response 25 of 75:

Mar 13 11:43 UTC 1996

I would be *STRONGLY* disappointed if we abandoned Usenet.
I have been spending a great deal of time on the Sun-4 upgrade with the
full expectation that when that was done the old computer would be 
available for use as a Usenet server. I had fully expected that when the
technical troubles were out of the way, that usenet would be restored
to the state it was when turned off. I find it particularly troubling
that, now that this goal is actually starting to come into sight, we
should suddenly talk of abandoning it. I have a counter proposal:

I think Grex should not support personal web pages, lynx, or any kind of
web server. It's a drain on CPU and resources and we're just going to
be swamped by all those people who flock here to use it.

Now whose sacred cow am I stepping on?

On the technical side, there is a problem with the arguement of: "Should
the Sun-3 be used for a news server or a mail server?" The problem is
that we *know* how to make the sun-3 into a standalone dedicated News
server. We *don't* know how to cleanly off-load mail processing onto
a separate machine. The are several suggested methods, but they all have
major problems. Centralized mail-processing is a perenial sysadmin
headache and there ar currently no perfect solutions to this problem.

response 27 of 75:

Mar 13 13:37 UTC 1996

Correction to #24: Usenet *reading* was always free to all; posting
was restricted to members. The members then voted to make posting
available to all *verified* users whether or not they are members.
There have been long delays in the implementation of that policy,
but as I understand it the technical obstacles have been overcome,
so as a matter of good faith I think it should be implemented
unless rescinded by another user vote. So if we do bring Usenet
back, it should be under the policy voted in by the members.

response 29 of 75:

Mar 13 21:27 UTC 1996

Maybe there's room for compromise here.  Everyone agrees that we don't need
to carry the binary groups which would vastly reduce the resources required.
Or should I say almost everyone.  

But even after eliminating the binary groups, there still may be a large
set of newsgroups that no one on grex cares about.  I'd say each user can
vote for a few favorite newsgroups.  We can carry the groups with the most
votes and as we prove that the system can handle the load, add less
popular ones. 

Everyone would be able to read all the groups that we carry, so there
would be no direct benefit to the voters.  Voting for favorite newsgroups
should probably be restricted to members or at least verified users so
that the ballot box isn't stuffed by a person who runs newuser many times.
Maybe votes could be sold as a fund raiser

I'd volunteer to count the votes and monitor the traffic levels.

response 31 of 75:

Mar 13 22:14 UTC 1996

<robh applauds kaplan>

response 33 of 75:

Mar 14 02:44 UTC 1996

  Surely noone would have a problem if it could be set up so usenet
was offered read-only to non-members, or non-verified users, and with
posting priviledges for members.  Again, I dont believe Nether has
been swamped with usenet users, and whatever load it has its handling
for the most part, so I question the "we're gonna get swamped fears"
Surely those are the same fears echoed when grex first went on the 'net
and continued to offer free e-mail.  Certainly grex is on more tahn
one web list as a free e-mail site.

I vaguely remember 2+ years ago when I first accessed grex that trn
and tin were there, but they were so slow I was horrified.  In fact
they were the slowest usenet readers I'd ever seen, even if I couldnt
post.  If they cant be any faster now, they arent really worth having.

response 35 of 75:

Mar 14 08:25 UTC 1996

Since tin is such a hog, would it be possible to make trn the only
newsreader available?  Would this help reduce the load on the system?

response 37 of 75:

Mar 14 10:53 UTC 1996

Re #33: I'd think anybody who takes seriously the bylaws provision
that policies can be adopted by member vote would have a problem
with restricting usenet posting privileges to members at this
point. I'll remind folks again that the members voted to make
usenet posting available to all verified users, whether they're
members or not.

response 39 of 75:

Mar 14 22:50 UTC 1996

#37...doesnt make any difference to distinguish since the only verified
users for the most part are members.  Now, if grex goes to closed confs
because of cda and has to verify everyone, that would make a differenc...
but fears about open usenet to all users, verified or not, are probably
unfounded.  Nether doesnt verify users.  I know other sites that offer
free usenet to unverified users.  They havnt been swamped or abused.
Verification outside of use for membership purposes is just more
bureacracy.  If the consensus is to allow open usenet, then anyone with
a login should be able to use the newsreaders.

Insisting on verification for use of usenet and not requiring it for
email makes no sense.  The fears in both cases would be the same.  In fact
it would make more sense to require verification for offsite email, because
that would cut down on people using bogus and alternate logins to run
mailing lists and mail bomb people.

response 41 of 75:

Mar 14 23:15 UTC 1996

Re #39: usenet is usually a lot more public than e-mail. One can cause
more problems for Grex by spamming usenet than one can with e-mail
(not that one can't cause problems with e-mail - its a question of which is
easier for staff to deal with).

response 43 of 75:

Mar 15 03:53 UTC 1996

   Jan is right in #40.  Really, the "alt" heirerarchy is the
problem.  With none of the normal social conventions for the
creation of groups, that is now the biggest set of newsgroups.
Making a baseline and then adding the various alt groups that
people want makes sense to me.

   Richard, I'm not interested in nether's policy/experience
because Nether isn't Grex.  I should that I'm interested in
hearing about them, but still, we're different systems with
different clientele.  Regardless of their policy and problems
or lack thereof, we will have a problem if we made things wide
open.  For whatever reason, we're a magnet for electronic pond
scum.  There have been enough incidents of fraudulent mail usage
giving Grex as their mail-drop that I alrady think too many
people might remember cyberspace.org as one of "those places".
aving one good spam to 5000 newsgroups would definitely put Grex
on the collective nets shitlist for several weeks.  Now, there
is no gauruntee that some verified person won't do this to us
at some point in the future (if we get news back up), but I
know that our chances are dramatically lessened by demanding
verification first for posting.

   Lastly, unauthenticated email is different from usenet--
very much so.  A single post on usenet to one group can hit
100,000 people easily these days.  A spamming of one message
on 1000 different groups can bother 1 million people and I
mean that litterally.  If anyone doesn't believe that find
someone who has the usenet aribtron monthly list and take
a look at the readership of the top 50 newgroups--it's just
unbelievable.  The fact that an anonymous person could spam
from Grex right now with an email<->news gateway doesn't 
really matter: its too complicated for most vandals to deal
with (they really are pretty dumb as a whole).

response 45 of 75:

Mar 16 12:10 UTC 1996

Re #39: I'm certain that when the staff implements the usenet
access policy that the members voted on, there will be plenty of
requests for verification from non-members. Unless and until
the members vote to rescind that policy, the staff is obligated
to implement it and can't just unilaterally adopt a different
one that they might think is better.

response 47 of 75:

Mar 19 07:20 UTC 1996

responses # 9, 10 and 25 are worth the echo ... i won't print
them here, but at the R/P prompt, try    only 9, only 10 and only 25
just to pick up the right flavor for Grex, imnsho.
  

response 49 of 75:

Mar 20 01:03 UTC 1996

There probably isn't anything that works in a text-only environment
like Grex that's comparable to what AOL offers in the way of
newsreading software. Actually, I think 'tin' is a reasonable
choice for a text-based newsreader if the system has the horse-
power to handle it. I've heard it's a resource hog.

If grex offers usenet, it will get serious support from staff.

After thinking things over, I'll reverse what I said early in this
item and come down as being in favor of offering news again, as soon
as it's technically feasible. Whether we do or not won't affect me
personally since I read news elsewhere, but in view of our past
statements commiting to offering it again, and in view of the
member vote on usenet access, I think we're obligated to.