response 126 of 156:

Oct 30 12:51 UTC 1995

So the board meeting would be rescheduled for the 15th? Looks
okay for me.

response 128 of 156:

Oct 31 21:47 UTC 1995

I am also free on the 15th but not the 22nd.

response 130 of 156:

Nov 2 23:46 UTC 1995

At this point, I'm beginning to wonder the extent to which Agora
is convincing new users not to use the conferences...

response 132 of 156:

Nov 3 05:59 UTC 1995

defaultinginto a conference ...like Agora  ... reinforces and directs
the cncept of Grex a a conferencing/conversation system. 

response 134 of 156:

Nov 3 17:00 UTC 1995

 ...... like coop ?

response 136 of 156:

Nov 3 17:54 UTC 1995

Why not have several agora? The basic error here is the presumption
that *everyone has to know everyone else*. That is obviously false
in society, and even more obviously it is undesirable. In society,
we know subsets of people with whom we intereact (and learn some
superficial information about many more in the "news"). So, a
conferenceing system can be organized the same way. It is, in fact,
if you eliminate "agora": everyone meets those with common interests
in the individual conferences, which is kept manageable by one's
choice of conferences. However expecting everyone to show up in
an "agora" is just asking to have a mob, which is what happens. The
"agora" should be demoted from its prominence. Maybe, change its name
to "corral" (or, "feedlot"), and let people find it on their own.

response 138 of 156:

Nov 4 01:50 UTC 1995

  I find "Agora" to be much more substantive usually than general
on mnet.  But I think defaulting to agora reinforces the idea that
grex is a one conf system.  I know that there are some who think grex
*should* be a one conf system, but I like this picospan setup and I
think its a shame that more people arent reading the other confs.

Of course, if confusion is the idea, have newuser default everyone
into the "accordion conf" instead.  

Seriously though, maybe there should be created a "newuser" conference,
which would have introductory items and messages from the fws about
the other confs.  This would allow newusers to automatically be in a conf,
but the conf would be simple and inviting and would lead newusers to
try agora and all the others.  This would be a place where newusers 
could be asked or encouraged to introduce themselves, say who they are
and how they found out about grex.  Call it the "Welcome to Grex"
conference.  I can think of a lot of uses for it, including providing
an area where new users can ask staff questions that they might be
afraid to ask in Agora or someplace because they might sound silly or
stupid.

response 140 of 156:

Nov 4 06:30 UTC 1995

I have always felt that newusers should be given access to *real*
conferences from day one.  I don't think there are really very many
people in the world who would want to learn to use PicoSpan, for the
sake of learning to use PicoSpan.  The only reason to learn to use
PicoSpan, is to participate in the conferences, and hence I think it's
real important to give people that reason to learn to use PicoSpan.  The
most important part of learning to use PicoSpan has nothing at all to do
with PicoSpan at all - it has to do with learning the people, & social
skills.  There isn't any other way to pick that up other than the real
thing.

On the other hand, I don't think that dumping everyone into agora is
necessarily the best thing.  Actually, dumping everyone into the same
conference anywhere will have the same effect in the end.  If we were to
create a "welcome" cf, & put all new people there, that's where new
people would start off.  For a while, there would be a segregated
system, with "old" people in agora, & "new" people in welcome.  Without
an influx of new people, agora will eventually become a small haven for
just the old farts.  Meanwhile, this new conference, with its constant
influx of new people, will turn into the same kind of place as agora
today - many of those people will find no more reason to wander out of
that cf than people do out of agora today.  Since the new conference is
separate, there's every chance it will acquire a different set of social
mores than the old cfs - and that could result in a certain amount of
social friction, much as we see today between m-net & grex - or what we
saw between certain people from the well in accordion, & certain grex
people.  So, to me, the problem seems to be not which conference we dump
people into, but the fact we dump them all into one place.

What I've always wanted to do with Grex, & newuser, is to change newuser
to put people into multiple "first places", instead of just one, using
their interests as a guide to this.  There are several reasons I'd like
to do this, but one is certainly just to avoid the "one giant conference
and many little conference-lets" problem.  I think the resulting system
could be a lot more cosmopolitian, as more different kinds of people
could be readily accomadated in different parts of the system.  I also
think the system would scale better while still preserving that "small
system" flavour that I think many of us like.

I really wish I had done this much sooner, because lately, when I've
mentioned wanting to do this, I've found a disturbing number of people
who seem happy with the currently setup, and don't want it changed.  But
since some people here don't seem to like the "one giant cf" problem,
perhaps this is a good opportunity to explore this.

response 142 of 156:

Nov 5 01:11 UTC 1995

 MDW, are you saying that newuser would pick a conf at random and
default a new user there, thereby spreading newusers throughout the
confs? Its an interesting thought, but you really want some 10 year
old kid defaulted into "sexuality", or somebody else defaulted into
a conf like "accordion" which they'd never get?  

It seems to me that a "intro" conf could be limited.  By that I mean
that it would only have a certain number of pre-set entries, which
any newuser could respond in, but newusers and everyone else could
be prohibited from entering new entries (except staff)  It would be
explained that staff controls this conf and that it has a very limited
purpose, basically being orientation, and that it isnt designed to
be a regular conf.

This would prevent an "intro" conf from turning into "newbie agora" or
whatever.  Now if you are talking about having newuser default to
a menu listing of all the available confs and having newbies choose
which ones they want on their initial .cflist and which one they want to
default to on a regular basis when they log on, that might be an idea.

response 144 of 156:

Nov 5 10:24 UTC 1995

(Heh. Was I a hopeless optimist in thinking that my response
#137 might put a cap on the endless chatter about agora and
channel things more in the direction of change? So it seems,
as so far it's only spawned more chatter. Oh well, that's
computer conferencing for ya. :)

response 146 of 156:

Nov 6 12:47 UTC 1995

Perhaps, but I've gotten a little cynical about the process because
these same points about agora have been hashed over again and again
for a couple of years now and no proposal has materialized.

response 148 of 156:

Nov 6 19:18 UTC 1995

  How would that make someone think Agora should never be tamed?