response 26 of 115:

Apr 2 06:48 UTC 1996

A *lot* of 19th century books are kept in libraries! They constitute the
bulk of what is called "great literature", and the bulk of the rest of it
predates the 19th century!  Admittedly  the bulk of writing done in the 19th
century has faded into obscurity, and should, just as most of today's
chitchat should too. Nevertheless, there accumulates in many cfs a lot
of still useful information, which can be found with "scan" and "find". 
That includes the content of items that have not been responded to for years.
Most cfs don't get restarted (and I think that coop itself should not be
restarted as often as it is), and they are becoming great repositories of
accumulated knowledge and lore. 

response 28 of 115:

Apr 2 10:21 UTC 1996

Hmm.... the one problem I can see with allowing users to link their own items
is spamming... What if somebody entered a Classifieds item and then linked
it to a bunch of other conferences?  And if the FW wasn't able to kill those
items?

response 30 of 115:

Apr 2 18:57 UTC 1996

I agree, Rane.  And as abusive as some FWs have been (present company 
included =( but i'm being good now), I can only imagine the chaos if
others were giving the same options.
The more users who have control of an item, the harder it is to 
control (by "control" I mean freezing, linking, etc., not actual control 
of content).

response 32 of 115:

Apr 2 23:12 UTC 1996

  Well, as long as the fw can kill and let it end up in an archival
defualt conf, where anything redundant can be killed outright, the
chances of spamming being a problem are minimal.

I only favor restarts of large confs because I fear that the larger and
more unmanageable a conference gets, the more unlikely it gets that new
users are going to be inclined to use it.  I want a place for those
old sex items and old coop items to go because I dont believe that
any of us can really know who we are without history.  The worst problem
we have in the world today is that too many people dont know their own
family, cultural and political histories.  People dont think they need
their past.

The sort of conf I am proposing allows grex to protect its heritage.  Years
down the road, it would be nice if users of grex could have a place to go
to where they can read these old items and get a sense of who founded
grex and why it came into exsistence.  And if they could see by reading
these old messages, how times and views have changed or progressed.  Grex
purging its past in the way it does is like if a library burned all books
the year after they were written and kept ONLY those copyrighted in the
current year.

There is enough space on grex for there to be a repository for preserving
this board's history.  

response 34 of 115:

Apr 3 02:33 UTC 1996

  I know that remmers.  I 've dropped the idea of taking away the
kill command (and I admit that I get carried away)  Instead I've come
up with alternatives.  The "archival" conf idea is a good one.
Letting posters link their own items, as long as fw's can kill items
and keep spamming to a minimum, is perfectly reasonable.  At least
I'm coming up with ideas.  I'm not saying they are perfect but 
they are constructive and they do address problems.  I never said I
had perfect ideas, but my frustration comes not when my ideas are 
rejected, but when the problem is ignored.

We have a problem with user confidence in conferencing.  Participation
is down.  Remmers, I'd like to see some of your suggestions.  But I
see very few from anybody.  Your previous post served no purpose, it
neither presented or defended any ideas on how to improve things.  All
your post said is that I rant on and on.  So what? I happen to care about
Grex enough to do just that, and I believe strongly enough in the 
problems and the potential solutions to do just that.  Is that wrong?

Repeatedly I've tried to get staff to address shortcomings in conferencing
and staff response has been ambivalent to apathetic at best.  So Remmers why
dont come up with a suggestion?  Maybe you have better ones than mine.  But the
 point is I've cared enough to give mine.  What grex needs is ideas. I thought
that was the purpose of the coop conf.  Not to berate the few who step forward
and actually try to say something constructive.

The only purpose of your previous post was to point out that I have taken
the time to defend my positions, over and over, and hell yes I have.  Does
it really matter?  I thought it showed that I cared enough about the
problems that I didnt want my positions misunderstood, even if that means
repeating and repeating.  What you just did was attack me, a user,
for making suggestions and defending them, and that is a callous 
attitude for a staffer to have.  Your previous post defeats the purpose 
of coop.  

Cant we just stick to ideas...

response 36 of 115:

Apr 3 03:01 UTC 1996

Doble post?
er Double
If you want to fw an Archive conf, Kerouac, the new conference sitem 
is around here somewhere.
If you don't want to fw it, nobody else is interested, so maybe you should 
drop it.
Just a suggestion.

response 38 of 115:

Apr 3 11:12 UTC 1996

<remmers notes that #34 and #35 contain the answers to why
 kerouac is so unsuccessful in the persuasion department.>

response 40 of 115:

Apr 3 22:32 UTC 1996

Few libraries have "as large a volume as possible."
I've worked in a library (MSU), trust me:  we threw out  *plenty*.

response 42 of 115:

Apr 3 23:02 UTC 1996

well the library analogy is inaccurate anyway...this would be a
like a storage room, where all grex's old memories are stored.  If
someone knows just one person or two on grex, and those folks are old
users, they could go to a storage/archival conf and search by name
and get all the old posts by those users in there.  I think this could
serve a useful purpose and wouldnt hurt anything unless space
limitations on grex become a problem.

response 44 of 115:

Apr 4 07:47 UTC 1996

I was saddened to find out that most of the glorious conference that was
Sexuality has disappeared forever because the current fair witness has a
different vision than the original.  I'm not saying that what that fair
witness did was wrong, but I am saying that sooner or later, this may happen
to many of the conferences we have here.  

I don't have the ability to explain it, but I think Grex loses something
important every time one of those items disappears.  

Is there a simple technical way to keep killed items from being deleted 
permanently?  

Failing that, perhaps there could be a "good will" social mechanism 
whereby fair witnesses could get their items liked to some "storage" 
conference before they kill their items?  I think that kerouac has 
implied that he would be willing to do the linking if he knows which 
items are about to go.  If not him, then I'd be willing to give it a 
go.  

Or if that's not a good idea, maybe it would be a good idea to backup /bbs 
onto tape about once a year?  This method would probably end up missing 
some items or responses before they got killed, but it would probably 
catch most of it.  Also, it would provide a wonderful snapshot of "what 
is Grex" every year.  Then again, this would require someone's time other 
than my own, since I can't do the backups.  Perhaps one of the staffers 
also thinks that this would be worth while?  

response 46 of 115:

Apr 4 20:35 UTC 1996

#45...you mean arthurp AGREES with one of my ideas?! *shock*  maybe I do
come up wiht something constructive occassionally.  I think a storage
conf would work if *all* fw's had the ability to link into it, so that
no one person has to take the time to do all the linking.  In this way,
when an item becomes old, instead of retiring or killing it, an fw
could link it to storage first.  Such a conference will cut down drastically
on items being deleted from grex altogether.

response 48 of 115:

Apr 5 02:58 UTC 1996

yeah but see the problem is that those tapes arent acccesible without
making a special request and causing lots of trouble.  Having a special
conf is a better idea.  Besides, those tapes are recycled.  Maybe no
tapes should be recycled, but I guess that would cost extra.