response 126 of 624:

Jan 1 07:06 UTC 1997

Trust me, brighn is gone from here.
I know, as he and I have been on a different BBS for months now, and I have
to go there to see him anymore. If Robh goes, I certainly follow. Most of my
other important reasons for being here are gone. Why should I stay?
I would, of course, as a responsible FW, find a new FW for Sexuality II prior
to actually deleting my account. THAT is the least, and maybe the most, I owe.

response 128 of 624:

Jan 1 14:18 UTC 1997

Re 127: "Klingons do not bluff."  (Lt. Worf)

response 130 of 624:

Jan 1 16:09 UTC 1997

The Cheetah speaks:
au contraire, mon Professeur. You understand NOTHING.

Brighn is gone. Dead. Kaput.
Babozita is alive and well.
Babozita is NOT Brighn.'

The same human being might be pressing the keys.
But Brighn posted poetry. Babozita doesn't.
There are some other changes, such as the amount 
of trust. Initially, Baboztia wasn't going to
post in the conferences, either, but I guess
I'll make occasional appearances.

The main difference is the posting of anything
original or creative. And after a while,
Brighn might come back to do that.

JanC understood, or at least understood 
well enough not to insult me (Paul Kershaw).

This is not a mindgame.
(brb)

response 132 of 624:

Jan 1 17:04 UTC 1997

Sorry, Indian trying to ntalk me. I've been getting
those since I changed my handle. Something, I'm sure,
to do with the -a at the end. Sorry, though, the Indians aren't
seeking women out in particular, silly me.

Anyway, this is not a mindgame. This is how I truly
feel about it.

Misti wants help understanding. I can appreciate
that. Let me explain this once more, as well as I
can.

Who reads the conferences?
-- Active participants
-- Lurkers
-- People who join once, decide they don't like it, never come back

Believe it or not, before remmers took it uppon himself to enlighten us,
I wasfully aware of all these groups. I'll return to this list.

What is, and should be, the level of verification for users of Grex?
Verification is currently non-existent. If someone logs on as "hogtied"
claiming to be 17 and female and living in Oklahoma, then logs on again as
"stprulez" claiming to be 24 and male in living in Boston, we have no real
way of finding out. So fucking what?

What are the problems with Guest (i.e. no handle) access?
(1) The legal one. Though I don't know that it *doesn't* exist, it's violated
enough IRL that it's not worth debating anymore. It comes down to a
distribution issue. I frankly don't care about it anymore.
(2) The conceptual one. This is the one Rob and I are currently attempting
to explain, and it's a lot harder. Mary, from her comments, obviously doesn't
respect our viewpoint; that's all right, I don't respect hers. But since Misti
has given me no real reason to be hostile, I'll try to explain to her. =}

This is true for many, many people that I have talked to IRL about being on
the Net: their Net persona is different from their IRL persona, but it is very
real and very complicated. Maybe they grew up snorting too much William
Gibson; maybe I did. The differences between their Net and IRL personae might
be subtle (as with Brighn-Net and Brighn-IRL), or they might be extreme (as
with hogtied and stprulez above, and the person who takes those handles). They
might be a way to act out what the user's really like inside (common on the
BBSs) or a way to act out some small facet of the user (more common on the
MUDs and MOOs and MUSHs).

In short, in the perception of many users, particularly younger ones (note
the age differences, in general, between those arguing AGAINST this proposal;
i think rob and i are the only ones over 24 -- while those arguing FOR this
proposal seem to all be over 20 or so), the Net is a universe of identities
unto itself. People don't need verification because *you are who you say you
are*. You can be whoever you want to be. BUT YOU HAVE TO BE SOMEONE. Go into
party sometime when there's a user with an empty plan. If someone else figures
out the plan is empty, they get nervous. You can lie about IRL facts in your
plan without creating too much agitation (if any at all), but you can't in
general leave it blank.

I like analogies. Let's give an analogy. Let's say you're watching a play.
You know all of the character's names, they interact with each other. Then
one actor comes in, unidentified, and sits on the couch. Everyone else ignores
him, he never talks to anyone, in fact, all he does is sit on the couch. After
a while, he gets up and leaves as silently as he came in. If you're watching
a mystery, you could write him off as being a red herring; if you're watching
a surrealist or related genre play, you could write him off as weird. But in
a serious modern drama, what would you make of him? Pretty disturbing, I would
think. I'd expcet many people would walk out of the play saying, "Well, in
general, I liked it, but what th heck was with the guy on the couch? He really
bothered me."

To go back to the types of users who enter conferences. Yes, they're
unvalidated. Yes, people rarely run whatever program it is that lets one see
who's been in a conference and who hasn't. BUT WE CAN IF WE WANT TO. The
reason why we don't is because it doesn't bother us to know that people are
doing it. If we really wanted to we could find out who it was, maybe even
track them down and find out why they're not coming in and posting. We don't,
and anyone who claims that we do is deluded (although there might be some
individuals who do do this, I don't know). BUT WE CAN IF WE WANT TO.

It's the faceless people we mind.

Now, I have some things published. Most recently, book reviews for the Detroit
Free Press. I know (or I hope =} ) that countless people I will never meet,
I will never have names for, are reading my words. That doesn't bother me,
because I knew going into it that that would be the situation. But some people
who post on BBSs do so because they don't want to be exposed to strangers.
I think that's understandable. I'd be surprised if anyone couldn't understand
that. As far as I can tell, what remmers and mta and so on are having trouble
understanding is why anyone who doesn't want to be exposed to strangers would
post on the BBS.

Well, that's because, in our view, users of Grex are not strangers, not in
the relevant sense. They've created a Net persona (even if it's identical to
their IRL persona). They have a face. Some of them are malicious, sure. It's
often impossible to tell the extent of the malice, sure. That's not the issue.
The issue is that they have an identity. We know who they are.

John, you're a professor. You might not personally have this problem, but many
professors are put off by the new trend towards videotaped lectures. Many,
many professors are put off by the large class sizes. Why? Work load and lack
of interchange, sure, two main reasons. But another reason that is cited is
the professor doesn't know who they're talking to... "a sea of faces". It
makes people uncomfortable. It makes people uncomfortable to be talking to
just about anyone.

One difficulty actors have in the transition from stage to screen is similar.
Listen to interviews if you don't believe me. With stage acting, the people
you're performing for have faces, even if you don't have names, and even if
you can't see them well for the stagelights. There's 500 of them, no more.
You can hear them talking and laughing. YOU KNOW THEY'RE THERE, YOU KNOW
THEY'RE RESPONDING. On screen, an actor can go to a theatre (in disguise) and
listen to the audience, sure. But an actor can't go to every theater and every
audience.

Many current users of Grex, or any BBS, would be equally bothered by such a
transition, and that's precisely what you're proposing. A stage actor can
address the audience after the performance for reactions; receptions are
frequently held in smaller venues precisely for that purpose. Likewise, a
poster on Grex can address the people who enter that conference. Whether they
do or not is up to them, BUT THEY CAN.

Remmers suggests that this change is less extreme than the dialin-to-telnet
change. I disagree. The dialin-to-telnet was the result of a stageplay being
so successful it moved from the KFC Hall to the Fox Theater. Woo-hoo! But the
actors are actors, and few actors would be bothered by such a change. The
telnet-to-Web, likewise: now it's on Broadway! Yippee! But the addition of
Guest access, or the more specifically defined allowance for Grex  to appear
on any Web page (which I understood Popcorn to be saying)? Well, whoa Nellie,
Spielberg just made us into a movie. And what lots of us are saying is, we
don't want to be in a movie.

It may seem like I'm exagerrating, but this is the way I think many many users
of Grex see this change.

Some other loose ends: I whine and threaten leaving Grex every three months.
This is the most extreme measure I've ever taken -- changing my login and my
posting patterns. I cry wolf. Selena' to my knowledge, has never cried wolf.
Rob, to my knowledge, has never cried wolf. In fact, the group of people who
cry wolf is fairly small... most people don't even bother to tell anyone. They
just leave. Everytime I threaten to leave, how many users really do? (Not
because I've threatened, but just because whatever's made me uncomfortable
has made others so too.)

As to the claim of clubbishness, even cliquishness, is it a club if current
patron needs are put over potential patron needs? A store that wants to
attract a new clientele will not usually deliberately alienate their old
clientele, and the ones that do generally wind up out of business. But such
stores are not clubs.

That was the issue that caused me to finally abandon Brighn as a handle, the
"private club" accusation. I made it, and it was levelled against me, and in
both directions it's grown tiresome. Grex is not a private club. Clubs have
dues. (My accusation of clubbishness, by the way, was based in part by Scott
Helmke and Steve Gibbard both making disparaging remarks about non-members
complaining about the system. These comments were made IRL at GNOs.)

Another difference between Brighn and Babozita is that Babozita pays dues.

response 134 of 624:

Jan 1 19:29 UTC 1997

It seems that all of brighn's arguments woudl be more than addressed by making
the b\BackTalk logs publically readable.  Then you'd have a lot more
information about who had been reading things than you ever will with newuser.

response 136 of 624:

Jan 1 20:13 UTC 1997

I hate to interrupt the flame-fest, but in the spirit of
compromise, I'll once again suggest making one or two of
our conferences available via anonymous access, while keeping
the rest closed.  (An idea I've shamelessly stolen from
the River.)  This way, Web surfers can get some idea what
we're about, without really changing the nature of Grex (IMHO).
All bbs users would know the confs were "open to the public",
so as long as f-w's are careful about asking permission to
link items to these places, nobody will be caught be surprise.
To follow brighn's analogy, the New York Metropolitan Opera
does videotapes of its performances once in a while and shows
them on PBS, but that doesn't make them a television program.

response 138 of 624:

Jan 1 21:00 UTC 1997

I agree with Rob in resp:136

Maybe there should be a Conf entitled "Public" which would be accessible 
from the web.

response 140 of 624:

Jan 1 22:23 UTC 1997

Number 132 contains some very convincing arguments.  I 
think I understand now why this issue evoked such visceral 
reactions in people and applaud babozita for helping me to 
understand.  I really appreciate how difficult it is to 
discuss such an intangible issue.  

I do think it would be nice to have the Intro conference 
web accessible.  I hope the humor item from Agora will get
linked there, since that is what I really wanted to link 
to my homepage.  8^)

response 142 of 624:

Jan 1 22:54 UTC 1997

As a member, I would vote for a proposal that makes Agora and Into open, and
allows FWs to decide on other conferences (unanimous decision when there's
more than one FW).

As a member, I would never vote for a proposal that makes all conferences
open, regardless of the opinion of the readers of that conference.

I believe I voiced this stance the *last* time this topic came up.

I also find posting of mail ethically disgusting and disturbing. We had *that*
discussion here at least once before, as well. While perfectly legal, it is
disturbing; if I had intended that to be a public comment, I would have made
it one. Then again, if I'd wanted it publicly known (immediately) that I was
reading Grex under a different handle, I'd've announced that too. I'm so glad
that John and Mary Remmers found each and fell in love. I think married
couples should share ethical viewpoints, or lacks thereof.

response 144 of 624:

Jan 1 23:19 UTC 1997

Thank, Paul.  It isn't my point of view, but now the strong feelings make more
sense.  To carry out your analogy, I would consider putting the conferences
on the web more akin to taking a play from the theatre to a stage in the
middle of a field at a Shakespeare or Middeval festival.  A larger, much more
transient audience, true ... but not so very different.  I can however see
where your movie analogy would be very uncomfortable if that's what you see
happening.  I suppose the difference is that I feel I've only gotten feedback
from an extremely small minority of my readers anyway...and since the observer
status exists in conferences, I've never been able to be sure who saw my
posts.  That makes the difference feel small to me.

Also, I'm nearly 40 (interesting that the split seems to be down age lines...)
and my persona here is simply a slightly more outspoken version of my everyday
persona.  That may be a function of age.  I experimented with many personas
in my youth, too.  (It was kind of a pain doing that ftf, let me tell you!
<g>)

I think many of the advantages I see in opening the conferences on the web
would be met by putting a subset on the web.  Agora, certainly, and Intro.
And perhaps any conference whose participants like the idea.

response 148 of 624:

Jan 2 05:10 UTC 1997

(I'd be interested in opening the confs where I'm a fw, too.  But I've got
co-fws in several conferences, plus conference users, all of whom should be
in on the decision, I guess.)