response 26 of 53:

Aug 30 21:49 UTC 1996

I really like a lot of that, Jan.  But I'd also like to 
point out a few things:

Section 1.1  5th bullet:
  Maybe "...services useful to local users..."

Section 1.2  Second paragraph:
  I was under the impression the reason only members had access
  a few of our services was simply because bandwidth would be 
  swamped if we didn't control use of these features.  Members
  were selected as the lucky subgroup until bandwidth allowed
  open use by all.  The restriction was not a carrot for drawing
  paying customers.  It was also not to be seen as a punitive 
  measure against those who didn't pay.  Your comments make it
  sound somewhat calculated to restrict based on inability 
  to pay.  Subtle difference but an important one.

             Third paragraph:
  Do we really discourage all commercial use?  Even when someone
  uses far less for their business-related activities than most
  other users for personal use?  I just don't remember this ever
  being stated as an official policy.

Section 1.3  1st bullet:
  How about "...parents home with small children..." instead?

Section 1.4  First paragraph:
  The Board doesn't do ALL final decision making.  Check out 
  the Bylaws if you don't believe me. ;-)

I'd also run the final draft through a spell checker to catch 
things like truely and Observor and a few others.

I let Rane have at the terminology regarding "member owned".
Tradition, you know. 

response 28 of 53:

Aug 31 06:53 UTC 1996

Re the last item in 1.3 - Chris Bartlett was a user here for
a good long time, and most people were startled when he revealed
that he was blind.  (I knew, because I'd been fortunate enough to
meet him before I even joined Grex.)  There was nothing at all
in his responses which suggested, "Hey, this is the response of
a blind person."  >8)  That would be a good example to add.

response 30 of 53:

Aug 31 17:04 UTC 1996

(Wow.  I never knew that Chris Bartlett was blind . . . Interesting.  
Grex is cool . . . 8^)

response 32 of 53:

Sep 1 15:48 UTC 1996

Yes, it looks GREAT!!  (Could I borrow the finish product for other PR
purposes?  Mostly for info to put on fliers, I think...

Do you want to mention that the Indians you refer to as keeping their web
pages here are in Asia?  In the the US, the word "Indian" without a modifier
is often assumed to mean the tribal Indians of the US.

Do you want to mention that there have been multiple GREXpeditions  where
GREXers went across the country to meet face to face?

response 34 of 53:

Sep 1 19:36 UTC 1996

Stuff I'd still like:

  Some numbers about the volume of mail traffic on and through Grex.

  Some examples of obscure questions that got answered recently on Grex.

  Some numbers on our annual budget.  I currently have a sentance like:
     We operate on an annual budget of about $####.  Of this, $####
     comes from member donations, $#### from sale of donated computer
     equipment at JCC sales, while the remainder comes from miscellaneous
     cash donations, the sale of t-shirts, etc.
  If we don't fill in exactly those blanks, I don't mind, but I'd like to
  give some sense of where our money comes from.

  We are planning to replace the Sun 4/260 CPU with a Sun 4/[WHAT] CPU?

I've also got to write some stuff specific to our current needs and what we
can offer, but this item mostly isn't about tat.

response 36 of 53:

Sep 2 01:00 UTC 1996

SUMMARY

Grex (named from the Latin word for "group") has for five years served as
an on-line community and internet resource.  It is operated cooperatively
by its users through a non-profit corporation called Cyberspace Communications
Incorporated (CCI).  Grex runs on machines currently housed in the basement of
an 150-year old residential building, but the City of Ann Arbor has determined
that, because the ceilings are too low, we must move out before the end of
September.  Hoping to make an opportunity out of necessity, we are especially
interested locations where a faster internet connection may be inexpensively
available, since net bandwidth is currently the major limiting factor on
Grex's continued growth.

1.0 BACKGROUND

1.1 Priorities

Grex began five years ago as a spin-off from another Ann Arbor system,
called M-Net, which was one of the world's first publicly accessible
conferencing systems.  Though Grex aims to be as free as possible, it is
not a freenet.  It is first and foremost an open virtual community.  There
are only a handful of similar systems on the net, and none of them are as
strongly dedicated to free and open access as Grex.  Thus our priorities
are quite different than other superficially similar systems:

 - Grex is more interested in being a destination than in being a highway.
   Most freenets simply give users access to the internet.  We do not want to
   be simply a route to other systems.  We want to be a resource that our
   users will want to visit on a daily basis.

 - Grex is more interested in facilitating communication among its users than
   in distributing information to them.  Rather than creating or collecting
   static databases of information, we want to introduce our users to each
   other.  If they want to know something, they can ask the other users.  If
   they just want to socialize, that's fine too.  What is available on Grex?
   People.

 - Grex is more interested in being inclusive than in being selective.  We
   want our system to be accessible as possible to anyone who wants to use
   it.  We have users of all ages from all over the world, many of them
   relatively new to computing, and many of them unable to afford for-pay
   services.  We don't require users to pay.  We don't even require them to
   give their real names.

 - Grex is more interested in cooperation than leadership.  The system is
   owned and operated by its members, and user input is sought on nearly
   all decisions.  Censorship is almost unknown and we seek to rely on social
   rather than technological factors to keep interactions healthy and
   productive.

 - Grex is more interested maintaining its Washtenaw County focus by providing
   services useful to local users than by discouraging remote users.  We have
   11 local dial-in lines and continue to expand this number, although they are
   among our most costly resources.  Face-to-face social events are scheduled
   in the Ann Arbor area at least twice a week.  Thus, although Grex has users
   from all over the world, it retains a strong base in Ann Arbor.

1.2 Services

Grex currently has 11 Ann Arbor dial-in lines and allows 64 simultaneous
telnet connections over its 28.8K internet link.  Any one connecting to the
system can fill out a form and immediately have an account created for their
use, without charge or validation.  This can be either be a full Unix shell
account or either of two different menu systems.  All users get access the
following:

 - Conferencing.  Grex has very active conferences in about 90 subject areas.
   The conferences are the heart of our on-line community.  We currently run
   Picospan (written by Grex staffer Marcus Watts), which provides a
   conveniently structured and user-friendly environment and will soon be
   adding a web interface to the same conferences (written by Grex staffers
   Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss for Grex and HVCN).

 - Live-chat.  The party program (written by Grex staffers Marcus Watts and
   Jan Wolter) provides a very easy-to-use real-time talk forum, similar to
   irc, but local to Grex.  It is especially popular with our younger users,
   and there are usually one or two dozen users there.

 - Email.  Grex provides all users will full access to internet Email, using
   the "mail," "pine," or "elm" interfaces.  [SOME NUMBERS ABOUT AMOUNT OF
   MAIL TRAFFIC]  Although our mail transport software has been extensively
   modified for efficiency, mail consumes about 25% of our CPU and internet
   bandwidth.

 - Lynx.  All users may use lynx, a text-only world-wide web browser to
   access web pages and gopher servers around the world.

 - Web pages.  All users may create their own web pages on Grex, though
   graphics are not allowed on the pages.

 - Unix.  All users may have full access to the standard Unix tools, except
   for some of the internet services, including compilers and other
   development tools.

 - Live help.  Using a modified version of the "write" program (written by
   Grex staffer Jan Wolter), users may be connected to volunteer helpers who
   provide answers to questions and assistance with problems in real-time.

A few services are restricted to members (who pay $6 a month or $60 a year).
This is done primarily to prevent our scarce resources (currently net
bandwidth) from being completely consumed by people who are using Grex in
ways that do not contribute to Grex's on-line community.  Thus outgoing
telnet, ftp, and irc are restricted to members only.

Other services are offered only in a restricted form.  Thus any user may
create a web page free of charge, but no multimedia files (pictures, etc) may
be used.  Mail is unrestricted, but we do not offer a POP server, so users
must log on and use pine or elm to read their mail, and we do not allow
mailing lists to be distributed from Grex.  We discourage users from ftping
large files or using Grex to host very busy web-pages, and we discourage
all commercial use.

Given these restrictions we still have many users who use Grex as a low-cost
alternative to an ISP.  We are pleased to be able to fill that niche and
consider our role as a poor-man's internet connection an important secondary
goal of the system.  We find that many of the people using Grex in that
capacity are young people and internet neophytes who eventually shift to real
ISPs.

1.3 Benefits

Grex has over 13000 users who have logged in during the last 3 months, and
about 1100 of these spent more than 8 hours a month on Grex.  During most
parts of the day, 65 to 75 users are logged onto Grex.  People use Grex in
many different ways, and derive many different benefits from it.  Among the
most important things Grex provides its user are:

 - A comfortable place to socialize for people otherwise isolated.  This
   includes not just computer nerds, but parents home with small children,
   and one woman who was living alone on a mountaintop cabin in West Virginia.
   Discussion items like the perennial "Why are you happy?" and "Why are
   you bummed?" items, as well as live-chat forums, allow people to make
   personal contacts in safe environment.  This kind of service adds hugely
   to the quality of life of many users.

 - A place where thoughts can be openly expressed and opinions developed.
   Grex provides an arena for serious discussion of all sorts of political,
   religious, social, and personal issues.  Since it allows users a
   significant degree of anonymity, if they seek it, many users feel freer
   to express themselves here than in other places.  The discussions also
   challenge people who ordinarily aren't asked their opinions to develop
   and express them.  It's a terrific forum for brainstorming and to be
   exposed to new ideas.

 - A place to learn valuable technical skills.  Grex tries to provide easy-to-
   use interfaces to most functions, but it still gives users full access to
   the Unix system, allowing to experiment with everything from writing
   HTML to developing programs.  Since the whole system is operated by
   volunteers recruited from among our users, there are also opportunities to
   get involved in a variety of system administration jobs.  Michael O'Leary,
   an administrator for an ISP in St Louis, and Steve Gibbard, a system
   administrator and network consultant for a local firm, are just two of the
   Grex users who gained their current jobs based on their Grex experience.

 - A place to get answers to obscure questions.  There are very few questions,
   technical or otherwise, which cannot be answered by asking them on Grex.
   The range of knowledge covered by the several hundred users in a conference
   is amazing. [EXAMPLES NEEDED]

 - A place young people can be treated as adults and gain experience acting as
   independent people in a forgiving society.  For many of our younger users,
   Grex is the first community they join as equals.  Given the anonymity that
   dial-in users especially can achieve, they find that nobody knows their age
   and nobody can punish them if they misbehave.  Most very quickly discover
   that they want to conform with community standards because they want to be
   respected members of the community.  We regularly see new "problem users"
   who grow to be valued members of the community.

 - A place where elderly and handicapped users can interact as equals.  Nobody
   can tell what you look like, how fast you speak, or whether you use a
   speech synthesizer to read the screen.  Grex has had many hearing-impaired
   users and at least one blind user.  In many cases, most other users have
   been unaware that there was anything different about these people.

Many of our users use Grex in much narrower ways, not truly becoming members
of the on-line community.  Some Ann Arbor parents use Grex as an email system
to keep in touch with kids at college.  Some students from India use Grex as
a home for their web pages when their own schools don't provide that service.
[MORE OF THIS STUFF]  Grex serves many users in many different ways, without
trying to fit them all in a common mold.

Beyond providing specific benefits to our users, we believe that existance of
systems like Grex is beneficial to the internet as a whole.  We are a living
demonstration that it is possible to build electronic communities based on
openness and trust in the responsibility of the users, and that censorship
and tight control of users is not necessary to create civilized environments
on the internet.  Though we certainly don't believe that Grex is a model for
the the way the whole net should work, we believe systems like Grex will have
an important role in the future of a free electronic society.

1.4 Administration and Funding

Grex is operated by Cyberspace Communications Incorporated (CCI), a member-
based non-profit organization.  Anyone can become a member by donating either
$6 per month or $60 per year.  Members elect a seven-person board of
directors.
The board appoints staff members and does most final decision-making.  All
board and staff members are unpaid volunteers.  CCI currently has 95 members.

The CCI board has a tradition of openness.  Nearly all major decisions are
first subjected to extensive public discussion in the Grex Co-op conference.
We are strongly dedicated to delivering to our users what our users want.
Decision-making is done in a very consensual style.  By the time questions
come to a vote, the vote is usually unanimous.

CCI is not wealthy.  We usually like to be rather low-key about soliciting
money from our users.  We operate on an annual budget of about $####.  Of
this $#### comes from member donations, $#### from sale of donated computer
equipment at JCC sales, while the remainder comes from miscellaneous cash
donations, the sale of t-shirts, etc.  This year we had our first on-line
auction, raising about $1100 by allowing users to bid on items donated by
other users.

Most of CCI's income goes to pay for phone-bills, electric bills, rent and

internet connection fees.  The remainder has been sufficient to fund steady
expansion and improvement of our hardware.  CCI has not been very active
in seeking large grants and public funding.  Most of us would be happy to
see a little more income, but extremely rapid growth could be dangerous to
the health of Grex's strong sense of community.

CCI has been active in seeking publicity for Grex through the distribution of
flyers around town, and through articles in the Ann Arbor News and the Ann
Arbor Observer.  However, most of our users find us through word-of-mouth,
and since we almost always operate at near saturation without it, we have not
in the past made publicity a top priority.

1.5 Hardware

Grex currently runs on a server-class Sun 4/260 system in a VME case with
96MB of memory.  A 2.7GB SCSI disk drive and a tape drive reside in a separate
case.  Running SunOS 4.1.3, this system has proved extremely stable and
reliable under the heavy loads that Grex normally carries.  The dial-up
modems are standard commercial models, connected to the Sun through an
ALM II card.  A 386 PC running FreeBSD serves as a router which is connected
to the internet through a 28.8K modem.  Two consoles are connected to the
Sun.

Currently plans include upgrading the Sun 4/260 CPU to a Sun 4/####, replacing
the ALM II card with an IOlan terminal server, improving the bandwidth of the
internet link, adding additional dial-in lines, and putting our backup Sun
box into service as a news-server.

2.0 CURRENT SITUATION

For the last few years, Grex's computers have been housed in the basement
of a 150 year old residential building on Ann Arbor's west side.  The city
recently determined that (1) although the computers are usually unattended,
that space is to be classified as office space, and (2) that the ceilings in
that space are too low to conform with the fire safety code.  Because of this,
it is urgent that we find a new location for our equipment.  We probably
will need to be moved before the end of September 1996 at the absolute
latest.

So we have been searching for a new location for our equipment.  We need 80
to 100 square feet of space, with adequate ventilation or air-conditioning
to keep our equipment cool, and 24-hour access for some of our staff members.
We would prefer a location where we could keep our current 761-XXXX phone
numbers, which is stable enough so we are not likely to have to move again
in the near future, and which is as inexpensive as possible.

We had been paying $25 a month (not including electricity) in our current
location.  We could possibly stretch our budget to pay as much as $100 a month
if necessary.  We have located a few rooms in commerical buildings that would
be feasible, though none so far are extremely attractive.


3.0 PROPOSAL

[omitted here]

4.0 CONTACT INFORMATION

Telneting to Grex:           telnet cyberspace.org

Dialing into Grex:           Dial 761-3000 with comm program set to 7E1
                             Note: If you have an error-correcting modem you
                             may have difficulty connecting unless you either
                             turn off error correction or call 761-5041
                             instead.

Grex's web page:             http://www.cyberspace.org/

EMail to board & staff:      baff@cyberspace.org

EMail to board:              board@cyberspace.org

Grex board members:
  Scott Helmke (chair):      scott@cyberspace.org     (313) 998-0194
  Steve Weiss (secretary):   srw@cyberspace.org       (313) 995-8250 ext 5632
  Mark Conger (treasurer):   aruba@cyberspace.org     (313) 741-9351
  Misti Anslin (publicity):  mta@cyberspace.org       (313) 741-3451
  Steve Gibbard:             scg@cyberspace.org       (313) 769-2628
  Rob Henderson:             robh@cyberspace.org      (313) 487-4931
  Valerie Mates:             popcorn@cyberspace.org   (313) 667-6789

Other Grex staff members:
  Steve Andre                steve@cyberspace.org     (313) 995-3556
  Greg Cronau                gregc@cyberspace.org     (313) 741-0748
  Michael O'Leary            nephi@cyberspace.org
  John Remmers               remmers@cyberspace.org   (313) 665-5388
  Marc Unangst               mju@cyberspace.org
  Marcus Watts               mdw@cyberspace.org       (313) 485-5045
  Jan Wolter                 janc@cyberspace.org      (313) 995-6716

US Mail:                     Cyberspace Communications, Inc.
                             P.O. Box 4432
                             Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432

response 38 of 53:

Sep 2 03:45 UTC 1996

It looks excellent!  I picked some more nits:

Introduction: missing word: we are interested *in* locations.
Section 1.1, bullet 3: missing word: "we want our system to be *as* accessible
as possible...".  (Or is it spelled "accessable"?)
Section 1.1, last bullet: missing word: "...interested *in* maintaining..."
Section 1.2: missing word: "All users get access *to* the following..."
Section 1.3, second bullet: "allowing *them* to experiment with..."
Re answers to obscure questions: Maybe something's available in the info
conference, or in jellyware or test?
Last paragraph of 1.3 is especially cool!
Section 1.5: Could probably say we want to upgrade to a Sun 4/400, though
in reality I think it's something like a 4/460.  STeve would know.
Section 4.0: Phone number for STeve is wrong; maybe best omitted.
Section 4.0: Marcus's phone number doesn't look right.  I think it's 485-4045.


Re 37: Hm.  Mary, your recollection and mine of why those Internet
restrictions are in place, differ.  Are they only temporary and only because
of a bandwidth shortage?  I thought otherwise.  I suppose this should have
its own item, though; I'm sure it can generate a lot of discussion.

response 40 of 53:

Sep 2 11:12 UTC 1996

The proposal looks good to me.  I only wish I had accurate numbers
to fill out your ####'s.

response 42 of 53:

Sep 2 12:30 UTC 1996

Re 41: Right, middle of response 37 is the actual text of the vote.  I'm not
sure the text of the vote supports the conclusion in the first paragraph of
#37.

response 44 of 53:

Sep 2 19:02 UTC 1996

*Cheer*

response 46 of 53:

Sep 3 15:49 UTC 1996

superior piece of work, janc. nifty nits. agree that mta should
incorporate this in the grexbook after it is finely polished.

response 48 of 53:

Sep 4 03:42 UTC 1996

Some [parts of it may be appropo, but I don' think it's appropriate as whole
cloth addition.    Certainly the reasearch you've done is extremely valuable.


As I mentioned in e-mail, my phone number is wrong also.  (About 6 months out
of date.  Darn, I thought I'd made the change everywhere...!