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Grex > Coop > #284: Grex Town Hall -- How do we move forward? - Fall, 2010 |  |
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| 25 new of 334 responses total. |
jep
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response 177 of 334:
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Nov 29 17:57 UTC 2010 |
I didn't have much interest in that when sending money meant -- solely
-- that Grex would have the money and I wouldn't. Grex had six thousand
dollars in the bank at one point, and no intention to use any of it for
anything. Why would anyone send money under those circumstances?
If Grex needs money to pay the bills, I can send some. If it needs to
purchase something, I will help. (I did when it bought the current
computer.)
If it needs money because the bales are settling and getting
uncomfortable to sit on, though, I'm just not interested.
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veek
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response 178 of 334:
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Nov 29 18:02 UTC 2010 |
This response has been erased.
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veek
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response 179 of 334:
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Nov 29 18:14 UTC 2010 |
Dan,
1. I'm not for a milli-second blaming you for implementing validation.
It was, in an absolute sense, the only thing that could have been done
at that point of time!
2. I don't see a correspondence between validation and a decline in
Grex. Grex was already in decline long before validation!
(I'm NOT! blaming you for 'validate' - just get that out of your head -
at least as far as i'm concerned! Chad was a bit too much! also, agree
with almost all of the above - mail spammers, bots - arbornet has some
ass running udp.pl)
----------
What I'm asking is this:
1. could we bring back no-validation AND if trouble returns, put it
back in place quickly? Far as I know, it should be fairly simple to
switch between the two?
2. What is the worst that would happen if we reinstated no-validation -
Grex goes down? Would the person running to provide (that would be TS i
think, but remmers also does that) be willing to do so?
Try to see it from my point of view.. I abuse my Linux box doing all
sorts of crazy things.. i don't think twice about powering off whenever
i feel like etc.. and nothing ever goes wrong.. so i'm wondering wth??
We have like 5 users..
3. The web thing and scripts I think i can handle and I'll do so :) <g>
Anyway 1,2 can wait me thinks till we finish with the web-site.. (and
till we get CGI/MySQL for shrimp users)
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cross
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response 180 of 334:
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Nov 29 20:51 UTC 2010 |
But what I don't get is, what's the point of turning it off? It's not
like there are hordes of new users clamouring to get accounts on Grex;
until Grex has something to offer those people, they're not going to
come here, regardless of whether they have to go through validation.
You could argue that what they come for is the shell, but I haven't
seen any evidence of that.
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kentn
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response 181 of 334:
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Nov 29 22:05 UTC 2010 |
Especially since there are fewer people trying to get accounts, we
should be as welcoming as we can be, including making it as easy to
get an account as possible, without forgetting the issues we've seen
recently. We need a higher percentage of the people trying us out to
become regular users. This wasn't always so in the past, when there
were thousands of people trying Grex and a few hanging around to use it.
Locking people in a maze of twisty passages is not my idea of a good
welcome, even though it may be seen as necessary.
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richard
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response 182 of 334:
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Nov 29 22:16 UTC 2010 |
One way to entice new users is to upgrade Backtalk or move to other
conferencing software. These days people don't want to participate in
conferencing/bbs's unless they can upload graphics and show pictures
and video in their messages.
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richard
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response 183 of 334:
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Nov 29 23:46 UTC 2010 |
Could also re-open the Grex store and start selling those Grex logo
boxer shorts again. After all what better publicity can you get than
your logo on boxer shorts :) (and no I'm not making this up, Grex
once had a store and in fact sold boxer shorts)
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kentn
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response 184 of 334:
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Nov 30 00:09 UTC 2010 |
Ha! That's a neat idea. Unfortunately, I'm told our last inventory
of products ended up being disposed of after traveling to Europe where
they wouldn't sell, either. Maybe times are different and if we limited
ourselves to very few items we'd do okay? But we probably don't want to
repeat history if things won't sell. What do others think?
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denise
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response 185 of 334:
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Nov 30 00:46 UTC 2010 |
I'd consider buying a Grex t-shirt and/or a mug or something.
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veek
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response 186 of 334:
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Nov 30 01:55 UTC 2010 |
resp:180 1. from what I've seen on SDF, people are always asking for
MySQL and CGI. One guy I spoke to suggested it might be for testing
purposes since he was completely clueless. But he did pay for arpa or
whatever..
2. People need a friendly push when it comes to such things.. like
sample scripts tailor made for Grex (a sample home-page with some
random cute girl/or guys, pic and a wall and crud like that). Then they
get ideas like Oo let me try that.. a decent home page is something no
one offers.. which is weird because look at Facebook :) 3. We have so
far never tried getting things going in a well organised manner.. ads,
and features together.
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rcurl
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response 187 of 334:
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Nov 30 05:14 UTC 2010 |
I haven't used newuser for a very long time, but it occurs to me that it
would be easier to use if it didn't ask questions but instead set up a
"standard" account, and then offer the user to make other choices by
checking boxes on a choice page (like Setup in Alpine).
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veek
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response 188 of 334:
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Nov 30 10:07 UTC 2010 |
Oo! yup! good idea! Actually i was thinking a cool cgi form or a shell
script.. and it could build his home-page and .plan simultaneously. I
could template that so it looks very nice (the home-page). The home-page
could also double as a resume so ppl looking for jobs. .. you know,
free- email.. resume on the web.. cool-domain-name.. some
work-experience with cyberspace.. it would be pretty useful to ppl!
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kentn
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response 189 of 334:
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Nov 30 13:46 UTC 2010 |
Great minds think alike. Yes, this has already been suggested in the
previous town hall item, but it bears repeating. I've also brought it
up with the Board in the last couple months. It might make the most
sense to have the web newuser be the simple, straightforward one and the
command line new user be the one with all the questions. Presumably,
most people won't use the command line if they are coming in through the
web. And if they do use a command line, they can probably change their
settings. Do those sound like reasonable assumptions?
Another thing that we could do is provide opportunities (links) for web
users to verify or validate and/or become members at the end of the
newuser session. Then they wouldn't need to search for information on
what to do later. The web newuser may do this already, but I haven't
been able to get through a complete session with it recently to see if
it does.
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cross
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response 190 of 334:
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Nov 30 15:16 UTC 2010 |
I've streamlined newuser and it only asks a few basic questions now;
it no longer asks about things like backspace characters or terminal
types. It now only asks questions about the person itself. We can
reduce those further. For instance, do we really need people's phone
numbers and addresses? Probably not. I'm not sure that's a huge
hurdle, though.
It strikes me that newuser has to ask some questions just to set up
the account: desired login name, the user's real name, an email
address. I'm not sure what the set of reasonable questions is,
however.
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kentn
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response 191 of 334:
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Nov 30 17:09 UTC 2010 |
The long web newuser says phone number and/or e-mail address is in case
there are problems and for checking that the person is who they say they
are when they want a password changed (or similar). It's optional and
can be set up so only root can see the information. So, it's probably
okay to continue to collect that information if people want to enter it,
with the usual notes about how it will be used.
We obviously need a valid login name that does not conflict with one
already used on the system and a password. The real name field on the
long web newuser page says it's not required to be a real name. So,
people can give themselves a descriptive name if they want. That's
fairly traditional on unix systems. Changing it from the web, however,
may be something we want to set up so people who enter something they
don't like can modify it. But that would likely not be on a set up an
account page. If we don't have a "manage my account" page we probably
should.
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cross
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response 192 of 334:
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Nov 30 17:22 UTC 2010 |
We don't have an account management page and we definitely should.
I'm not so sure about asking for phone number, though. Email address,
definitely, but I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that someone
would get a phone call, at least from me. That said, I don't think it
hurts anything to ask for it, but I think realistically it's not going
to be used.
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kentn
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response 193 of 334:
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Dec 1 00:34 UTC 2010 |
I suppose it depends on the urgency of the problem as to whether we need
a phone number. I agree that an e-mail address would be less intrusive.
Unfortunately some people change their e-mail address frequently. Since
a phone number is optional, those who do not want to be contacted that
way can leave it out.
I'm wondering if it would help us be a better system if we did an
annual survey of users and members and see if there are issues or ideas
they want fixed or implemented? Of course, nothing prevents anyone
from sending in ideas and issues at any time, including here in the
agora or coop conferences or in an e-mail to staff and board.
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remmers
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response 194 of 334:
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Dec 1 14:33 UTC 2010 |
Being something of a minimalist, I'd personally prefer a newuser that's
short and sweet. I'll think about what I'd like to see newuser say/ask
and post it.
Maybe discussion of newuser deserves its own item, particularly if we're
going to have go-rounds about what it should say and ask, to avoid
swamping the Grex Town Hall. I'm glad we actually have a new newuser
to discuss, that does some sensible things that bring it more into line
with current practices on the web - specifically the email verification
and the captcha thing.
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tod
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response 195 of 334:
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Dec 1 18:00 UTC 2010 |
I'd personally prefer a newuser that's
short and sweet
Shirley Temple hasn't logged into this system but remmers is holding out
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remmers
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response 196 of 334:
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Dec 1 19:52 UTC 2010 |
Well, short then. It doesn't have to be "sweet", although it should
exude an aura of friendliness.
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kentn
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response 197 of 334:
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Dec 2 04:51 UTC 2010 |
Do we still give out those "Wizard in Training" docs? It's on our
web page (on the newuser page). If not, then we should probably
fix that page (though it is a nice touch if we give out something
tangible to new members). If we do, then we're okay.
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tsty
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response 198 of 334:
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Dec 2 08:10 UTC 2010 |
as soon as the web-newuer problem is fixed i wiell start a campaign on the
web wehre i travel.
as of this moemnt... only (!!) ssh/telnet newuser works right.
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cross
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response 199 of 334:
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Dec 2 09:01 UTC 2010 |
The "Wizard in Training" documents do still exist, I believe, but are
ridiculously out of date. A good project would be for someone to update them
to reflect the state of Grex post 1999.
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kentn
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response 200 of 334:
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Dec 2 13:17 UTC 2010 |
Okay, then, we need a volunteer to update the "Wizard in Training" docs.
Is anyone interested in helping with this?
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veek
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response 201 of 334:
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Dec 2 13:54 UTC 2010 |
I got to do website and home-dir-web-templates; flyer is complete
(unless anyone thinks differently :p)
Hey Dan, I suppose you'll be wanting all the web-patches in one go? Or
do you want them trickled.. I finished the CSS template(tables has to
be added).. it's much cleaner and err.. bigger than the current
template..
here's a sample page (it looks exactly like the original):
http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/confs.xhtml
http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/style/services.css
Is this okay?? the text is black BUT it's so much easier to read! Also,
light orange links - i like color sprinkled about.. just a teensy bit..
+while reading long docs it provides visual checkpoints.. vs having
everything swimmming in a green sea..
I'll add a cheat-sheet and new-stuff later.. (i'll do corrections once
the color thingy and css is okayed)
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