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| Author |
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janc
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State of Coop
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Apr 3 03:48 UTC 1996 |
I used to read the coop conference thoroughly and participate actively in the
discussions.
Now I just skim through it and say almost nothing.
This is because I feel like nothing worth talking about is being talked about
here.
Is it just me?
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| 100 responses total. |
raven
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response 1 of 100:
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Apr 3 04:30 UTC 1996 |
That could well be, remember though the price of democracy is a
higher noise to signal ratio. Ultimatley though the signal is bosted
by the noise so democracy is worth wading thorough a few useless posts
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kerouac
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response 2 of 100:
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Apr 3 04:32 UTC 1996 |
There is plenty that worth talking about here. The problem is that
there is a HUGE degree of apathy among most here. I'm one of the few users
who is not on the board or staff that actively participates here. And
yet users like me are not encouraged to participate here, and when we do
and step forward to suggest things, we get berated. A lot of regular
users do not read coop because if you try to participate for any length of
time, you realize that many staffers disregard ideas almost out of hand
unless it is another staffer proposing it.
I expended a lot of energy trying to defend my positions in item 42 and
I never got the impression my ideas were welcome, even if they were
not the best ideas. I wanted people to come up with other suggestions.
The listing Steve did in a previous item showing conference activity showed
a huge problem. But instead of "that's an interesting suggestion, here's
a better one", I got essentially, "you're an idiot, shut up" This is
not the way to get regular users of grex to come here.
Even if fair witnessing is not part of the problem, it doesnt mean that
the problem doesnt exsist. And that it needs addressing. But as for
the Coop conference, the problem is that staff is a closeknit group
who know each other well and thre is natural cliquishness. This makes
it difficult for regular users to feel welcome. Half the responses
I got to my impassioned, even if misdirected, defenses of my positions
and the problems in general were sarcastic one-liners and "me too's"
from staff.
Two staffers, Remmers and Valerie, even joked about forgetting the item.
If staff wants coop to work, it has got to have a better attitude. You
guys do know more about grex than anybody, but that doesnt mean that
we regular users cant sense problems and cant sense solutions as wellas
you can on occassion.
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kerouac
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response 3 of 100:
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Apr 3 04:36 UTC 1996 |
And this is a nuts and bolts conf that deals with *problems*, I didnt
know it needed to be fun. There are plenty of fun confs and this one
can be too, but it serves a purpose regardless.
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scg
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response 4 of 100:
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Apr 3 05:04 UTC 1996 |
Actually, I think kerouac is the only user who tends to get attacked for the
things he says regularly, except for those who he attacks. I don't want this
to come off as an attack, but I'm not sure how to word it to get it perceived
any other way. Reading Coop has become a very unpleasant experience, because
of kerouac. It's not just me who says that -- I keep hearing the same thing
over and over again from many of the "regular" users who he claims to be
speaking for. He makes an occasional good point, and is certainly more than
welcom eto participate just like any other Grex user. However, when one user
manages to so thoroughly dominate the entire conference with many conflicting
circular arguments and attempting to turn every tiny little issue into a major
flame war, it gets boring *really* fast. There are still plenty of "regular
users" who participate in this conference. There used to be a lot more, back
when Coop participation didn't require nearly as thick skin.
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popcorn
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response 5 of 100:
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Apr 3 07:20 UTC 1996 |
Re 0: Actually, I was about to enter an item saying "I can't take it anymore.
I'm taking a vacation from co-op."
I agree with everything scg says in #4.
I keep *looking* for something, anything, that kerouac says that I can seize
on to agree with. Haven't found much of anything yet.
The preachy login screen doesn't help.
I'll be back in co-op eventually, but for now consider me on vacation.
Send me e-mail if there's anything here that I ought to read right away.
I consider reading co-op an essential part of my duties as a voter, board
member, and staff member, and as a user of Grex, so I will come back.
Or resign. I really hate it when people threaten to leave if they don't
get their way, and I dislike the idea of leaving mostly because of one
person who is difficult to get along with, so I've stuck around in silence
for a long time. But it's definitely time to take a break from this.
See ya in the future....
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srw
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response 6 of 100:
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Apr 3 07:39 UTC 1996 |
I will keep reading coop. I do not believe it is apathy that Kerouac is
seeing here. I think that he is getting very few people to agree with his
ideas. I haven't felt like arguing with him about them because others have
been doing a fine job.
I don't think conferencing needs fixing the way he seems to think. Call it
apathy if you will. I wish I had more time to post thoughtful items in
history, world events, politics, internet, and other conferences I read.
I think they would be better, but I seem to spend all my time working on the
system, or some other system. That is how I would fix conferencing.
I think Kerouac is trying to make grex better. I really do. I don't want to
squash that desire in him. Honestly, though, I haven't heard any suggestions
that I really like. I think that there are ways Grex can be better, and we
would all do well to continue brainstorming here in coop. I do not think it
wise for a board member to leave coop, no matter how unproductive it seems to
be getting. The fact of the matter is that this is really the only forum we
have for discussing policy. That is a good thing, and shouldn't change.
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janc
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response 7 of 100:
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Apr 3 08:03 UTC 1996 |
I don't necessarily expect coop to be fun. I expect it to be productive.
Discussion about the login banner. Stubborness over trivialities. I've
said I don't like the login. It's obvious the FW's aren't going to change it.
It isn't important enough to make an issue of. So I'm not interested.
Discussion about whether the author of an item should have frozen it. Who
cares? As long as the discussion can be continued in another item, freezing
an item is so ineffectual that it can hardly be counted as more than a trivial
act of petulance. Why should I care to listen to debates over the propriety
of trivial acts of petualance?
Discussion about rules for fairwitnesses. Very few people appear to see a
need for them. I don't see a need for them.
Don't dismiss "me too" responses. They are a lot more important then most
ten-screen dissertations. They indicate several people agreeing. The ten-
page dissertations only indicate one verbose person, and in a democracy,
several people agreeing count for a lot more than one verbose person. If
there were more "me too" responses after kerouac's postings, I'd certainly
pay more attention to them.
The only useful items I've seen here lately were the discussions of the
Sun versus a PC for a newserver. There were actually several people on each
side of the issue, and every angle of the issue were pretty well covered.
I suspect that at the next staff meeting the PC camp will yeild to the Sun
camp, with reservations. I guess the discussion over whether we should have
news was good too...after a short, sharp altercation, John scored a knock-out
punch for the pro-news camp. I don't call this fun -- I'd personally rather
see the whole news thing thrown overboard -- but the discussions have
certainly been productive.
I feel we are having more and more discussion here where the real issue is
somebody's ego, so we can't resolve it or drop it and it just lingers on and
on, in one form after another.
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janc
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response 8 of 100:
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Apr 3 08:11 UTC 1996 |
Valerie and Steve slipped in. I'm sorry Valerie is so frustrated with this.
Luckily, I'm no board member, so I can just skim the boring threads.
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robh
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response 9 of 100:
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Apr 3 08:18 UTC 1996 |
I still read Co-op, but I've gotten to the point of only glancing
at kerouac's responses, because when I try to read them all the
way through, they make no more sense than when I skim them, and
skimming saves a lot of time.
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srw
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response 10 of 100:
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Apr 3 08:24 UTC 1996 |
While I'm not so ready to put down the login screen issue, as its annoying
nature will reappear every time I enter coop, I have to agree with you about
the freezing and fw rules. There is a clear consensus that freezing an item
in the middle of a discussion is rude, but easily overcome. There is a clear
consensus that we don't need to change the fw rules. There is also a clear
consensus that the login screen of coop shoould be much shorter. That is the
one place where democracy seems to be losing.
Now that these consensuses have appeared, and no one's mind is going to be
changed by further argument, it would probably be wise to move on and discuss
other things.
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brighn
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response 11 of 100:
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Apr 3 10:07 UTC 1996 |
I became a regular reader of Co-op because of Kerouac, in part.
Now I find myself wishing to be interested in threads that don't invovle
him, because it's grown tiresome. I can't find any.
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gregc
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response 12 of 100:
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Apr 3 11:27 UTC 1996 |
Jan, I *do* agree with you about the trivial nature of the login screen
issue. However, what I find most disturbing is the cavalier attitudes of the
FW's. In the face of very clear and majority opinion against what they have
done, they have choose to ignore the wishes of the users. Especially in
this conference more than any other, that is the wrong thing to do. We
can't get them to change on a trivial issue, what are they going to do
when something really *important* comes along? I want to see some responsivness
from them, or I want to see new FW's for this conference.
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gregc
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response 13 of 100:
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Apr 3 12:07 UTC 1996 |
Here's some useless coop statistics that people may find interesting:
Total responses(including #0's): 2751
Total users who have responded: 73
All responders:
183 steve 171 kerouac 170 rcurl 159 popcorn 155 srw
145 adbarr 129 janc 122 scg 121 robh 112 scott
109 ajax 108 brighn 104 tsty 98 carson 91 cfadm
77 gregc 68 davel 63 remmers 62 chelsea 58 mdw
51 nephi 38 mta 31 kaplan 28 raven 25 arianna
24 arthurp 23 danr 20 aruba 19 selena 18 dpc
17 sidhe 12 jazz 12 dang 8 nestene 8 n8nxf
8 lilmo 8 freida 8 aaron 7 rlawson 7 albaugh
6 giry 5 yo 4 rickyb 4 jared 4 headdoc
4 eeyore 4 abortion 4 abchan 3 mikep 3 mcpoz
3 janh 3 bruin 3 anne 2 katie 2 kase
2 garya 2 fade 1 zook 1 wisdom 1 wh
1 sekari 1 ryan1 1 omni 1 mju 1 meg
1 jquesada 1 drew 1 darylk 1 dam 1 clb
1 chanur 1 bjorn 1 batfang
It's interesting to note that 90% of the responses are confined to the
top 25 people.
Any other conclusions you'd like to draw from this data, you are free to
draw yourselves.
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remmers
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response 14 of 100:
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Apr 3 12:36 UTC 1996 |
I don't think that those figures indicate anything unusual for
forums of this type. The discussions are usually dominated by
a relatively small core of active participants.
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remmers
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response 15 of 100:
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Apr 3 12:49 UTC 1996 |
Oh, one point of interest: It was asserted above that very few
non-board, non-staff people participate in Coop. The figures show
that the split is actually pretty even. Of the top 30 responders,
15 are neither board nor staff, and of those, 11 have never been
on board or staff.
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davel
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response 16 of 100:
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Apr 3 14:14 UTC 1996 |
It might be interesting to count words instead of just responses. (Or it
might not show anything different.)
In general I have to agree with remmers. I don't think you'd find it all that
much different in any special-purpose conference, including such things as
usenet groups & mailing lists. I'm surprised at how far down a few people
(including me!) appear, & how far up a couple of others are.
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gregc
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response 17 of 100:
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Apr 3 14:17 UTC 1996 |
I was thinking of also posting a word(or character count), but it turns
out that's a bit more difficult to accomplish and I didn't want to waste
much time on this exercise.
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ajax
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response 18 of 100:
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Apr 3 15:42 UTC 1996 |
Re: Jan's premise, it's not just you, co-op is a bit different lately.
However, I think it's just due to a temporarily stable lull for Grex.
I think it's kind of nice, in fact, to have no serious controversies.
It may be partly due to the backlog of Grex plans that have already
been decided but haven't yet been implemented (e.g., we don't need to
discuss all the particulars of Usenet access again). Things are running
fairly smoothly.
I just skim or forget what I consider the fluffier items, too. The
"FW" items are important to some people, but not to me. Until votable
proposals come out of that (and I doubt they will), I feel comfortable
ignoring the debates. Seems like mostly just personal venting there.
Interesting tally, Greg. I think the quantity and distribution of
participants (90% by 25 users) is pretty good. For comparison, about
30 people attended the US Constitutional Convention from start to
finish, and they did a pretty good job of creating policies for a
wider audience!
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gregc
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response 19 of 100:
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Apr 3 15:47 UTC 1996 |
Heh. Interesting comparison.
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kerouac
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response 20 of 100:
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Apr 3 22:02 UTC 1996 |
Of the forty seven items in the current coop, I'm involved in less
than a third of them (fourteen by my count) I havent said a word in any
of the tech items, and little if anything in items about the budget. You
cant really judge tone or inflection in the words that I type, and certainly
not by the amount that I type. I type very fast and I like to discuss
things. We all have our own personal natures. If there isnt room for
different types and approaches, then there isnt room for a lot of people
in this conf. I happen to think that many of grex's problems are
aestethic, and would exsist even if grex had the finest state of the art
equipment and software in the world. Most of staff are tech people who
naturally think in terms of tech solutions.
But as important as any programming is getting users involved and making
them feel welcome and valued. People want to feel a PART of something,
and they want to be able to speak out without fear of recrimination. Dont
persecute people for being who they are.
It isnt that most users dont read coop. Most members dont read coop. People
arent being encouraged to become involved. I'm just a concerned user--
I've never resorted to name calling or tried to make any issue personal.
I'm long winded and I type fast *shrug* put a gun to my head...if I mean
well shouldnt that be all that matters?
So I'm sorry if I happen to be too outspoken and stubborn. But if staffers
like Valerie cant give users the benefit of the doubt and assume the
highest motivations, then communication becomes impossible and coop dies.
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rcurl
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response 21 of 100:
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Apr 3 23:30 UTC 1996 |
Yikes. I better shut up for a while.
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davel
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response 22 of 100:
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Apr 4 00:01 UTC 1996 |
<snicker>
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scott
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response 23 of 100:
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Apr 4 00:33 UTC 1996 |
Um, kerouac, did you really read Valerie's response? She said that she reads
your material in all seriousness, it's just that she can't find anything to
agree with.
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kerouac
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response 24 of 100:
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Apr 4 02:27 UTC 1996 |
I've presented some perfectly good ideas on things like an intro conf
and finding new ways to get users involved. I know valerie hasnt disagreed
with everything I've suggested. My ideas just happen to be non-technical, I'm
not a techie so I dont think in those terms for the most part. There has to be
room for different perspectives.
The only way to a kinder and gentler coop is to treat everyone with respect.
All I'e done is defend my positions and I've been ridiculed. I didnt
know I couldnt defend my own ideas here with as much conviction as I felt
they needed.
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