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Grex > Coop8 > #63: Making "Intro" the default conference | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 126 responses total. |
nephi
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response 100 of 126:
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Jun 2 21:50 UTC 1996 |
(Hmm. I wonder if it can be set to ask the user to choose between three
options . . . (1) Intro (2) Agora and (3) Other conferences. Selection 3
could then take them to another screen that gives more options, like "System
conferences," "Hobby conferences," "Social Conferences," "Other conferences"
and perhaps other things that I'm not thinking of right now. Anyway, if a
person wanted to pick one of those to start out in, perhaps we would have less
of a special emphasis on Agora, and more activity in the other conferences,
which is what everyone says they want.)
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janc
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response 101 of 126:
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Jun 2 22:37 UTC 1996 |
One of the functions of the "intro" conference is to act as a guide to "other
conferences". It is not supposed to function as a real conference itself.
Thus nephi's choice (3) is really just "intro". Probably the description of
"intro" should make this clear.
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scott
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response 102 of 126:
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Jun 2 22:39 UTC 1996 |
Although perhaps kerouac's point was that as long as we have a menu of
choices...
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adbarr
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response 103 of 126:
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Jun 3 01:00 UTC 1996 |
Richard, how can we control their minds if we can't force them to choose
from a selected menu. Why you would have all kinds of independent thought
messing up the system. No way. :-)
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janc
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response 104 of 126:
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Jun 3 15:51 UTC 1996 |
There is already a way for users to select from the full list of conferences.
There is no reason to put another version of the same thing in a wrapper
around picospan. The original idea was to change the default conference to
"intro". People thought that was a good idea, but for reasons that escape
me wanted to give people a choice between "intro" and "agora". Well, OK.
But now people want to go further off the same slippery slope and add all
two hundred conferences to the same list, confusing new users still further.
How many newusers really want "accordians" as their default conference?
Unless people have very specialized interests, there aren't that many
conferences that make sense as a default conference. Why innundate every poor
newuser with a flood of absurd choices?
Look kids, the whole idea behind "intro" is to provide a *gentler*
introduction to conferencing than "agora". If we swamp the poor newbie with
stupid questions offering him choices between unlikely options that he can
barely assess (he's never even *seen* a conference before...how is he to know
which he wants as a default), then we are *not* providing a more friendly
entry point to conferencing. We should *not* allow creeping featuritus to
take over.
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rcurl
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response 105 of 126:
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Jun 3 16:01 UTC 1996 |
...like it has almost everywhere else...
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carson
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response 106 of 126:
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Jun 4 00:41 UTC 1996 |
ditto.
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aruba
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response 107 of 126:
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Jun 4 02:07 UTC 1996 |
Yeah, I think I agree with Jan. I feel strongly that the user's first
impression of Grex's conferences should be unmoderated if that's what he
wants. First impressions are awfully important, after all.
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aruba
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response 108 of 126:
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Jun 4 02:43 UTC 1996 |
I like remmers's original wording for describing the conferences, and if we
go with longer bits I like Valerie's description of the intro conference.
My suggestion for how to describe agora:
The "agora" conference is Grex's general-purpose conference where hundreds of
Grex users talk about dozens of different topics. Any subject is fair game,
and every subject comes up eventually. Agora is restarted at the beginning
of each season, but even so it can sometimes grow to daunting proportions.
Agora gets the most traffic of any conference on Grex.
I know that's five lines and the original was four; I tried. :)
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remmers
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response 109 of 126:
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Jun 4 13:57 UTC 1996 |
Since intro is supposed to be a training-wheels sampler
conference for newbies, how about not running the front-
end dialog at all if the user has any participation
files whatsoever? I think that checking for filenames of
the form $HOME/.*.cf and $HOME/.cfdir/.*.cf would by a
99.99% effective test for this.
Here's my suggestion for the way the dialog should go,
including an additional message *after* the user has
made a choice. It's a bit verbose, but on the other hand,
a user will see it only once.
You are entering Grex's Picospan conferencing system for the
first time. Grex has several dozen conferences on a wide variety
of topics as well as a general conference called Agora for
discussion of any topics, announcements of off-line events,
and reports of system problems. Like almost all of Grex's
conferences, Agora is "unmoderated", that is, material that
people post there is not pre-screened in any way. It is a
very large, active conference.
To assist new users in navigating the conferencing system and
choosing the conferences that they want to participate in
regularly, we provide a conference called Intro containing a
sampler of currently active discussion items in various
conferences and a brief tutorial on how to use the conferencing
system. The Intro conference is "moderated" in the sense that
the conference "fair witness" selects the items that appear
there. The Intro conference is purposely kept small to avoid
overwhelming new users with information overload.
You will be able to join and participate in any of Grex's
public conferences. Initially, we will let you choose either
Intro or Agora as your "startup" conference, that is, the
conference that you go to each time you run Picospan. Whatever
decision you make now can be changed later to make any
conference you wish your startup conference.
Would you like Intro or Agora as your startup conference?
<user responds to this question, and is then shown some additional
text>
<if user chose Intro...>
You have chosen Intro as your startup conference. To jump from
there to Agora, type "join agora" at the "Ok" prompt. To see
a list of all the Grex conferences, type "help conferences"
at the "Ok" prompt. Once you are familiar with using the
conferencing system, you may wish to change to a different
startup conference.
<if user chose Agora...>
You have chosen Agora as your startup conference. To jump from
there to Intro, type "join intro" at the "Ok" prompt. To see
a list of all the Grex conferences, type "help conferences"
at the "Ok" prompt.
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janc
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response 110 of 126:
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Jun 4 16:29 UTC 1996 |
Pretty good text. I would like the first part to fit in 24 lines though.
I thought about checking for participation files. It might be a better
way to go. People would only see the question if they have neither a
.cflist nor any *.cf files.
Yes, I do think that would be better, and the performance impact would
be minimal -- reading a directory is pretty quick, and the system probably
has the search the user's home directory anyway to find if he has a .cflist.
Checking for *.cf files as well would have little extra cost.
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nephi
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response 111 of 126:
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Jun 4 21:41 UTC 1996 |
I think it is quite good text! (And I bet that if the margins were made a
little wider, the text would easuly fit into 24 lines.)
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aruba
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response 112 of 126:
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Jun 4 23:26 UTC 1996 |
I like remmers's text too.
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chelsea
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response 113 of 126:
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Jun 5 01:51 UTC 1996 |
Me also.
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scott
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response 114 of 126:
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Jun 5 02:07 UTC 1996 |
I don't care about the exact text. They've all be fine.
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janc
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response 115 of 126:
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Jun 5 06:04 UTC 1996 |
OK. I've made a couple changes to the program:
- It now asks the question only if you have no .cflist and no *.cf files.
Basically, this means that users will see the question only on the
first time they access the conferences. No existing user who has ever
been in the bbs will see the question at all.
- I deleted the test that suppresses the question when you do "bbs coop".
If the user entered bbs for the first time doing "bbs coop" and we
suppressed the question, then he would *never* see the question,
because he now has a participation file.
- It now has the capability to print some body of text after he has
selected a conference. It uses the following text files:
/usr/local/lib/bbswrap.mesg -- Text printed before asking
/usr/local/lib/bbswrap.intro -- Text printed if intro chosen
/usr/local/lib/bbswrap.agora -- Text printed if agora choesn
I've set up those files with copies of remmers' text, reformatted to fit on
a 24 line screen. I've installed a demo version of tha program as
bbswrapper
If you run this, it should appear to behave exactly like "bbs" (since you have
participation files), but actually it does a directory scan and then executes
"bbs_" which is a hard-link to "bbs".
If you have a .cfdir, you can easily do a more interesting test of this.
Rename your .cfdir to something like Xcfdir. Then run "bbswrapper". You
should see the whole nine yards of text and questions. To clean up afterwards,
do "rm .cflist .*.cf" and restore .cfdir to it's original name.
It would be good if some people could test this before turning it on for the
newbies. By it's nature, it's something that will be largely hidden from
experienced users when it is in operation, which means it will be hard to get
good bug reports once it is operational.
To turn it operational, we would rename "bbswrapper" as "bbs", leaving the
real "bbs" program in place as "bbs_". At that point, someone should test
that it works correctly for people with the bbs shell.
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rcurl
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response 116 of 126:
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Jun 5 06:57 UTC 1996 |
I use the system alias conf in place of bbs (I adopted this option quite
a while ago because I didn't think we should associate conferencing
with the usual meaning of "bbs" - but I couldn't get much of a following
on this theoretical point). Anyway...does it all work the same if the
command conf is used to enter Picospan?
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remmers
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response 117 of 126:
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Jun 5 12:19 UTC 1996 |
Yep. Creating an alias doesn't disable the original.
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remmers
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response 118 of 126:
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Jun 5 12:22 UTC 1996 |
Just tried out bbswrapper. Worked fine for me.
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popcorn
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response 119 of 126:
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Jun 6 06:12 UTC 1996 |
I tried out the bbswrapper program. It seems OK to me.
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janc
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response 120 of 126:
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Jun 11 14:11 UTC 1996 |
I've switched this 100% on. "bbs" is now the "bbswrapper" program, and "bbs_"
is the real thing. Experienced users who want a very small speed increase
and can cope with the possibility that it might suddenly break could alias
"bbs" to "bbs_".
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scott
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response 121 of 126:
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Jun 11 16:06 UTC 1996 |
er, "don't want a small speed increase"?
anyway, thanks for doing this, Jan.
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scott
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response 122 of 126:
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Jun 11 16:12 UTC 1996 |
Oops, never mind. ;)
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janc
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response 123 of 126:
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Jun 11 16:14 UTC 1996 |
Nope. "bbs" is the wrapper program. It checks if you are a newbie before
running "bbs_" which is the real Picospan. If you are a newbie, it injects
the question before running "bbs_". If you are not a newbie, you avoid the
test and the exec() by running "bbs_" so "bbs_" is faster. However, not much.
If I hadn't told you, you wouldn't notice.
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janc
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response 124 of 126:
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Jun 11 16:14 UTC 1996 |
Scott slipped in. I'm sure he feels good about that.
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