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Grex > Coop > #278: Grex Town Hall -- How do we move forward? |  |
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| 25 new of 357 responses total. |
kentn
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response 235 of 357:
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Jun 25 19:25 UTC 2010 |
If things stay the same as they are right now, Grex will cease to exist.
As to people who will go along being not likely, more's the pity.
Inertia tends to win out due to being easiest. So much for democracy.
It will take the Board to do something, I expect, but they are not
responding here.
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krj
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response 236 of 357:
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Jun 25 20:25 UTC 2010 |
"To everything there is a season." :-)
I participate in two other forums whose structure is derived from
Picospan -- NewCafe (formerly Utne Cafe) and TheTown -- and both
of those are fading away from inactivity, just like Grex.
(And they don't even have the troll problem, as users can be banned
in those systems.) I am thinking that the Confer/Picospan model
has just run its course, kind of like Usenet and Gopher.
On the other hand, if anything changes, some sizable amount of the
remaining user base will be turned off and go away.
One of the big issues is that there is no consensus on what is to
be saved, what the priorities should be.
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kentn
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response 237 of 357:
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Jun 25 20:34 UTC 2010 |
Thanks for responding, Ken. What do you think should be the priorities?
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richard
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response 238 of 357:
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Jun 25 22:15 UTC 2010 |
re #236 The generational issue is being ignored. These places don't
attract young users. Younger users want as much functionality as
possible. They aren't likely to participate in conferences that aren't
as functional as Facebook and the like. What you have here on Grex and
these other boards as a result is a user base that is getting older and
dwindling away. Grex used to attract plenty of college students, from
UM, MSU and other schools. There was a school down near St. Louis,
whose name escapes me at the moment, where a number of students used
Grex.
Not anymore. Those times are long gone.
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tod
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response 239 of 357:
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Jun 25 22:31 UTC 2010 |
re #235
If things stay the same as they are right now, Grex will cease to exist.
Why?
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kentn
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response 240 of 357:
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Jun 25 22:55 UTC 2010 |
No members, no money eventually. End of story.
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kentn
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response 241 of 357:
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Jun 25 23:13 UTC 2010 |
Re 238: which is why we should add more functionality.
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tod
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response 242 of 357:
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Jun 25 23:25 UTC 2010 |
I don't think features need to be changed to attract users and revenues.
It is always amazing to me how the existing positive of features enjoyed
by existing users is not leveraged toward better marketing.
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kentn
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response 243 of 357:
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Jun 26 01:47 UTC 2010 |
Certainly there is more than just features that will attract and retain
users, but a failure to keep up with the times will leave us with a
group of users attracted to what we have now and as we've seen, a slowly
dwindling group. I don't have a problem with a retro style of offerings
per se. It's just that there are other groups of people out there that
look for more. And of course, our restricted shell and validation
procedure probably chases off many (I know I wouldn't go for it if it
were in place back in 1991).
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tod
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response 244 of 357:
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Jun 26 05:57 UTC 2010 |
That newuser is almost IMPOSSIBLE to use, too..
*snort*
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bru
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response 245 of 357:
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Jun 26 14:34 UTC 2010 |
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richard
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response 246 of 357:
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Jun 26 18:22 UTC 2010 |
There's also a strong sense of inertia here. For instance people have
been complaining about the validation patch since the day it was put
in, but its all hot air because staff has its feet bolted in place.
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mary
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response 247 of 357:
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Jun 26 22:13 UTC 2010 |
I forget if this is the item in which the question of our resident agent
came up, or not, but... I spoke with Mark Conger today and he'd be fine
with continuing in that role.
I'm looking around at conferencing sites for an online community we
could experiment with. Not places where we'd rent disk space and
install our own software but rather where we'd use existing software on
a hosting service dedicated to such use. Quite a few look fine but tend
to function more like mailing lists than conferences. Google Groups, on
the other hand, threads better and has some nice features. I'm still
playing with it and will come back with a list of pros and cons sometime
within the next. But I thought I'd mention it here so the naysayers
could have a head start. ;-)
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cyklone
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response 248 of 357:
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Jun 26 22:55 UTC 2010 |
Count me out of anything with Google attached to it.
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kentn
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response 249 of 357:
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Jun 26 23:07 UTC 2010 |
Re 247: that may have been one of the Board minutes items, but it
doesn't matter as long as we get the information :) For that, thanks
for talking with Mark and I'm glad he's willing to continue in that
role. There isn't much to do for it, generally, but we do need someone
to take care of the requests that the resident agent gets, like that
once a year corporate update form.
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keesan
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response 250 of 357:
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Jun 27 02:49 UTC 2010 |
Could someone PLEASE tell Mark we have a reel-to-reel tape deck for him.
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tonster
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response 251 of 357:
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Jun 27 04:13 UTC 2010 |
resp:248: why the negative stigma to google?
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cyklone
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response 252 of 357:
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Jun 27 14:21 UTC 2010 |
Because I don't trust their data policies any more than I do with FB.
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slynne
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response 253 of 357:
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Jun 27 14:31 UTC 2010 |
Yeah. One if the things I like about conferencing here is that posts
here don't turn up in search engines. But I am not too worried about
that on whatever web based place we try. I'll probably use a pseudonym
though. I figure you folks can probably handle that.
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mary
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response 254 of 357:
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Jun 27 15:42 UTC 2010 |
That's a good way to go if you don't want your comments to be indexed. As
I'm looking at Google Groups I see it's possible to be just as closed and
locked-down as the current Grex but also make more open choices. If this
is going to be truly an experiment I sure hope we take a different
approach and try to be more open.
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marcvh
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response 255 of 357:
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Jun 27 16:10 UTC 2010 |
That's certainly one candidate for a focus of the system -- catering to
people who have some reason they'd prefer to avoid the mainstream Web
2.0 services like keesan and cyclone. I have no idea how you would
market to them though.
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bellstar
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response 256 of 357:
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Jun 27 17:27 UTC 2010 |
> [...] the mainstream Web 2.0 services like keesan and cyclone.
I don't mean to be rude but that made me smile... broadly.
By the way, I'd rather classify "Web 2.0 services" as sewerstream. It's a pity
the strongest currents on the web, and on the Internet, consist mainly of
domestic sewage even though I do take pride in contributing my fair share of
alimentary canal status reports.
Oh, and Grex needs a topic--users will follow. It seems to have lost its
function as a regional hub and after that loss it hasn't picked up any
specific role beyond being a low-impact discussion place (which is nice, by
me; I learnt quite a few things on here that would've been a lot less easily
learnt on a place with higher impact and broader participation of random
people).
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kentn
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response 257 of 357:
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Jun 27 19:36 UTC 2010 |
Re 244 and newuser is impossible to use: Yes, it's difficult to wade
through, especially for first-time users with no commandline/shell
experience. I wonder if we had more web-based services (chat, bbs,
email) if there could be a simplified newuser for people who have no
desire to set up a shell account so that they can use the web for
conferencing?
This would lock people out of a commandline/shell, presumably, or else
give them some automatic defaults for a shell they'll never use. If
they do at some future point desire to use that shell, they might want
to redo some of the settings (and that might lead to another program to
help with that along the lines of the historic newuser program).
Another thing that would be interesting, at least, would be a way for
people to quit newuser before finishing (I've done it but it was a lot
of interrupts, etc. before it finally decided to stop) and tally the
number of people who do that. I suspect we'd see plenty of people who
opt out before finishing vs those who actually do get through the setup.
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cyklone
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response 258 of 357:
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Jun 27 21:25 UTC 2010 |
Re #253-255: My views are colored somewhat by the recent mnet incident
involving an Iranian user (not bellstar, to the best of my knowledge)
who became fearful after learning someone had messed with mnet in a way
that made his posts or files web-searchable.
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richard
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response 259 of 357:
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Jun 27 23:22 UTC 2010 |
re #258 how by hacking mnet? all this guy has to do is not post using
his real name. no big deal.
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