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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 239 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 25 of 239:
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Jan 8 07:48 UTC 1996 |
Re #16: I would expect an enormous drop in web pages of nonmembers if
we charged a fee of even $5/year. This is a prediction, not a judgement.
Also, charging a fee to non-members, but including that fee in
member dues, makes a significant change in how we view dues, which is
currently fully as a donation, for which no significant services are
provided. If we set a fee for web page, we would need to establish
a value for the member perogative of outgoing telnet, and both of
these would not be deductible if Grex were to obtain 501(c)3 exempt
status. This is just something to think about, before moving ahead.
In my opinion, it is a good idea.
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scg
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response 26 of 239:
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Jan 8 08:38 UTC 1996 |
I'm not convinced that it is a good idea. All idealism aside, this would put
us in a position where if something were down or not working, people could
be saying, "but I'm paying to have my web pages here, and therefore you have
to keep them available." I think we do a pretty good job of keeping things
running, and presumably anybody wanting to do this will understand first that
Grex tends to be rather slow, but we have had a few long, unplanned, periods
of downtime for certain services, and we may again. I want to see Grex
figuring out how to best serve its users, for its purposes (mostly
conferencing). I don't want to see us becoming a business where we have to
keep our customers happy above all else.
This also raises a more general question about what we want from Grex. When
I first started Grexing, just about everything was free to everybody,
regardless of whether they were a member or how much they had paid. With
making some of our Internet access into membership perks, we've moved away
from that somewhat. This, as small a step as it might seem, would push us
a lot more away from that ideal. Do we want that? I can see arguments on
both sides, but my gut feeling is that it wouldn't be a good thing.
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chelsea
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response 27 of 239:
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Jan 8 14:30 UTC 1996 |
Re: #25 No problem with the IRS. We could just increase membership
dues to $8 a month, include a web page perk along with outgoing
Internet access as a members only thingie, say it's a bandwidth
issue, and the IRS will never be the wiser!
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chelsea
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response 28 of 239:
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Jan 8 14:32 UTC 1996 |
$6.00 + $5.00 = $11.00. I still don't think they'd notice, much.
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rcurl
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response 29 of 239:
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Jan 8 16:42 UTC 1996 |
Re #26: I think we need to consider the possibility that there are some
uses of Grex that we want to have accessible to all, with no "fees", and
some uses that we can use deliberately to raise money (to help support the
former as well as to control "bandwidth"). Web pages are a category to
consider for this latter use, because they do not significantly enhance
Grex's "community" purposes relative to the bandwidth they consume.
I presume that Mary is being sarcastic in #26, as we have forever had this
argument. I believe (and it is approved by the IRS) that there are many
"advantages" that members of a non-profit organization can have without
losing tax exemption. One example is a newsletter, so long as it is not
sold separately, or edited to be of "general" public interest. In regard
to the internet access "advantage" to Grex members, I have asked for a
long time for a numerical cash value be placed on it as measured by the
amount of money it costs Grex to support it. Whehter this "advantage" is
significant or not depends upon the answer to this.
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danr
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response 30 of 239:
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Jan 8 17:00 UTC 1996 |
Whether or not we charge for "services" someone is going to have to start
looking at new ways to raise funds. We've increased our monthly expenses
substantially over the past year, while donations have actually declined.
As I've pointed out in other items, we didn't even collect enough in December
to pay our phone bill. This month has started out no better--I've only
collected $12 so far. I don't think we should wait until this becomes a real
crisis (it isn't one just yet) to address this.
We keep saying that "When the sun-4 comes on-line, things will get faster and
that will increase donations." I don't think that's the case.
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robh
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response 31 of 239:
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Jan 8 22:12 UTC 1996 |
Re 30 - That's why I'm bringing this up now, instead of when we
absolutely have to. (At which point it will likely be too late.)
Speaking of which, what ever happened to the Auction idea?
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steve
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response 32 of 239:
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Jan 8 22:13 UTC 1996 |
I don't quite agree--it's not the speed that will help so much, as
the increased reliability of having a good filesystem underneath /home
such that people don't get files randomly deleted on them. That hurts,
and we've been doing that to people for a while now, really much too
long. I think getting to the Sun-4 *will* help, but it isn't going to
be a miracle cure by any means. Just as it took time for people to
become impatient with Grex and leave, it will take some time for various
folks to gather the belief that Grex is worth supporting again.
Your statement about coming up with more money is absolutely 100%
right. Thats something that we need to have started already, and I
don't think we have, have we?
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adbarr
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response 33 of 239:
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Jan 8 22:17 UTC 1996 |
re# 11, 12 - Could this be "First Contact"?
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ajax
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response 34 of 239:
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Jan 8 23:52 UTC 1996 |
STeve, I think you may overestimate the membership-deterrence of
the disk bug. I have what I'd guess are more than the average
number of files, and only get hit about once every four months.
If I'm representative, most users probably never lose a file,
though it probably appears more commonplace from the other side
of the console. At least to me, speed is much more of an issue;
I'd rather lose twice as many files on a system that's twice as
fast! :-)
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srw
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response 35 of 239:
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Jan 9 01:28 UTC 1996 |
Fortunately you won't have to make that tradeoff. We should be faster and more
reliable at some time in the future. I think it will improve our support
level, but I agree with Dan that it may not help it enough. We really need
to do something else to improve membership levels.
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popcorn
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response 36 of 239:
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Jan 9 03:31 UTC 1996 |
Robh - I'm still avidly interested in the auction idea, hopefully really soon
after we get onto the Sun 4. Wish I could light more of a candle under the
Sun 4 project....
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robh
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response 37 of 239:
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Jan 9 05:45 UTC 1996 |
<robh wishes he could light a bonfire uner the Sun-4 project>
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carson
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response 38 of 239:
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Jan 9 12:56 UTC 1996 |
what needs to be done?
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popcorn
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response 39 of 239:
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Jan 9 14:24 UTC 1996 |
SunOS has a number of patches to fix various known bugs. One of the patches
for the Sun 4 is buggy. It's the patch that would probably fix the disk bug,
so it matters a lot that we install it and not skip it. I'm not exactly sure
what the plan is for getting a non-buggy version of the patch, but we need
to locate and apply it.
I think we're still waiting for Picospan and one or two other critical
utilitiies.
There's a ton of minor stuff that isn't terribly urgent. For example, I need
to rebuild the mathom program on the Sun 4.
Then there's some security stuff that needs to be checked.
I think that's everything, except for actually moving the Sun 4 to the dungeon
and copying Grex onto it.
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scg
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response 40 of 239:
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Jan 10 05:22 UTC 1996 |
I'd hate to see us not move to the Sun 4 as quickly as we otherwise might due
to a lack of the Mathom program. I'd imagine that sort of thing can probably
wait.
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popcorn
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response 41 of 239:
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Jan 10 05:26 UTC 1996 |
Yup, nobody is planning to wait for the stuff like the mathom program. The
other things on the list are pretty important, though.
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carson
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response 42 of 239:
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Jan 10 12:46 UTC 1996 |
I didn't misread you, popcorn. ;)
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kerouac
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response 43 of 239:
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Jan 11 00:01 UTC 1996 |
The most notable fact is that although usage is up, conference
participation is down. Fall agora 1994 had over 200 items, whereas
fall agora 1995 had 135 or so total. There are many confs on here
that only a handful of people read or participate in. If grex's
conferencing setup is its main purpose (and I havent noticed any
consensus that it is) then these arent the rosiest of days for Grex.
If Grex's purpose is to facilitate an exchange of ideas and information,
though, then it should be for and about the conferences. Instead most
people seem to use Grex for e-mail, to do things privately and not to
be part of a community. Perhaps the only way to change this is to make
everything BUT conferencing and file priviledges restricted and a
membership perk. Limit outbound email (anything sent outside Grex) to
members only. Say that non-member grexers can recieve outside mail
but cannot send mail outside Grex. This would be saying, in effect,
that Grex's service is provide the means to participate within the
Grex community and to be a part of it, and that if you want to use
Grex for a purpose not directly beneficial to the Grex community, thats
fine but you have to pay for it.
This may seem radical, but it would accomplish two things. It would
cause an upsurge of memberships from people who want to keep their
mailboxes, and it would lead to new users conferencing more because
they wouldnt have any other immediate options. It would also make
Grex run faster. Most people have other e-mail addresses and if Grex
gets larger, it may get swallowed up in mail processing.
This is a change of opinion for me because in the past I've complained
loudly that nothing should be restricted. I still think voting and
conference participation should be open and un-restricted, but if Grex
has 50 people logged in on a given night and three are in party, two are
reading confs, and 45 are in e-mail, something is out of balance. The
idea of Grex is to facilitate a community, and if people want to use it
for any OTHER purpose, they can become members and pay for that
priviledge.
Grex doesnt have the capacity to be all things for all people, so its
focus should be on what it can do best. In my mind that is the
picospan conferencing. The user totals mentioned earlier are badly
inflated as it is because many people have multiple logins, and many
MANY people use grex only for e-mail. Grex has far too many
interesting confs that nobody uses, or that no new users use so that
they have become stale and cliquish. This is a problem that needs to
be addressed.
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carson
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response 44 of 239:
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Jan 11 01:45 UTC 1996 |
That's a miserable yardstick for measuring conference activity,
kerouac. By that measure, M-Net is doing *extremely* well and
couldn't be better. Think quality over quantity.
I don't disagree with your implication that other conferences
could use increased particpation. I do disagree that conferencing
is the only activity on Grex that fosters community. I think that my role
as Grex's Unofficial Ambassador has helped to shed light on the
not-so-obvious members of Grex's community. In addition, such events as
the Grexwalk and the GNOs further reflect a diversity in the community not
limited to conferencing.
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scg
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response 45 of 239:
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Jan 11 06:11 UTC 1996 |
What Carson said.
I'd further add that e-mail is often the sharing of information and ideas,
just on a smaller scale. In addition, e-mail is something that probably
attracts a lot of people who later stumble into conferencing. I know that
free e-mail was why I first started using Grex, and I'd imagine that holds
true for a lot of others. Unfortunately, most people out there don't know
what conferencing is, or how wonderful it is. If they're told they can't come
here unless they're going to conference, they'll go away without ever seeing
what they're missing. If they're using Grex for other things, they have a
much better chance of stumbling across it.
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srw
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response 46 of 239:
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Jan 11 06:12 UTC 1996 |
I agree with you Carson, but there an important point kerouac is making.
We can choose to provide all of the wonderful things we are capable of
providing all for free if we want. This will make us popular, and very busy,
but it will add nothing to the content here.
The question being raised is "what do we want grex to be".
I would like to see Grex be a community bound together by the sharing of
ideas. The best vehicle we have for sharing ideas is Picospan. It is, IMO,
a very powerful tool (taken together with the unix and internet
infrastructure) for this purpose. I strongly doubt we are using it wisely,
though. I think 90% of the conferences on Grex are sadly underpopulated.
I blame ourselves for not doing a better job of organizing things. We do
everything completely haphazardly here.
By permitting a lot of our services to anyone for free, we are allowing the
unix and internet infrastructure of Grex to be sapped by people who could pay
someone for services, but choose to get those services from us for free
because they can. I am not interested so much in tapping them for donations,
though it wouldn't hurt, as I am in getting them to join the community. If they
don't want to do that, I'd prefer they go away, and make room for someone who
will.
I want to see Grex become a place that people want to go to,
not a place people want to use to get somewhere else.
Maybe we need to use stricter access policies on some things to make this
happen.
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popcorn
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response 47 of 239:
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Jan 11 14:06 UTC 1996 |
Hm... motd plugs for the conferences?
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n8nxf
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response 48 of 239:
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Jan 11 22:45 UTC 1996 |
Grex has no written out purpose? It's purpose to be there for whatever people
want to use it for? Odd, but inovative.
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danr
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response 49 of 239:
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Jan 11 23:34 UTC 1996 |
I don't think a computer system can be all things to all users, however.
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