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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 225 of 624:
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Jan 4 19:52 UTC 1997 |
Re #217: I am still perplexed how an "atmosphere of community" will be
affected at all by anonymous web reading when it isn't by anonymous user
or observer reading. Besides, the great likilyhood is that few or no more
persons will read most conferences (more than once...).
I'm a fw in a few conferences where I am sure the participants would
welcome more participation, and more exposure is one way to get more
participation.
I am going to enter enquiries in those cfs to see if there are any
objections. and to invite readers there to come here to enter their
comments on the issue.
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mta
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response 226 of 624:
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Jan 4 20:40 UTC 1997 |
Two issues where I see GREX being better off if we allow (at least some) web
access reading are
a) More staff time freed up for making GREX a btter place by reducing
the number of once only logins that need to be reaped. People will
have the chance to browse one or two conferences and see if GREX
is the kind of place they're looking for. If not, then they'll
never create that once use login and the staff won't have to spend
time deleting it.
b) Folks who have no idea that GREX exists or what computer
conferencing is all about will have a better chance to "stumble
upon" GREX and see for themselves. As Mary says, this could
open GREX up to a whole new group of people and do wonderful
things for the diversity that makes GREX so much fun.
c) (I just thought of a third) People who are being drawn here now
for the most part being drawn by the prospects of free mail, or
party, or ... anything but conferencing. But the conferences are
the heart of what GREX is. They are not only the source of most
GREX memberships, which are what allow e-mail and party to be
offered at all, but they are the long range, timeless conversations
define our community and allow us to compare and contrast our ideas
with people over time and across space. People we may well never
meet directly. OPening up web reading access will open up a
reference point that will bring people directly to the conferences
and put them on an even footing with e-mail and party as GREX destinations.
,
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valerie
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response 227 of 624:
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Jan 4 20:51 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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kerouac
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response 228 of 624:
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Jan 4 21:35 UTC 1997 |
When the board was about to vote on this matter, it was tabled
because Valerie wanted a member vote. Since Valerie apparently
has rescinded her request for such a vote, it would seem that
the matter of anonymous reads is back where it started and the
Board should take it up and decide the matter at the next
meeting. Obviously anyone who doesnt like the board's decision
can then ask for a member vote. Put it back on the agenda.
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jenna
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response 229 of 624:
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Jan 5 02:51 UTC 1997 |
Actually, I've spoken to a lawyer who deals speciofically in
copyright law (during a creative writing seminar) who said
that the place of publication only has the right to distrubute
the material you've given them permission to distribute to the
same places as originally specified. Mainly this is because
national and international copyrioght laws are differnt and to be
nationally copywriteen something need not be internationally
copyrighten, however it also applies here.
--
Really, if you guys WANT to start opening everything to the web,
sincerely really want to, that's fine. Just restart every conference
first and don't expect to see my name in the future.
-I'm against it, still, for all the community reasons.
KEROUAC> if not responding in poetry doesn't mean agreement with the
majority,wouldn't not responding in CVOOP mean the same thing, and
thus might there not be more people who want to conferences to stya
on grex alone? *if that even is the majority opionion, I've lost track*
As for Experimentation> You're experimentatio, if it involves all
the conferences wioll do just what either MDW or Janc (I think it
wasone of the them) said back ther.e It will make the people who
feel uncomftoable even more uncomfotable. And it will send me runnningTest
groups are usually smaller than the whole group, aren't they?
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mdw
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response 230 of 624:
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Jan 5 03:43 UTC 1997 |
[ I am relieved to hear that Rob H. is unlikely to take Grex hostage, or
to spam kerouac. ]
As matters presently stand, the only thing that stops new people from
responding is fear of the "r" key. That *is* a barrier, but not a huge
one. Valerie's statistics suggest that most people either overcome the
barrier, or stop visiting. (To detect permament lurkers, you'd need to
measure how *often* the current participants respond, and how long ago.
A significant # of people don't respond very often, & some leave as
others join...)
With "anonymous web browsing", the "respond" barrier becomes much
larger, because the "newuser brush" barrier has been moved. Jan argues
that the resulting larger # of people crossing the "read" barrier will
more than make up for the increased height of the "respond" barrier. I
think it's very possible that it could work out the other way. Firstly,
it *does* seem that there is a "goldfish" bowl to take into effect -
some of our most scintillating current contributors might leave, thus
decreasing the overall attractiveness of the system. Secondly, we
*know* the "newuser brush" barrier is a significant barrier - one many
of those web people won't overcome. Selena here makes an excellent
illustration of the cusp of the "newuser brush" barrier - if we were
only *slightly* more picky about identities she would not be here at
all. Thirdly, as Ryan points out in #213, there is the system load
factor to take into account. We only have a limited # of CPU cycles &
network bandwidth to spend on people who *might* overcome the "respond"
barrier and become full-fledged respondents. Even if a larger # of
people overcome the "read" barrier, if a smaller % of those people are
capable of overcoming the "newuser brush" barrier, then the net result
is a smaller # of new respondents. If the "read" barrier shrinks too
much, it's possible that the resulting tidal wave of transient web
surfers could so totally overwhelm system resources as to scare away
some formerly permament participants. (Imagine what would happen if one
of the web search engines indexes grex.)
Mary, Rane, & others are essentially arguing that we need "more
diversity", and that any form of participation, even anonymous web
browsing, is "good". Actually, however, we know that's not true. For
instance, we know that party is very popular, and even that some % of
party goers become regular conference respondents, and yet here in coop,
the tendency is definitely to think of party as a sort of "cinderella"
form of computer conferencing. There are certainly also plenty of
people here who have been in the past, at one point or another, been
concerned about the "problems" of "unbridled" growth. I certainly
haven't seen *any* serious proposal to put a mud on grex, even though we
all know that would *certainly* be one of the surest ways to increase
growth on the system. I think it is fair to say that no matter how much
we might *say* that we value "diversity", that there are still some
kinds of "diversity" that are more equal than others, and that perhaps
this is one of those "mushy PC" terms we might want to avoid, because it
is so overloaded with multiple emotional meanings.
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janc
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response 231 of 624:
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Jan 5 04:56 UTC 1997 |
I don't think the arguments Marcus attributes to "Jan" are mine.
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rcurl
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response 232 of 624:
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Jan 5 06:28 UTC 1997 |
I pause to visualize bagheads wielding the newuser brush.....
Jenna, you can not *know* that any of your concerns will happen. If any
did, and the consensus is that they are serious, anonymous web access can
be closed immediately.
The same goes for Marcus' (convoluted) discussion. He can not *know* that
any of the things he speculates about will happen. He also raises
strawpeople: muds are not conferencing; party is probably a minor source
of conferencers (I recall that was studied once, and found to be the
case).
Like others here, I refuse to be intimidated by the threats of users to
leave. I think some making threats are fine conferencers, but I will not
abide threats. This is a *democratic* society, and decisions should be
made by *democratic* processes, and not influenced by what amounts to
threatened terrorism, self immolation, or any of the other tools of those
that do not, apparently, believe in democracy and an open society.
Nevertheless, I do listen to rational discussion. I can believe that not
all conferences are the same. One, staff, is not open to users, members or
not, unless they have been anointed staff. Perhaps an argument can be
made (but has not been made) that others should not be open to *nonusers*
(i.e., those without accounts). I don't know of any, but I do not visit
those few that have been mentioned in this context.
I would like to ask those that think that there are conferences that
should not be open to *nonusers* to make their case for each. No one has
attempted this yet. If such cases can be made, there would be a basis for
the suggested compromise of opening some and not others.
The question of system load is a completely separate matter. Could we have
some numbers on this? By how much would we expect the load average to
increase for so many web readers reading? We don't appear to want to do
anything about the contribution to load of e-mail - why web reading? Which
leads me to ask - can the number of simultaneous anonymous web readers be
limited, separately from web conferencers with accounts?
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mdw
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response 233 of 624:
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Jan 5 08:59 UTC 1997 |
I claimed "Jan argues that the resulting larger # of people crossing the
"read" barrier will more than make up for the increased height of the
"respond" barrier." Actually Jan (in #203) said "- 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." It would be more accurate to say that
Valerie (#184) & Mary (#187) [& very probably others] are making this
argument, and that Jan is expressing skepticism ("theoretical")
regarding this possibility. I apologize for stuffing words into Jan's
mouth.
Obviously I can't *know* for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt. All I
can do is argue based on 17 years of experience with computer
conferencing and other forms of computer aided communications, including
a fairly wide range of entrance barriers and user interfaces, and 15
years worth of actual hands on design experience. It is of course
entirely up to you if you consider my experience as "worth anything" or
not.
Technically speaking, party *in and of itself* is a form of computer
conferencing. (Technically, it's a form of "synchronous group"
communications, as opposed to PicoSpan which is "asynchronous".) It is
of course used here mainly for frivolous purposes, but there are
applications in which it could be used for a serious purpose, and
indeed, there are actual computer conferencing implementations out there
that are mainly designed around "synchronous" use. So Rane is already
guilty of a pretty glaring value judgement in making the assumption that
party is not a form of computer conferencing. If one is willing to
discount "party" because of its ephemeral and mostly social use, then
how much of a step is it to start deciding that agora or test should not
be here because of its ephemeral and mostly social use? Perhaps "write"
and "talk" (two other synchronous tools) shouldn't be here? Or, if you
agree that party, talk, mail, and picospan all belong here, on what
basis do you decide how much of our limited resources to give to each?
[ Every mud I've heard of includes at least a "note board" which players
can leave notes for each other. Different muds have different
characteristics, but nearly all have *some* social element, and I've
heard of some that are pretty much devoted to non-competitive "social"
uses. Frankly, I don't see much difference between those muds, and
some of the literate conferences I've seen (such as hbk5:muse) or
party, for that matter. ]
Rane asks regarding "system load of web conferencing. HTTP is not very
amenable to any sort of load throttling. HTTP has no real concept of a
"session", so it's actually quite complicated to count active users, or
to detect when they go away. Each URL that is fetched by a client
"comes out of nowhere" so far as the server is concerned, and is
supposed to be serviced "instantaneously". The only two ways a server
might throttle load would either be to service some requests more
slowly, or to "arbitrarily" reject some requests. Many web users come
from long distances via slow lines. It would be difficult to program in
a meaningful amount of extra slowness in performance, that would either
help reduce system resource usage, or even be noticeable over such a
link. Throwing some requests out is even worse - it just looks like a
broken web server to users - surely not the face we'd like to present to
users. So the only effective throttle we have on the web is what we
have right now - the overall capacity of the internet link, with a
limited amount of discrimination for telnet sessions and against web
sessions, coupled with an aggressive policy of discouraging .gif's &
.jpg's, or any other really large file.
Rane also asserts it would be "easy" to just turn it off. That's not
necessarily true. If (for instance) a web engine managed to index our
conferences (and that is, after all, a reasonable thing for us to
*want*, is it not?) then it is very probable that some of the resulting
items could become *very* popular. Our current internet link is
certainly *not* up to that kind of load, and we could end up having to
change our DNS name and pointing the old URL to outer space to get rid
of the unwanted hits. A web engine is sort of a "worst" instant
disaster, but a more realistic disaster, say, an exponential growth in
web browsers "discovering" grex, could result in the same problem.
(Basically, this is Steve Andre's "the continent of India decides to all
use Grex" disaster.)
Someone up above pointed out that in PicoSpan, all of the responses are
stored in one file, and started a thread to solve this "problem". In
fact, it's completely irrelevant. It would be silly to export the naked
PicoSpan item file, because a web browser won't be able to do anything
terribly nice with it anyways. Instead, one would write a cgi binary to
parse out the item file format, and produce a text/html stream with
nicely formatted responses in it. There's no reason the cgi binary
can't just stop after response 0, and that's all that would be needed to
implement the proposed "item text only" restriction. Even though it
would be technically easy, it's a silly idea. It doesn't fix the
"goldfish bowl" problem, it's certainly not going to do a good job of
introducing people to "discussions on grex", and in short, it just plain
doesn't make sense.
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popcorn
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response 234 of 624:
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Jan 5 16:38 UTC 1997 |
Marcus, so you're saying that having lots more people reading the conferences
would be a disaster? I don't get it.
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dang
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response 235 of 624:
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Jan 5 16:51 UTC 1997 |
System load wise, given our current setup, yes, frankly. Any drastic increase
in system useage at this point would be a disaster. Case in point, mail
storms. We may have to, regardless of this proposal, start dealing with "web"
storms. Certainly if we get indexed by a webcrawler.
Now, that's not really the point here, as we've always has system load
difficulties. The question is, is the increased system load worth it?
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kerouac
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response 236 of 624:
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Jan 5 20:06 UTC 1997 |
#338....Jenna, that interpretation of national cpyright law was what I was
referring to. If grex suddenly chanegs mode of access and distributes
material in new ways that the poster of said material could not have been
aware of when he/she made the contribution, there is a question of whethe
that would violate the law. Someone who posted a poem three years ago
implied permission for grex to distribute it to anyone who dialed in. Two
years ago and it was implied permission to also share it with those who
telnetted in.
But permission cannot be assumed when the paramaters of that permission
changes. That is why I was saing it would be safer if notice was given of
a change to allow anonymous reading through the web and posters of old
material can remove their material and in cases of posters who are no
longer active, confs should in some cases be re-started (poetry certainly
for one)
As a side note, since I wasnt obviously around at the time, how many
current users threatened to leave Grex if Grex went on the 'net and became
telnet accessible? How any users actually left. I really think there is
a lot of bluffing going on around here. It is not nearly that easy to
give up something you've been doing everyday for years. Most people cant
quit drinking cold turkey, I doubt robh and others could quit grexing cold
turkey either.
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scg
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response 237 of 624:
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Jan 5 20:19 UTC 1997 |
I think the argument is that if we're going to be overloaded, it would be
better to be overloaded by conferencers than to be overloaded with mail users.
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kerouac
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response 238 of 624:
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Jan 5 20:28 UTC 1997 |
I really dont think this issue is that devisive. Based on comments here
I think the Board would approve anaonymous reads by maybe 5-2 (with janceither
opposed or abstaining.) The only board member strongly objecting seems to
be robh.
The point is the consensus is there and always has been.
It is just the opposing voices have been louder and more threatening.
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robh
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response 239 of 624:
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Jan 5 21:11 UTC 1997 |
Re 236 - Nobody thought I could quit Agora cold turkey, either.
Watch me.
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robh
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response 240 of 624:
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Jan 5 21:13 UTC 1997 |
But I do think this should be discussed at the next Board meeting,
if there isn't going to be a membership vote held.
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jenna
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response 241 of 624:
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Jan 6 00:07 UTC 1997 |
Alright, here;'s a case for why poetry shouldn;'t be openeing
(opened)
1.) It contains sensitive materials, works of art, some of which are
tenuously shared by participants.
2.) It has a writer's circle feeling, a group of people who've chosen
to make themselves a part of it read, respond and enter in varying amounts.
We have regulars, we have in our minds a picture of about who we expect to
read and or respond to our pieces.
3.) Of all the places where copyright issues will come up, this will
be a hotspot.
We have poems posted years ago, the authors of whichcould not be aware
would soeday be offered up to the Web.
4) Most of the people who have responded to the item discussing this
have been very against it and threatened to leave the conference
and delte their items if it is opened. I don't want to loose 1/2 the
fairly active people in the poetry conference.
If you want to open the conferences for the good of Grex, don't open
Poetry. If Grex is a community, who makes up the community? We do.
We all do, and it seems a majority of the poetry community wyu\\ould rather
people found their way in the old fashioned way.
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arthurp
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response 242 of 624:
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Jan 6 03:57 UTC 1997 |
In reference to the system load issue. Grex was crippled to the point of
staff censoring material until I could be contacted. The largest that load
got was 5 Meg per 24 hour period. That isn't really all that much data, but
it killed the link. I think that the increase in uncontrollable data flow
generated by web access could drastically affect grex. I was really worried
about this when backtalk came about, but I hadn't thought about the queueing
flow *compared to picospan queueing*. If I haven't lost you by this point,
I'm saying that I am pretty concerned about the potential load increase that
links 'out there' could lead to. I'm slowly being swayed by (Marcus in
particular) the carefully done technical and logically constructed behavioral
arguments. I'm not sure if I would abstain on this or vote against the open
policy. The issues have become so clouded. As generous as I want to be, I
can't ignore the practical side. (Someone will probably slip in).
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raven
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response 243 of 624:
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Jan 6 04:16 UTC 1997 |
As a co-fw of three confs here (video, music & cyberpunk) I have to say
that intended audiences for conferences *do* vary and that some
conferences should be open to anonymous reading and some shouldn't.
Conferences I can think of that would be OK to have anonymous reading,
Agora, Intro, Valerie mentioned the Cooking conf I believe, Rane mentioned
the Environment conf, I would be interested in having Video and Music
being accesible to anonymous reading. Conferences that probably
*shouldn't* be open to anonymous reading SexualityII, Poetry, Recovery,
Cyberpunk are ones I can think of offhand, there are probably other confs
that I don't know of that should only reamin accesible to users &
members. The only fair way to determine whether a conference should be
opened to anonymous access is for the fw to start an item in the conf
discussing anonymous acess of that conference. If we had several
conferences open for anonmous access then we could give web surfers a good
feel of what Grex is about *without* endangering the feeling of community
& trust that is necessary in certain conferences such as Poetry,
Sexuality, etc. Perhaps the fundamental issue here is that some
confererces are public forums such as Agora or World, in these
conferences *ideas* are discussed abstractly with little emotional input,
other confernces such as Sexuality or Poetry are communities where people
discuss their feelings and make themselves vulverable. In those
conferences where people make themselves vulnerable I can understand the
objection to having "faceless" people read the conference with no
acountability and with no opportunity for them to respond.
I like the idea of making Grex more accessible to people on the web,
however, I think this should be done in such a way that it doesn't destroy
the sense of community in confernces where that is an important feature of
the confernce.
As for addational load on Grex from increased usage this seems like an
important issue, however, I'm no techie so I'll defer to the techies on
that one.
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raven
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response 244 of 624:
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Jan 6 04:18 UTC 1997 |
242 sliped in...
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arthurp
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response 245 of 624:
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Jan 6 04:26 UTC 1997 |
Oh, and I don't see much use in a compromise in case you didn't infer that
from my last resp.
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cmcgee
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response 246 of 624:
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Jan 6 05:29 UTC 1997 |
I'm puzzled by the way the "some open, some not" scenario might work. I have
no problem with the PFC conference being totally open, but what happens to
an item in a non-open conference that gets linked to an open conference? Does
the fw of the non-open conferece give permission to link? the author of the
item? total concesus amoung respondents? Or could one respondent say, "Not
my posting!" and keep the link from happening?
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phenix
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response 247 of 624:
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Jan 6 06:33 UTC 1997 |
ok ok ok ok, whoooaaa.
why is it not ok for people to read sexuality or poetry?
poetyr as jenna said is a "writers group"
<srhug>
i still say if you post it to the net, you post it to the world.
and i'm sorry but 241 sounds like COMPLEATE cliqueshness to me.
if you wnat to post to an "audiance" join a mailing list, that's what they rae
there for. i still think the main problem is the technicall issue, and grex
jsut can't handle it.
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scg
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response 248 of 624:
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Jan 6 09:11 UTC 1997 |
I disagree with the "Grex just can't handle it" part. Grex will soon be on
faster hardsare, and hopefully on a faster Internet connection. It's a
matter of whether we want our extra capacity taken by conferencing or mail
use.
Also, I think people are grossly overstating the effect this will have on
Grex's resources. Yeah, a few people who stumble across our web pages will
now be able to read stuf fin tthe conferences. Hopefully they'll like what
they see, and will decide to create an account and start participating. The
way this is designed, the conferences would not be indexed by search engines,
so the sorts of floods that I think were first brought up by Marcus wouldnt'
be likely to happen.
I've asked this question before, but I haven't seen an answer to it. Why
should people who stumble across Grex on the web automatically know, without
seeing what's going on here, if Grex is worth their time? Wouldn't it help
people decide whether or not to create an account if they could know what Grex
is first? Why would allowing people to know what Grex is before wasting hteir
time and our time by creating an account be a bad thing?
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mdw
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response 249 of 624:
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Jan 6 10:47 UTC 1997 |
It's not a yes/no grex can handle it/grex can't handle it problem. It's
different shades of grey, or really, different colors (is blue darker
than red, or yellow?, &etc.) People have previously identified system
performance as an issue, and the pty count has generated considerable
controvery on this score, as has party. Web based conferencing is
essentially like not having pty limits. Anonymous web reading could
have the same effect as "people reading party" so far as the network
link goes. And if you want web based reading to attract users, what's
wrong with letting search engines explore grex, to attract more users?
ISDN could be faster than 28.8K PPP, but not by *that* much. We
certainly don't have either ISDN or the 6xx today. If we want to make a
*serious* effort to appeal to the mass-market web user, then we had
definitely better plan on a much more ambitious upgrade to our
infrastructure.
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