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25 new of 61 responses total.
ryan
response 2 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:01 UTC 2005

This response has been erased.

keesan
response 3 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:12 UTC 2005

For $1 you can get about 30MB of home directory and 30MB of webspace at
sdf.lonestar.org where you can post images to link to.  NetBSD.
abc
response 4 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:25 UTC 2005

You can get 25 megs of space (and 1,500 megs of bandwidth) per month at
free image hosting, http://www.photobucket.com/
richard
response 5 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:27 UTC 2005

It has to be considered how this proposal might affect grex's regular 
conferencing environment.  Hosting blogging here could hurt the normal 
conferencing, which up until now has been grex's raison d'etre.  People 
could come here for blogging and email, and the regular conferencing would 
only wither on the vine.  

Whats the point of even having all this niche speciality conferences, when 
the groups of people using them can do these blogs instead?  What is grex, 
a conferencing environment or a blogging environment.  I don't think it 
has enough users or activity to be both.

I am against this blogging idea.  Grex needs ideas to HELP the open 
conferences, not to kill them.  There are a zillion places on the web to 
have your own blog.  Grex doesn't need to be one of them.  Grex needs to 
champion its old style open conferencing.  If everyone starts using blogs, 
it could well kill all but one or two confs here.  
twenex
response 6 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:29 UTC 2005

Confs are interactive; blogs, afaik, are not.
richard
response 7 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:33 UTC 2005

NOt all the conferences are inactive and never that I know of in grex's
history have the conferences not been the center of everything.  That would
change adding a blogosphere.  As a co-fw of three mostly dead conferences,
I don't like the idea that the blogs would drive away the few users that still
participate in those conferences.

Tell me how this helps the conferences. If it doesn't help the conferences,
grex should not do it.  After all, what is Grex if it isn't ABOUT its
conferences...
twenex
response 8 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 01:37 UTC 2005

Why can't GREX be about blogs AND conferences? For some of us, GREX is about
conferences and party. For others, it's about party, solely. For others, it
may be about programming, with or without any or all of the other services.
cross
response 9 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 02:45 UTC 2005

I thought grex was about community.  Why does that have to focus
solely on conferencing?  Why can't a programming community spring
up here?  Or a blogging community?  For that matter, who says it
all has to be the same community?  Grex can, and should, strive to
provide for multiple communities sharing the same space.  Building
blogging on top of an existing conferencing system provides a nice
way to provide a loose coupling between at least two (potential)
communities.

In short, I'm against the idea that grex is ``all about'' any one
thing or the other.
twenex
response 10 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 02:50 UTC 2005

I don't think GREX *is* one community.
keesan
response 11 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:08 UTC 2005

I have met many people at grex who never tried the conferences but wanted to
'talk' over the web.  
mary
response 12 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:14 UTC 2005

If conferencing fails it's not because of blogging.  It's because 
conferencing isn't working.  

I'd like to see this tried here.  For some already here, it might be 
a more comfortable way of being part of the community.  And it might 
bring in new people.  We really won't know until it's tried.

Grex needs to experiment more and try new things.  Like, soon.
cross
response 13 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:23 UTC 2005

Agreed.
jp2
response 14 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:34 UTC 2005

This response has been erased.

twenex
response 15 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:35 UTC 2005

Heh. I love the third idea.
jp2
response 16 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:38 UTC 2005

This response has been erased.

richard
response 17 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:42 UTC 2005

#12...agreed that grex needs to experiment more and try new things.  
But why something that will kill the conferences rather than enhance 
them?

Why not offer some sort of pop e-mail.  Many users would come here for 
free web email, and limits could be in place and you could only get 
around those limits if you paid for a membership.

Also allow limited use of .jpg files

Maybe even a web chat or web interface to the existing party program.  
The answer is to make the place more web friendly so people coming 
here will see and USE the conferences.  Not to provide them with 
excuses to not use the conferences.  With a blogosphere Grex may as 
well close down every conference but Agora and Coop.
twenex
response 18 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:43 UTC 2005

Re: #16. Is that just trolling?
richard
response 19 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:50 UTC 2005

Also why not a better menu system for the conferences, and since grex 
is on this fast new server, why not start offering usenet feeds again.

Remember the good old days when grex offered tin and trn newsreaders.  
The problem always was that grex was too slow to take advantage of 
them.  The conferences would be helped with the ability to link to 
relevant usenet feeds and get people from usenet groups joining grex 
groups.

cross
response 20 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:50 UTC 2005

Regarding #17; I don't think it will kill the conferences.  Those that
participate in the conferences now aren't likely to stop; new users aren't
exactly appearing in droves.  So what are we losing, really?  If anything,
we might net a gain as users pop on to look at blogs and then say, `oh,
neat, what's this conferencing thing?'  Anyway, my point is: What makes
you so sure that blogging will kill conferencing?

I agree that we should do all the other things you mention.  Pop and
webmail, image files on the web server, and perhaps even web chatting
aren't a bad idea.
twenex
response 21 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 03:52 UTC 2005

Someone could do blogs on using a timesharing system, or a system that isn't
one of the Big Two.

Re: #19. Agreed.
mfp
response 22 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 04:31 UTC 2005

http://www.juiceforjesus.org/
pfv
response 23 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 14:55 UTC 2005

Sadly, they CAN go overboard (you know how they can, too).

A gif Collective would be an interesting idea, though.
Again, it is unfortunate that staff would have one more
detail to manage.
mooncat
response 24 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 15:29 UTC 2005

I like the idea of Grex hosting blogs- it still may attract new people 
(people who want something 'different' than say LJ or one of the other 
sites). Also, if you're able to link between blog and conference (the 
way an fw can link maybe? or just a -for the web- clickable link) 
people who blog but don't know about conferences may be lured over.
aruba
response 25 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 5 16:51 UTC 2005

I think this is a great idea.
remmers
response 26 of 61: Mark Unseen   Jan 6 17:59 UTC 2005

I think this is one of those things that you don't know how it'll work
out until you try it.  In contrast to what Jamie said above, I think that
with interest in and public awareness of the blogging phenomenon exploding
as it is right now, this is a perfect time for Grex to be trying out a
blogging interface.  Computer conferencing wasn't exactly new when Grex
launched in 1991 either, but that didn't stop it from being very successful
here.  (By the way, re one of Jamie's other points -- Grex already has RSS
feeds.  There's an item in the Garage conference about it.)

Experimentation with different kinds of communication interfaces and
community-building tools is perfectly consistent with Grex's mission.
To address concerns that this might have harmful unintended consequences,
an appropriate way to proceed would be for the Board to authorize it but
build in a review after a reasonable trial period, say six months.  That's
how we handled the internet connection when we first got one in the early
1990s, when the internet was new and not everyone was sure that internet
connectivity was the right path for Grex.
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