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kentn
Grex Town Hall -- How do we move forward? Mark Unseen   Jun 14 17:02 UTC 2010

The board had mentioned a while back about having a "town hall" meeting,
but that would generally only be for those who can come in person.  So,
to fill in that gap, we thought it would be good to have an item that
will stay around as agora get rolled. So, here it is.

What we want to do is get opinions about how Grex can move forward, what
we can do to encourage more people to use it, and what we want Grex to
provide in terms of services or applications.

Some of these questions have come up in other items, but we'd like to
pull them all into here and develop a plan for Grex to move beyond where
it is today.  Now that we've had 6 months or more to try to get Grex
going again, it is time to see what else we can do beyond making it more
stable and reliable and adding more staff to take care of issues in a
timely manner.
357 responses total.
keesan
response 1 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 15 13:31 UTC 2010

What is happening with the two phone lines?
denise
response 2 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 15 13:39 UTC 2010

One of them will be discontinued.
kentn
response 3 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 15 14:06 UTC 2010

And we'll monitor the remaining one to see how much it gets used.
kentn
response 4 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 15 14:08 UTC 2010

BTW, Board meeting minutes, which document this decision on phone
lines are available in the coop conference in item 279. 
richard
response 5 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 05:38 UTC 2010

I want Grex to attract new members, which it is not doing and has not
been doing since the validation patch was put in eliminating a fully
open newuser.  Today's internet has far too many things to do for most
people to have the patience to wait around for some staff member to
'validate' them and confer that they are good enough to participate here.

The validation patch should be removed and then Grex needs to discuss
ways it can publicize itself and attract more people here.  Grex needs
to use some of its funds to let people know its around and its cool.  I
recall some years ago Grex used to sponsor a movie night at one of the
outdoor movie things they had in A2, even gave out keychains or pins or
something there one year.  Grex can also better publicize itself through
youtube, facebook, twitter .etc  
lar
response 6 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 07:19 UTC 2010

set up an IRC server
set up a newsgroup server
set up a gopher server

these retro services will attract the only people who really care about 
unix places like this anyway.  Hippy nerds chowing down on granola and 
trail mix.

tod
response 7 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 17:22 UTC 2010

re #6
I would only be for IRC if people are forced to telnet to port 6669 and
use it manually..none of that remote mIrc or BitchX GUI client stuff.
Newsgroup and IRC is all about p2p file xfer anymore...waste of bandwidth.
kentn
response 8 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 19:10 UTC 2010

Maybe gopher will make a comeback?  Hmmm...
 
The idea of a retro system has been tossed around a bit.  It is one
way to go and one thing we can continue to do (text conferencing, for
example).  We could do more retro things, of course.  Along this line,
installing more programming languages, debuggers, databases, and other
apps that can be run or used at the command line might attract some new
users (even if they aren't "retro").

GUI apps tend to use too many system resources for a small multi-user
system.  Perhaps if we got a better system...

Becoming a member of Grex gets you access to more features, like
outgoing access.  BitchX and ircII are available, for example, if you
are a verified (not validated) member.  These are command line programs.

I don't know that being only a retro system will attract a large
community of new users willing to become members, though.  We're more
likely to attract new users with newer means of communication or at
least a fresher interface to the conferences and email.  And of course,
we'd need a more open new user policy than what we have now.  The
latter assumes the system can be set up so that juvenile twits don't
cause frequent issues. Being destructive is so much easier than being
constructive...

Not everyone wants to use Facebook or Myspace or Twitter.
tsty
response 9 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 19:13 UTC 2010

  
the towonhall idea is a goo done and if we could get non-local partipsipation
it wold be even better.
  
the meeting wold hae to be a tad more controlled/discipliend than just
a ppl-ftf-gathering thogh.

woth tonsters confernce call facility, and one of my amps, the 
assemble multitude could partipsipate from .. oh,,,, paki/afgh/engl/japan
or wherever.
  
thoughts?
richard
response 10 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 19:56 UTC 2010

Grex needs to start allowing graphics in its conferencing posts.  
Everyone who blogs or conferences these days uses pictures and such.  

In addition backtalk needs to be changed to start allowing posts to be 
edited.  In most other places you post on the internet, you are given 
the chance to retroactively edit your entries at least for a short 
period after posting if you choose.  Here you make a typo or a mistake 
in a post you have to delete the whole thing.  
nharmon
response 11 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 20:08 UTC 2010

Allowing graphics in the conferences? Well, I guess 4chan.org is pretty
popular too.
bellstar
response 12 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 22:34 UTC 2010

Sadly, "/b/ isn't your personal army." /g/, however, can promise users to
break new ground in raid organization and allow libertarian militias to roam

> Here at Grex, Everybody Gets Their Own Personal Army [of One]
bellstar
response 13 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 22:35 UTC 2010

Ow sh*t I forgot the ;-)
kentn
response 14 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 16 23:55 UTC 2010

I like the idea of editing posts. If we had someone who could change
backtalk reliably, we'd be in business for that as long as there were no
policy reason against editing (I'd assume if each user owns their own
responses such that they could delete them, they should also be able to
edit them).  I've seen on some systems where a note is added to the post
to indicate when it was edited so that readers know it has been changed.

I'm not sure about the graphics.  It would be neat in some respects,
but as soon as someone starts posting images that will get Grex in
trouble with the law, then we'd need to start moderating responses,
which doesn't sound good.
keesan
response 15 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jun 17 00:06 UTC 2010

Can you already link to images at other sites?
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