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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
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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davel
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response 200 of 624:
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Jan 3 23:55 UTC 1997 |
<dave reminds rob that he also sometimes links agora items to helpers, hopes
that rob won't go away in any case, & thinks rob means what he says>
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robh
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response 201 of 624:
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Jan 4 00:12 UTC 1997 |
<robh notes that it actually wasn't his idea to link items
from Agora to Helpers, that two other users asked him to do so, and
thanks davel for his response>
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scg
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response 202 of 624:
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Jan 4 00:20 UTC 1997 |
<scg notes that when robh does go into agora, it is in observer mode. make
of that what you will>
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janc
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response 203 of 624:
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Jan 4 02:04 UTC 1997 |
Comments on the above:
(1) Currently my feeling is that the best solution is to retain the status
quo. No conferences open to unregistered users. I don't think the
"compromise" solution is particularly useful.
(2) I don't have a problem with "compromises to appease maybe 10 people."
This is because I don't think that any of the people participating in
this conference are space aliens or mutants. Or if they are, they are
probably representative of a significant number of space aliens and
mutants who use this system. So if there are a significant number of
people here who would be bothered by this, then I think there is likely
lots more who aren't reading this item. It should be obvious to most
people that this is a serious concern to some people, however illogical
it may seem to others.
Bottom line for me:
If we turn on unregistered read access, then
- some set of current users is made unhappy. Some may leave, some may
reduce or change their participation, and some may decide they can
live with it after all.
- some wholely theoretical set of people who were previously too timid
to fill out a newuser form, will get on, observe for a while, and
then register to become full participants.
So the question is, should we piss of some of our current users, in hopes
of attracting more users?
I think the answer to that is obvious. Some people really hate this idea.
Nobody has given any reason to support it that is strong enough to make
offending them a good bargain. If we need to attract more users, we can
find ways to do it that have broader support among the people already here.
Why try to attract more users if we don't care about the users we've got?
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kerouac
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response 204 of 624:
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Jan 4 02:08 UTC 1997 |
I have a better compromise. Maybe it can be set up so that those reading
anonymously can read all confs but can only read the items and not the
responses (other than #0 obviously) This way anonymous readers still get
to read the items, and original entry for each, and those who dont want
them to have access to poems or whatever, can enter a blank screen for #0
saying "go to first response" and then enter their poem as response #1
where anonymous folks cant read it.
I think that if anonymous readers can read the original entry (#0) for
items in all confs that will suffice to give them a sense of all the confs.
This avoids anyone, fw's or staff, having to make arbirtrary decisions
about which confs can be read anonymously and which cant. It is a better
compromise.
(p.s. and Jenna, you cant assume that all those not responding in poetry
support restrictions....you dont even know how many people are reading the
conf!)
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dang
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response 205 of 624:
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Jan 4 02:24 UTC 1997 |
First off, that would be hard to do. All of the responses, including 0, are
stored in the same file.
Second, that doesn't compramize anything. Those who want open access would
say, rightly, that that doesn't give open access to most of what the
conferences are. Those who want name tags would complain, rightly, that this
doesn't solve any of their fears. They could never, for example, post poetry
in it's own item, only in responses. Conclusion: No one is happy. That's
worse than voting and getting a decision one way or the other. At least that
way, the issue is decided, and one side is happy.
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kerouac
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response 206 of 624:
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Jan 4 02:31 UTC 1997 |
Couldnt Backtalk automaticaly store response #0's ina separate file? Anyone
could still post poetry in an item with their name on it, just they'd
have to put "see my poem in next response"or something.
I also dont like the other compromise because grex is more than agora and
intro
and I disagree that prospective users are getting a true picture of grex
by only being able to read those confs.
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kerouac
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response 207 of 624:
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Jan 4 02:38 UTC 1997 |
clarification of last entry: Backtalk could (?) store the original
item entries (the #0's) in a separate file that it would only access
when anonymous users request conf access. This is not in any way
changing the present file setup, just saying that anonymous users will
as a norm be reading an entirely different file when they read the confs.
Maybe this cant be coded without a lot of sweat, but if it is simple
enough I think this is worth trying. It gives anonymous reads at least
ona limited basis and it gives other users the option of not entering
the text in #0 and preventing such users from reading.
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dpc
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response 208 of 624:
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Jan 4 02:47 UTC 1997 |
This is plainly one of the most interesting items presently on Grex.
So when is it going to be linked into the Intro Conference?
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robh
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response 209 of 624:
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Jan 4 03:26 UTC 1997 |
Not at all. I don't link items into Intro that have more than
50 or so responses, since I don't want to overload any new users who
have to read through them all. And we're a bit past 50 responses
by this point. >8)
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rcurl
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response 210 of 624:
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Jan 4 04:10 UTC 1997 |
Re #194: Jan, I think the experiment tests for exactly what we need to
determine - whether there are problems, personal or practical. A lot of
good reasons have been put forward for open anonymous web reading, both
practical and personal, and likewise good reasons against, both personal
and practical, have been tendered. The solution is to test both systems
and thereby determine which personal and practical reasons seem most vital
to follow. I am sure that if we already had anonymous web reading, and it
was proposed to close it, there would be users that would find that
personally objectionable.
I think I may be proposing this experiment because I don't make absolute
prior decisions based solely on my feelings, and am always willing to
experiment to determine whether my feelings are what I think they are -
whether I judged my feelings correctly.
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