response 1 of 38:

Feb 11 21:48 UTC 2006

I wouldn't be in favor of this. This would basically require users to use the
Gmail interface to check their mail -- we're not in the business of providing
web-based email.

response 3 of 38:

Feb 11 22:28 UTC 2006

Sure -- but, again, I think that would be just us contracting Google to provide
POP3 email service for us, when it has historically been our policy not to
provide it. I think our prior policy has been a good one.

response 5 of 38:

Feb 11 22:56 UTC 2006

Read the FAQ (!faq); about 45% of the way through is "How do I read mail with
Netscape or Eudora?"

response 7 of 38:

Feb 12 01:01 UTC 2006

What if the e-mail could be downloaded through POP3?

response 9 of 38:

Feb 12 01:42 UTC 2006

(I assume that's addressed to keesan, but ...)

I think that unless you could put some restriction on it to make it *only*
downloadable to Grex, and not viewable through webmail (that is, unless you
just outsourced our spam checking), I think that would encourage users to make
Grex a mail drop rather than a community -- *not* a good idea.

Besides, I don't think Google would take us without some restrictions; after
all, Gmail has a hoop you have to jump through to get an account, as do the
other systems the article mentioned (colleges give accounts only to students,
staff, and possibly alumni), while we don't.

response 11 of 38:

Feb 12 01:47 UTC 2006

I would not want to use pop mail.  Shell account mail is much faster, you can
ignore the html parts, which tend to triple the size of mails.  

response 13 of 38:

Feb 12 02:17 UTC 2006

Re. 9:  Since when is Grex a community?

/etc/passwd currently has about thirty thousand entries.  The current Agora,
which should be one of the most popular conferences on Grex, has 1036 people
listed in the participant list.  However, that's at least several times
greater than the number of people who have actually entered anything into the
current Agora or at least read it extensively.

If the choice is between scrapping E-mail entirely and providing E-mail
service through Gmail, rather than locally, providing E-mail through Gmail
is clearly the ideal choice for the aspects of Grex which actually have
something to do with community.

Re. 11:  You're an ignorant cunt.  What nharmon is proposing would allow you
to access mail through the shell and allow you to filter out anything you can
filter now.

response 15 of 38:

Feb 12 05:24 UTC 2006

Re #12: I agree that Grex needs an overhaul of mail operations. I just don't
think a web-based or POP3 solution would fit with the stated aims of Grex. 

Re #13: Grex has been a community since it was founded in 1991. It has had
noncontributing members (in the nontechnical sense of both words) for nearly
that long. Some of those noncontributing members have since become contributing
members. If the choice is between providing email through Gmail and not
providing it, I think the latter is clearly the choice more in line with Grex's
historical principles. We are *not* a mail drop.

#14: And look at the percentage of American citizens of age who vote.

If this ever becomes a viable option, we need to *put it to a member vote.*

response 17 of 38:

Feb 12 16:33 UTC 2006

Regarding #13; And of the people who are participants, only 82 have actually
posted something.

Regarding #15; I think you're confused about what the suggestion is.  It's to
use gmail as a mail server, with grex as a client to it, not to offer popmail
or anything else.  Personally, I don't think it'd make a significant
difference in usage patterns.  And while some ``noncontributing members'' have
become ``contributing members,'' in the past few years, more the number of
``contributing members'' has halved.

Grex really does need to think seriously about how it does things and
reconsider some of them.  I doubt that it will, however.  The community is
just too insular and backwards.

response 19 of 38:

Feb 12 18:16 UTC 2006

Using "insular and backwards" the way cross did doesn't at all imply he thinks
ANY change is good, let alone that change on GREX would be good, let alone
that ALL CHANGE is good (which is how you deliberately and condescendingly
interpreted post).

Anyway, to prove your strong thesis that some changes are good and some
changes are bad, you should offer more examples, I think.  For example:  It
would be good if you shut your ignorant mouth and allow yourself to benefit
from people who actually have experience as system administrators.

response 21 of 38:

Feb 12 19:55 UTC 2006

It didn't leave any such impression, and you should stop sticking your junk
into people's mouths without their permission.

Grex being governed by its members doesn't mean that technically naieve users
should assume they know more than experienced Unix system administrators and
should refuse to accept reasonable guidance from them.

I don't know why you're contorting my post into one that has anything to do
with the formal social hierarchy of Grex.  I value the input of cross more
than yours, even though you're a member and he's not.

response 23 of 38:

Feb 12 23:57 UTC 2006

Re #22: Using Gmail as our mail server wouldn't free up any resources except
bandwidth for those users who decide to use POP3 clients from elsewhere, and
users who use only email would take up disk space for home directories here.

I still think we would get a minor deluge of users if we offered POP email with
open newuser. Users who can't get a gmail account (or don't want one because
they have to jump through a hoop to get one) would go to us. To an extent they
do already, which is why I think adding a few minor hoops to email access on
Grex is a good idea, but the problem is exponentially greater with the addition
of web-accessible email. (It wasn't about "a cool name.")

The issue wasn't about bandwidth, it was about what Grex was going to be: an
online community made possible by computer conferencing, or a Hotmail
competitor. The former was chosen, and I for one am glad of it.

I had to cite the FAQ (which have a last-updated date of 2003, not 1996, btw)
because this has been so generally accepted that there's no precedent in the
history of member votes.