Grex Blogs

Jun 25 21:01 UTC 2007

In the last month, I picked up working on this again, and maybe I'll get it done this time. I'm hoping to be able to get a demo version up within the next month or so.

Here's basically how it would work.

There would be some web page somewhere where people who have a Grex account can sign up for a Grex blog. Doing this, would give them a blog that would be accessible at (in my case) http://janc.cyberspace.org/. Obviously the "janc" would be replaced by the user's login ID.

The blog would be pretty much your basic blog. You'd be able to choose from some pre-defined "skins" that control the appearance of the blog, or create your own skin via a rather complex web interface. (This mostly already exists, and I was able to generate skins the pretty nearly clone three random blogs that I regularly read.) RSS would be supported by the blogs, as would trackback (I think).

Blog owners will pretty much rule the roost in their own blogs. They can decide who can post comments (anonymous users, people with Grex accounts only, only selected Grex users, or nobody at all). They can delete unwanted comments from their blogs. They can open their bogs up so others can make postings, and so forth.

From a technical point of view, of course, the blogs are really backtalk conferences in disguise. Each blog is implemented internally as a conference, with the owner being the fairwitness, items being postings, and responses being comments. It will actually be possible (though unusual) to view the blogs via the usual backtalk abalone interface or via fronttalk. It will not be possible to read them from Picospan, because Picospan would let random people post, which is undesirable in a blog.

I want to emphasize that from an administrative policy point of view, I think these blogs should be treated as a separate service from Grex conferences. The established free-speech rules on Grex conferences would not be changed. In Grex conferences, fairwitnesses are treated as "owners" of the conference content in any sense. In Grex blogs, the blog owner would be quite explicitly the owner of the blog. So though at some deep down level the software would be the same, these would be separate services from an administrative point of view.

Blogs will probably not appear on the "list of conferences" in the grex conferences. From the blogs it may be possible (if the blog owner chooses to include a link) to get a list of "other blogs on Grex", but that won't include grex conferences. It will not be possible to link items from the blogs into conferences or other blogs (unless the blog owner permits it). It probably would be possible to link Grex conference items into your blog, though that would be weird.

My inclination would be to allow people to do things like place google ads on their blogs. Obviously that would never to tolerated on a Grex conference.

My plan at this point is, once I get the software to a usable level, to just put it up on Grex as an "experimental service". The blog sign-up page will include a warning saying that the blogs may disappear, or the features and capabilities of the blogs may change without notice during the experimental period. We'll have a discussion here, and we'll either modify the blogging software or remove it, depending on how people feel about things.

response 2 of 16:

Jun 26 01:34 UTC 2007

I'm all for it!

response 4 of 16:

Jun 26 12:33 UTC 2007

Just to be an echo- I like it too. :)

response 6 of 16:

Jun 26 23:23 UTC 2007

While I am not so fond of blogging for myself (I prefer to communicate
via email, these forums and instant messaging), I see this as a product
that would be welcome and might help with recruiting efforts. That said,
if a couple of people here started keeping weblogs, I would probably
look at them, at least occasionally (yes, that means you Dan, and
UnixPapa).