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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
janc
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response 175 of 624:
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Jan 3 04:38 UTC 1997 |
An amazing amount of ridiculous stuff is being said in this item by people
on both sides.
The question is "how much access should we give to people before they
register?" We all understand that registration is quick, easy, and
doesn't make a person any less anonymous than they used to be.
Grex does not become a closed system if we require people to register first.
That's absurd. This issue does not make sense as an "open access" issue.
Users do not become anonymous just because they haven't registered. That's
absurd too. This issue does not make sense as an "anonymity" issue either.
If there is anything to discuss here it is about weighing "ease of access"
against "sense of closure".
The pro side is about making it easier to sample Grex from the web. People
will be able to look at the conferences much more easily. People will be
able to put links on pages anywhere in the internet that say things like
Click here to see a cool poem Brighn posted on Grex.
The con side is concerned about the blurring of boundaries that leads to.
Currently the is a clear mental difference to posting something to the
poetry conference and posting it to your web page. If links like the example
above proliferate, then of course people will feel that Grex is more of a web
page than a community. There is a justifiable concern that Grex will blur
into the World Wide Web instead of remaining a unique place. The
difference between the two depends on how people think about it, not on any
hard facts or logical arguments. And how people think about a place has
a lot to do with how they (and others) enter it.
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cmcgee
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response 176 of 624:
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Jan 3 05:02 UTC 1997 |
Surely anyone who uses Grex already understands that posting something on Grex
is posting on the Internet. Anything I, or anyone else posts here could be
used in the future by a stalker, the police, or political opponents, to
assemble quite a bit of information about me or them. If people are
uncomfortable revealing sensitive information, and worried about the privacy
of posting, then they should be very careful about what they reveal.
Whether or not someone accesses that sensitive information via dial-in,
telnet, or a web-browser is immaterial.
Grex may feel like a private place, but it is no more private than the public
library. In fact, electronic bbs are far less private. And getting steamed
up about "copyrights" and "anonymity" is baseless. Grex staff, fws, and
members have no control over who reads your postings and what readers do with
that information.
I am for the proposal to let anyone browse (but not post to) any conference
they want to, without clogging the system with a momentary login id. If they
are interested enough to want to post, then they can register. I was startled
when Rob linked an item in the PFC conference to Intro, but don't think anyone
should have to decide whether that is "OK" or not. Under the "compromise"
parts of nearly every conference are available for browsing in Agora or Intro,
but not all items. Who controls the linking? Currently no one, and I don't
think Grex needs a new committee to mediate the conflicts that will arise over
who "owns" an item and its responses.
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rcurl
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response 177 of 624:
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Jan 3 06:03 UTC 1997 |
I have read the last few days worth of posts, and I am of the same opinion.
The only thing anonymous web reading does is enlarge the "gallery" where
anyone in the world can come and visit. This is like enlarging the seating
in the Town Hall where town meetings are held and anyone can speak about
anything, and anyone can listen. I have considered carefully the opposing
arguments, but they do not seem to me to have enough substance to change my
opinion. Does brushing a visitor with newuser sauce really make them somehow
different? I don't believe it does.
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robh
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response 178 of 624:
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Jan 3 06:49 UTC 1997 |
And I do. I think we've really hit a nasty issue here, people
are coming into the "discussion" with completely different
worldviews, and things aren't meshing at all.
Re 176 - Obviously, I'd have to be more careful about linking
items to Intro if it were an open-access conference. I'd want
to at least get permission from the item's author, if not the
fair-witnesses. Yes, it's an extra level of bureaucracy, but
it's something I'm willing to do. You'd be surprised what I
wouldn't do to prevent myself from being forced off the system.
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nephi
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response 179 of 624:
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Jan 3 07:11 UTC 1997 |
Gosh, Jan just gets smarter and smarter . . . 8^)
I think that this issue is one about a sense of community. The
tendency for people to share their thoughts with their community
is inversely proportional to the size of the community. People
are more likely to gab with a couple of friends than they are to
gab with a lecture hall full of people. And people who would
normally feel free to give a speech to a lecture hall are less
likely to want to give a speech that will be scrutinized by
millions of television viewers.
I wonder if Grex's conferences will become more like Usenet news
groups if we start to eliminate our sense of "place" . . .
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janc
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response 180 of 624:
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Jan 3 07:40 UTC 1997 |
Re #176: You are, of course, correct that anyone on the internet can read
anything posted here. On a purely logical level, yes, posting here is
nearly the same thing as posting the the internet. But it *feels* different.
And the difference in feeling is not a bug. We have somewhat paradoxical
goals here. We want to be a "community". That means that we want to feel
as if we are among friends and people with whom we have mutual interests.
At the same time, we want to be "open" so that anyone on the planet can
easily join. The idea of an "open community" is not very logical. Luckily,
we don't have very logical minds, so where logic fails we can use smoke and
mirrors. An awful lot of what we do here is based on illusion.
The fact that we have a doorway, a process people have to go through to
join (newuser) or to enter the system (logging in) gives a largely false
feeling of boundaries and closure to the system. The illusion of closure.
I know many of you feel that the only thing to do with an illusion is to
dispell it. I don't agree. This particular illusion is all that makes an
"open community" a possibility instead of an oxymoron. Illusions can have
much more power than logic.
I'm not really sure that allowing anonymous reading via backtalk would be
enough to break the illusion of community. It seems some of our users do
think it would for them. To some degree, I think I'm arguing this side of
the issue because it is more interesting than the other one, harder to
understand and harder to explain.
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mdw
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response 181 of 624:
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Jan 3 07:50 UTC 1997 |
Woof. >2000 lines here. I know I saw interesting stuff scroll by in
responses #1-77, but I don't think there's much point for me to go back
& look.
I am definitely a bit unhappy with the idea people would use the
argument of "threatening to leave" if they don't get their way. That
may honestly be their feeling, and it obviously indicates they feel
pretty deeply about it, but I don't think the threat itself is a valid
argument. I do think the last sentence of #178 is in very poor taste.
I hope its author will either clarify it or withdraw it. It sounds like
a threat against the very concept of a member-run system, which is
definitely most inappropriate.
Nevertheless, I can't say that I'm particularly in favor of anonymous
web reading of conferences. I was also not in favour of "anonymous
guest access", as I'm sure people will remember. I think Jan in #118
does a very good job of introducing some of the problems I think this
would introduce. I'll see if I can't find a different way to explore
the same problems.
Let's see, Rane in #177 asks if "brushing a visitor with newuser sauce
really makes them somehow different?". I think the answer is actually
"yes!" It's all a perception problem, which may explain why some people
are having trouble seeing this. So here's a different way to look at
it. Suppose you were throwing a party, for a bunch of people you didn't
know at all well, and a few of your friends. Suppose, at the door, you
handed paper sacks to *all* of the strangers, and instructed them to
wear those over their heads, and told them not to say anything, but to
feel free to go hang out and listen in on any conversation they pleased.
A few of your friends *might* not mind having a faceless audience to
perform in front of. *Most* of your friends will feel varying degrees
of uncomfortableness as random faceless blobs barge in on their
conversations. The faceless blobs will also probably act rather
differently. Most of them are likely to feel at least somewhat excluded
*even if* you told them ahead of time that they could go into a bathroom
and take off the bag if they wanted to participate. However much it
migh seem like you've made it "easier" to participate, you've now
created a bi-modal system, with two interfaces that people have to
navigate instead of just one. The result is that you will get a larger
permament population of "lurkers", and very few people willing to suffer
the 2nd hurdle of entering the bathroom and unmasking. Naturally,
nobody but college psychology students would *ever* give a real life
party like this. In fact, what *most* people do when they give a party
for a bunch of strangers, is to hand out name tags. This is the real
life equivalent to Rane's "newuser sauce".
Of course, computer conferencing is different than real life.
Unfortunately, it's all in the wrong direction, so far as the "bag"
problem goes. Without the "real life" cues, many people find it far
harder to feel confortable participating in a conference, and without
obvious signs of their presence, it's harder for other people to give
them even overt personal ascii cues that their participation would be
welcome. This is one of the reasons you get more lurkers in computer
conferencing than you would get in a ftf party. If we want to promote a
computer conferencing *community*, then I'm afraid to say that
"anonymous web browsing" of conferences is just completely the wrong way
to go.
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robh
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response 182 of 624:
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Jan 3 08:19 UTC 1997 |
The author of #178 isn't about to retract the statement, but is
quite willing to clarify. (I hope you weren't reading anything
sexual into it - believe it or not, that didn't occur to me
until I reread it.) I'd like to think that we can arrive at
some solution that will satisfy both sides of the debate,
rather than leaving one side ecstatic and the other one pissed
off. Even if I do end up on the ecstatic side. To that end,
I'm more than willing to put extra effort into the Intro
conference to make it open to Web users without violating the
other conferences. I know some users are appaled at the
thought of adding a layer of bureaucracy to our system. Well,
maybe they now know how I feel about this entire matter.
(And yes, I admit it, I should have lied. I should have just
said, "Why no, I wouldn't leave Grex if this were passed! What
a silly question!" Silly me, I've actually been trying to be more
honest with myself and others lately. Guess I won't make that
mistake again. Now people are attacking my "threat" rather than
addressing my arguments.)
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scg
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response 183 of 624:
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Jan 3 08:37 UTC 1997 |
Hmm... Marcus has a good point there. I'll have to think about it.
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valerie
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response 184 of 624:
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Jan 3 08:55 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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dpc
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response 185 of 624:
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Jan 3 15:44 UTC 1997 |
Aha! But, Valerie, regardless of the number of bag-headed people who
are lurking in conferences now, nobody *knows* that they are there!
If, OTOH, we open conferences to Web readers without newuser sauce,
then, by that act of a policy change, people suddenly *know* that
bag-headed people who haven't been there before are there.
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kerouac
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response 186 of 624:
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Jan 3 15:45 UTC 1997 |
The proposed compromise where Agora and Intro are the only confs that
anonymous users can read is censorship. Everything I post into other
confs is censored because they cant read those confs. This is not
tolerable. Therefore the compromise cannot be accepted.
So under those circumstances, I would feel obliged to enter new items
in Agora and copy over as many of the current items from the other confs
that I read as possible. And I will encourage others to do the same.
Let grex be a one or two conf system if that is the only way that all confs
can be available to read by anyone, regardless if they want to give their
name or not. I think when you join Grex and start to post, you should
accept that this is not a closed community and anything posted is in the
public domain.
The compromise is not acceptable and I'm not bluffing.
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chelsea
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response 187 of 624:
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Jan 3 15:47 UTC 1997 |
Exactly what Valerie said. (In response to Marcus.)
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ryan1
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response 188 of 624:
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Jan 3 17:11 UTC 1997 |
Richard: Don't even start with this bologna on this issue... A
compromise may be the only agreement possible in this situation.
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chelsea
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response 189 of 624:
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Jan 3 18:11 UTC 1997 |
I have no way of proving it but I'd suspect most folks who go through
newuser have heard of Grex from friend, watched a friend use Grex, or
heard about Grex from a computer-related newsletter, a local newspaper
article, or a campus flyer. The biggest group probably arrives via word
of mouth. So in a way we are self-selecting for related users. I wonder
if that doesn't tend to limit our diversity.
If folks could more easily see what we are about, test the quality of our
discussions, *see* that newcomers are welcome, maybe we'd attract users
that otherwise wouldn't think we could be worth their time. Example -
maybe we'd actually get enough blacks here that there could be discussions
on race relations where minorities acknowledge their presence and offer
their point of view.
In order to attract a truly diverse community of users we need to make it
easy for them to find Grex, to see what we are about, and to get through
newuser and master the interface. What we are talking about here is
facilitating the first two (critical) steps.
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jenna
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response 190 of 624:
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Jan 3 18:26 UTC 1997 |
Kerouac, Grex is open to anybody who wants to join newuser.
How the hell can you censor something that;s open to everyone
to read?
--
I really give a standing ovation to mdw. I 100% agree.
Now, if it was at all possible I'd maybe say that kerouac's
idea of letting the original author decide has merit,
but as usual, he failed to consider the feasiblitiy of the issue.
--
People just sitting there, reading and never responding scare me.
A lot. I think it's quite a waste to promote MORE people you'll
never know. Besides, if someone can stumble oto Grex's
webpage, they can telnet directl;y in. If they could get a small
sample of the conferences the people who didn't want to be paper
bags forever could show up. Opening all the conferences
is just promoting permanent lurking, isn't it?
And wouldn't it be better to have nametags? Sure, you can lie in
newuser all you want, but it is still a tag. I mean I used to have
a login for a long time, "shade" I think its been reaped now.
Shade's full name was N.S. Morgan and her plan was poetry.
Still... it gave people a sense of what I was, without any facts.
I just think it would be better if we all stopped viciciously
argyueing and agreed tio some sort of compromise...
Unwillingness to compromise is rarely a way to run a system or
a life.
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rcurl
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response 191 of 624:
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Jan 3 18:29 UTC 1997 |
I agree with Valerie (#184) that we are already in the midst of bagheads.
They are all around us, reading this item and others. However those of us
that participate are simply unaware of them most of the time, and *we*
form the community that we would like to see maintained. If these conferences
are opened to web reading I think that almost all of us will remain just as
unaware of an increased number of bagheads.
There is one way to find out: open all conferences to web reading as an
experiment. Those that oppose our doing so should stay around so that they
too can observe the consequences, if any. We will be in a better position to
make a decision about maintaining the web access after we have experience with
it.
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kerouac
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response 192 of 624:
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Jan 3 18:48 UTC 1997 |
rcurl has an excellent idea. I really believe that either all confs
should be open to anonymous reads or none should. There are times
when a compromise is far worse than either alternative. This is
clearly the case here. And I will repeat that if the agora and
intro confs are the only confs that anonymous readers can read, I
will copy or link over as much as I possibly can to there from other
confs. I reject the idea that all but those two confs should be
censored. Either censor all of them or none of them. Period.
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e4808mc
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response 193 of 624:
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Jan 3 19:39 UTC 1997 |
I am amazed that Richard will single-handedly set out to destroy conferencing
on Grex uless we agree to his point of view.
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janc
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response 194 of 624:
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Jan 3 21:18 UTC 1997 |
Part of his continuing effort to turn Grex into M-Net. "My way or die." Lets
see how far we can back ourselves each into our own corners. Lets see if we
can get so entrenched on this issue that nobody can see a way out. What fun.
Rane, I think your suggestion of an experiment kind of misses the point. The
problem is that some of our users (not me) would be seriously uncomfortable
with unregistered readers, and feel they wouldn't be able to participate in
the same way in such an environment. What you are asking is essentially:
Why don't those of you who are uncomfortable with this temporarily stop
begin uncomfortable with this while we give it a try and see if people are
uncomfortable with this.
This is pretty poor experimental design. You've eliminated exactly the
variable we are testing for.
I personally wouldn't have a big problem with unregistered readers. But I
do understand why some people might. I don't think scaring those people off
is a very promising first step to "improving diversity".
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robh
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response 195 of 624:
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Jan 3 21:20 UTC 1997 |
(Folks can say what they will about me - at least I haven't
promised to destroy the conferences if I don't get my way.)
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kerouac
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response 196 of 624:
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Jan 3 22:35 UTC 1997 |
#194...Jan,. based on the responses here and elsewhere, it seems
that a clear majority favor having anonymous reads. Why enact a
painful compromise to appease maybe 10 people? I believe most of them
are bluffing when they talk of leaving anyway. There isnt anyplace
else on the 'net where they would be able to go and have what they
have here, so it would be sily to leave over anonymous reads.
I believe that grex needs a consistent policy. And since Grex does not
allow closed confs, it is philosophically inconsistent to close all
but two of them to anonymous reads.
I believe in freedom of information, and if someone is not allowed that
information
it is responsible for one to try to get that information out. And I also
dont believe it is fair for you or anyone else on staff to decide for
fw's who have gone to the trouble of creating confs, who can read them.
So dont tell me Jan, that you are going to decide that anonymous readers
cant read the Politics conf. I reject anyone's rightto assert authority
to make that decision. It is one thing if none of the confs can be read
anonymously.
For someone to arbirtrarily decide which ones can be read anonymously is
quite another. That would be wrong.
That would be the same as if staff decided to decide which confs can
be open and demand that all the others be closed to members only. Noone
would stand for that, and noone should stand for this. Even if it pisses
off some users and some leave, its important enough to have a consistent
policy.
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orinoco
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response 197 of 624:
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Jan 3 23:38 UTC 1997 |
I disagree with the assumption in there that for an FW to decide whether a
conference can be read anonymously is 'arbitrary'. Hopefully, an FW is
looking out for the good of thconference, and of the users of the conference.
As for a consistent policy being a good thing, that isn't always true either.
If attitudes on this sort of thing vary from conference to conference, how
is forcing everyone to conform to the majority opinion a good thing?
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jenna
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response 198 of 624:
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Jan 3 23:40 UTC 1997 |
Kerouac, again, I twell you to read tone of the later items
in poetry... at least 6 people there, a majority of the people
who have responded to the item are against this. As fairwitness
I think that my personal agreement aside, I have to represent their
uncomrfotableness here to the very end.
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robh
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response 199 of 624:
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Jan 3 23:45 UTC 1997 |
Once again kerouac demonstrates that he has no idea what he's talking about:
> #196 Richard Wallner(kerouac) on Fri Jan 3 17:35:34 1997:
> [...]
> painful compromise to appease maybe 10 people? I believe most of them
> are bluffing when they talk of leaving anyway. There isnt anyplace
> else on the 'net where they would be able to go and have what they
> have here, so it would be sily to leave over anonymous reads.
> [....]
"Isn't anyplace else on the Net?" Funny, I was seriously considering
joining the River, which has a very similar conferencing system.
And there's this other system I used to be on, something called M-Net...
Also, when I told people that I was leaving Agora, most folks thought
that I would be gone for a month or two, then apologize and come back.
After all, how could anyone read the Grex conferences without reading
Agora? Two and two-thirds years later, and I still haven't been back,
except to link items to Intro. Which I consider distasteful, but
necessary for the good the Intro conference. You (and others) might
keep that in mind before accusing me of bluffing or lying.
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