*NEW* (and better?) Proposal for Unregistered BBS Reading

Mar 11 02:52 UTC 1997

Here's my shot at a proposal to satisfy everyone:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
     There is to be exactly one conference which is open for read-only 
access by unregistered users.  Unregistered users are people who do not 
have an account on Grex.  This one particular conference can be readable 
via backtalk.

     This single conference is meant to give unregistered users a small 
taste of what Grex is like.  Items which have the potentional to catch 
the interest of unregistered users are to be linked to this specific 
conference.  Before an item is linked, the person who entered the item 
must concur to the linkage.  If the user who entered the item no longer 
has an account on Grex, then the item may be linked without the 
agreement of the user.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

response 2 of 83:

Mar 11 06:49 UTC 1997

Sounds decent.

response 4 of 83:

Mar 11 10:22 UTC 1997

you garnered another agreement from me.... fine idea.

response 6 of 83:

Mar 11 16:16 UTC 1997

Several people have suggested this along the way, and it seems to me a fine
way of approaching the thing.  How about waiting 'til everyone has got voting
and arguing out of their systems and calmed down, and then just *doing* this
(if anyone cares enough to implement it)?  This doesn't require a lot of
policy-making.  Just announce it, and make sure everyone participating in the
conference understands.

Incidentally, my guess is that this would turn out to be a better way to
"market" Grex.  If everything is completely accessible, we'd probably get
innocent websurfers stumbling into the Coop conference, and then signing off
in disgust.  This way we put our best stuff out there.  Maybe we should
have a new conference for the purpose--the "Grex World Open Conference", say.

response 8 of 83:

Mar 11 19:37 UTC 1997

Would individual posters not be given a say in whether their
responses would be readable by the unregistered users?  I thought
this was of grave concern to those who feared losing control over
who read their stuff?

response 10 of 83:

Mar 11 21:13 UTC 1997

Ok, got that out of my system. On a more rational plane, Grex currently
allows A. Nonny (mouse) to read any conference by joining as an observer. 
This leaves no record of the person being a participant. In fact, we would
have *more* information about a Web-based unregistered user, than we do
now for someone with a Grex login who uses the observe mode, especially if
they did not give accurate information when they created their account. 

This whole set of proposals is an attempt to allow people who feel more
secure with A. Nonny (mouse) reading from telnet with no record, to
continue to feel secure.  There is really no security, but we are
attempting, nonetheless, to let people continue to feel that there is.
(Isn't a sense of community wonderful <g>).  

response 12 of 83:

Mar 11 22:08 UTC 1997

Well, in my opinion, an "unregistered" user who just stops by 
http://www.cyberspace.org and decides to browse through a few 
conferences would be bored to death, and could go away because of the 
large amount of information that isn't any immediate use to the user.  
One single conference could display the best of each conference, while 
leaving the junk out.

When a company advertises a product, they tell about the good things; 
not the bad aspects or flaws in the product.

response 16 of 83:

Mar 12 15:39 UTC 1997

#7> Steve, I understand the fuss. If you don't by now, you won't.
it's that simple... *sigh*
  
"It all seems so stupid, it makes me want to give up,
 but why should I give up when it all seems so stupid?" -- Depeche Mode

response 18 of 83:

Mar 12 16:21 UTC 1997

I'm not too worried about that. The sex conference has been just
as open to all users with login id's as every other conference,
for something like five years now, and we haven't seen a
spillover effect into other conferences. I think that a user who
discovers grex on the web and who wants to talk about sex will
go to the sex conference to do so, not some arbitrary other
conference like cooking or garage.

response 20 of 83:

Mar 12 20:34 UTC 1997

I'd just like to point out one thing.

STeve Andre' keeps claiming that "unregistered" users who were to use 
backtalk to read the conferences instead of creating an account are 
logged more than if they were to create an account.  But, if I recall 
correctly, the httpd logs are not world-readable.

So, is unregistered reading logged?  Yes
Can non-rootly people view them?     No

response 22 of 83:

Mar 12 23:41 UTC 1997

The web server logs are currently readable only to staff.  I'm not sure fi
there's a good reason for that or not.