem with the cancellation of our account.

Aruba said he had not yet ordered the new disk.  The Board authorized 
asking Leeron Kopelman (lk) about the right kind of disk to order.

Staff Report:
The Board discussed the recovery from the crash.  One SCSI disk failed, 
and newuser was not working.  STeve investigated, and Grex would not 
reboot.  STeve then went into the hospital.  The Board authorized 
buying a new disk via e-mail.  Janc felt thee was enough spare room on 
other disks to move all the data over.  Janc and remmers went to 
Provide.net and managed to get the data transfer.  Remmers went back, 
and go Grex to boot from a second SCSI drive.  The staff then worked 
remotely, and got Grex back up.  Provide.Net was very cooperative.

Aruba asked if the Board could do anything to make things run more 
smoothly.  Vanloons asked if we use RAID.  Remmers said no.  We tried 
software RAID, and it had a big performance impact.  We might try 
hardware RAID in the future.

The Board thanked all the staff for its excellent work in recovering 
from the crash.

Schedule Next Meeting:
The next meeting will be on Tuesday, May 24, at 8:00 p.m. at the 
Remmers'.

Open Newuser and Twit Filter:
Nothing has yet jelled.  A member vote would be needed, and code would 
have to be written.  Janc is thinking about being able to easily borrow 
someone else's twit filter - a meta-twit filter.  Vanloons asked if we 
are thinking about changing newuser.  The general consensus was no.  
Mary said it was great that janc was thinking about this.

Blogs:
Mary moved that as a complement to conferencing, we add blogging 
capability to Grex.  Polygon seconded.  The motion was carried 
unanimously.  Remmers said that janc was envisioning blogging through 
Backtalk with the same interface.  On telnet, a blog would look like 
Picospan, but would be user-controlled.

Slynne said that the difference with blogging is that people delete 
comments.  The freedom of speech is that everyone can start their own 
blog.  Mary said there are limits on social behavior everywhere.  
Slynne said why do fair witnesses have the technical capability to edit 
items in their conferences if they can't use it?  Dpc suggested that we 
should see what will happen.  Mary said the hard part is integrating 
blogs without ruining the rest of Grex.

Continued Discussion of Twit Filter:
Aruba said that any twit filter would have to presented simply to any 
new user.  Remmers said that maybe we could use a "recommender" system 
like Amazon.  Polygon said that if we did this, it would be like 
slashdot, where people wind up voting on responses, and the negatives 
fall by the wayside.  He said it would be confusing for new people.  
Remmers said in those circumstances threads tend to get confusing and 
disjointed.  Vanloons said he felt janc should concentrate his work on 
configuring Grex for blogs.  He said we need more discussion on twit 
filters.  Remmers said that in newuser, we should make it clear that 
Grex is uncensored, and that if you find some users offensive you will 
be able to screen them out.  Mary suggested that we model a twit filter 
after spam filters.  People could choose some filtration, or only to 
see material posted by people who are approved.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:50 p.m.

response 2 of 17:

May 4 00:05 UTC 2005

Wouldn't uLike 2Know?

response 4 of 17:

May 4 03:51 UTC 2005

Not endorsing.  Just using.

response 6 of 17:

May 4 18:30 UTC 2005

 !talk is limited to 2 people (IIRC)... better to use !ytalk

response 8 of 17:

May 13 02:02 UTC 2005

I'd like to announce, that thanks to Aruba, your coop fairwitness is back.

Thanks, Mark

response 10 of 17:

May 13 15:31 UTC 2005

Colleen's .cfonce file had a bad "pager" line.  It proably worked fine on
OldGrex.

response 12 of 17:

May 15 02:39 UTC 2005

thanks, scholar !

response 14 of 17:

Jan 21 15:03 UTC 2006

... may 17, 2005 ..... jan 17, 2006 .... this is also a 'bad pager line'?

response 16 of 17:

Jan 21 21:48 UTC 2006

 !@