response 138 of 334:

Nov 24 22:45 UTC 2010

resp:134 Actually, Richard, do you have any data to back that up?
Because I've been watching the user population, and it's remained
more or less the same size from before the "user validation patch"
was installed.

That said, it declined significantly in the years leading up to
putting the validation policy in place.  I attribute this to three
things:

1. Grex was frequently down for long periods, for two reasons:

   a. The efforts of anti-social types like cdalten and mickeyd to
      find and exploit security problems in OpenBSD (which we chose
      to run for its much vaunted, but ultimately way overblown
      security reputation) and in Grex's configuration, leading
      Grex to either crash or be effectively unusable.

   b. Despite much protestation about things like the necessity of
      ECC RAM during the SPARC vs. x86 debate, when the current
      Grex hardware was purchased, the buyers nickle and dimed on
      important components (like ECC RAM, hardware RAID, and some
      sort of remote console capability).  I think this was a sad
      side-effect of Grex being run by an organization that for
      nearly its entire life operated on a shoestring budget.

2. The environment on the system was so hostile, in party, BBS and
   even just for interactive users working at the command line,
   that many older users left while many newer users didn't see the
   point.

3. Grex, as a service and as a community, is generally less appealing
   than it once was.  If you want to argue endlessly about conservative
   vs liberal, republican vs democrat, atheism vs religion, pro-choice
   vs pro-life, gun control, oil, wars, and all the usual stuff,
   and you want to argue it endlessly with the same five people
   who's positions are known and extraodrinarily unlikely to change,
   then Grex is a great place to do it.  But so are thousands of
   other places.  If you want to do that using either a web interface
   dating from the late 1990s or a command line interface from the
   early 1980s, then Grex is just awesome.  But most people don't
   want to do that.  Also, the scale of problems associated with
   keeping Grex running increased in the mid-2000s to such an extent
   that it became very challenging indeed to keep Grex running.

Note that the validation patch was designed, and largely succeeded,
in addressing points 1(a) and 2.  It really has nothing to do with
1(b) or 3.

Now, Richard, what you will notice, and I will agree with you about,
is that there has been a general decline in participation in the
Grex community, as defined by the BBS and party.  But that's only
one of several communities that exist on Grex; it would be a mistake
to conflate the two or to assume that decline in one implies decline
in the other.

Richard, you've made clear that you don't like the validation policy.
Fine.  But you've also made no proposal for dealing with the problem
of electronic vandalism that, history has shown, will occur if we
get rid of it.  If you have a viable alternative, I'd be very happy
to hear about it.

response 140 of 334:

Nov 24 23:06 UTC 2010

Somebody, it might have been Dan, suggested validating via a micro-payment 
like through PayPal. Couple that with a manual validation method for 
people who are unable to use PayPal (ie. other country, or under 18), and 
I think that would fit our needs.

response 142 of 334:

Nov 24 23:29 UTC 2010

We're in luck: the Board added PayPal verification as an acceptable form
of identification a few years back (see item 23 in coop).  So, what we
are talking about then is an automated way of verification.  You can
already be verified via PayPal, though it is a manual process of the
treasurer checking the PayPal account to see who has paid via a verified
PayPal account.  If we do implement this, we'd need to make sure that
there are good records kept so that the treasurer and the verifiers are
in the "loop".  The verification policy doesn't say anything about the
amount of money, so there may be micro-payments for verification only,
and payments for memberships to tell apart and handle.  

response 144 of 334:

Nov 24 23:30 UTC 2010

Can't you just do automatic verification.  Say you have to provide a 
valid email address, a link is then automatically sent there that you 
have to click on to validate.  Then the system notes that email and ip 
and in the future automatically rejects any other newuser request that 
ever comes from those details.  No humans or human judgement is 
involved.  You have a valid email, you get in.     

response 146 of 334:

Nov 24 23:46 UTC 2010

resp:144 What's the point?  Kent understood exactly what I was getting at
in resp:142.  There's no humans involved there, either (other than the
person getting an account).

response 148 of 334:

Nov 25 00:07 UTC 2010

I'd think email verification is preferable to paypal.  Grex is a non-
profit site and need not be in the business of encouraging or requiring 
prospective new users to use a corporate site, PayPal, that has no 
ownership stake here.  Why solicit hits for PayPal unless Paypal is 
paying Grex to do that?

Grex staff also doesn't need to get into storing personal information 
about users.  Email verification obviously isn't foolproof as kent 
points out, but if it is done with Grex blocking future new user 
requests from both that email address *and* the ip address it came 
from, it at least makes it more difficult.

response 150 of 334:

Nov 25 00:13 UTC 2010

Oh, yes, and it's really not about paypal per se.  Any service that did
something similar, but could track a user down to a human being, would do just
as well.

Grex already stores personal information about users.  It has since its
inception.

Trying to block on email address and IP address is a) useless when one
considers something like tor and how trivial it is to create a throw-away
email account, and b) more invasive for legitimate users who want multiple
accounts than what we're currently doing.

response 152 of 334:

Nov 25 00:30 UTC 2010

In fact I believe that Grex encouraging validating via a micro-payment 
through PayPal is essentially promoting use of a for-profit service and 
could be a violation of the rules for a 501(3)(c).  This sort of thing 
could threaten Grex's tax status.    

response 154 of 334:

Nov 25 03:36 UTC 2010

resp:151 What if a user *wants* multiple logins?  Why should we restrict
that? Have you *really* thought this through?

response 156 of 334:

Nov 25 13:42 UTC 2010

I can not think of a single other forum I participate in that allows
political or religious arguments. So no, not all. But I'm sure many do.

response 158 of 334:

Nov 25 15:10 UTC 2010

Last I looked at the Puppy Linux chat area two people were discussing 
marijuana.  Some linux forums have a 'general' area where people talk 
about anything they like.  SDF has a general forum.

response 160 of 334:

Nov 25 17:04 UTC 2010

I see where PayPal offers micropayments and that might actually save
some fees as the rates are lower than if you send a small payment via
regular PayPal (the example I saw was that usually a $1 payment would
incur a 33c fee, but with micropayments the fee would be lower, 10c).
The problem with this is it requires a new PayPal account and is geared
more for merchants selling digital downloads.  Plus, somebody in the
transaction (Grex or the user) loses those fees if you give money back
(and the credit transaction might incur a fee as well) unless PayPal
refunds the fees.