response 26 of 63:

May 22 12:29 UTC 1996

They are the Flintoids of the 90s. (obscure M-Net historical
reference)

response 28 of 63:

May 23 20:43 UTC 1996

   I think that "Indian users" are more noticable than others perhaps,
because of the unusual--from our point of view--login IDs.  After doing
a "who", a vinesh or gupta is a fairly good indicator of at least some
background on them, just as "fred" or "mary" denotes european 
chaacteristics.
   And so, since there are a fair number of them, and their names
stand out, they're "noticable".
   Some of these users (Indians) are seeking "sex".  I will however
point out that *american* males frequently do the same thing, and putting
on my "security hat" for a moment, *the worst* offenders on Grex have
been American males, in college.
   It is *flatly wrong* to say that 80% of the Indian males here are
seeking sexual gratification on Grex.  Back a little more than a year
ago, Wipro systems got on the net, and a couple employees there got it
into their heads that Grex might be "good for sex" (their quote).
After hearing about complaints about five times in as many days, I
rather forcefully informed these some 5 accounts that Wipro Systems
wouldn't like hearing from me *at all*.  I did just enough research
to get local phone numbers and names of the managers at Wipro, which
freaked them out a little.  Since then, *I have not heard of excessive
complaints about Indian users*.  Yes, staff has gotten *some*.  But
nowhere near what people might think.
   ...I'll also publically state that when women have written me
for help, I'v usually asked them about their experiences here overall.
I have heard some complaints about "overly friendly" young males, but
not constantly.  When asked where these people were from, they usually
said that they were from the US somewhere.  Some *few* have reported
about Indian harassment--there is more that I've never heard of,
obviously, but if its reasonable to assume that, in general, we hear
some constant percentage across the board of problems, I'll state
right now:

     Grex's Indian user population is no more of a problem than *any*
     other identifiable set of users.

   I have had many really wonderful talks with users there.  I for
one would be more than sad to see them go, or feel that they are unwelcome 
here.  It is true that many of them use English in a slightly different
way than we do, but thats how it goes.  There probably have been some
misunderstandings because of this, but I don't see it as any different
(or harder) than conversations I've had with users from the Phillipines,
Poland or Columbia.

   So: we have a huge population of Grex users in a country that
is 7000+ miles from here.  Neat.  Only problem is, we've set this
system up with certain expectations *for American/English speaking
people*..  Thats OK in one sense, but if we want better participation
from users in other countries, we have to look at ourselves, and how
we are doing things.  We need to think about

 - Helping grex users in other countries find out abou each other,
   and encourage them to get together.

 - Getting a new idea across that group contributions pooled together
   could work, and be sincerely appreciated.  Even a dollar a month
   from only 50 users, could really add up.

 - Helping people set up their own Grex-like systems.  Thats what
   this item is about.  Jan mentioned that there aren't many places
  that have the needed set of talents to do this, but India might
  be one of the few non-firstworld countries where that could 
  happen.

response 30 of 63:

May 24 05:11 UTC 1996

I would love to see another Grex, or Grex-like system. Isn't the idea of
creating a shared community system the whole reason Grex was created
in the first place?

response 32 of 63:

May 24 07:04 UTC 1996

Hrm.  I've tried talking to several Indians, and their English has
been so abyssmal that it's been impossible to carry on a conversation.
Out of curiosity, Steve (Andre), have you been logged on in the wee
hours?  That's when the probelm is teh worst, and it's not racism,
based on the handles, since many of the Indians have distinctly
non-Indian-sounding handles.

What *is* racist, of course, is painting the Indians as universally
sex-crazed.  If I personally have given that im-pression, I apologize.
In my experience (having close relationships with three women,
two of whom who have female-sounding handles), the *likelihood* 
that a given Indian user will be after netsex is significantly igher
than the likelihood of  given American user.  Of course, the horniest
group of users is most likely the American males 16 to 23... 
AT any rate, this whole thread is seeming rather moot, since
regardless of origin, harassers should be dealt with case-by-case,
not by nuking Bangalore on principle... I just wanted to reinforcem
my disagreement that Indians users are a problem at all...

response 34 of 63:

May 24 09:02 UTC 1996

<< ?? elder Weiss ?? >> someting abut a song?

response 36 of 63:

May 24 13:09 UTC 1996

   I haven't been on during the wee hours much in the last couple
of months, except for some weekends.  It may be worse at that time--
I can't say.  However, I would expect that we'd hear complaints
about it more often, if it were really common.  Now, I might be
all wrong about dead-of-night harassment, but it doesn't seem likely
to me.
   If there are people who read this who have been harassed, espically
more then once by the same person, I'd like to know about it.

response 38 of 63:

May 25 03:42 UTC 1996

   Ha!  Using write rather than talk--thats funny on the theoritical
level, but probably aggravating as hell to the person who had it
happen to them.

   I think you're right Rob, Indian users are more forthright in
their questions.  It's a cultural thing.  I think also, that Grex
is the first time that many of the Indian users have had the
oppurtunity to talk to a real American.  From what I've seen,
a lot of people in India hold Americans in fairly high regard,
or are at least curious to see if we're all like what they see
on television--and they *do* see a lot of us on TV; American
television is the most popular foriegn TV culture that India
gets, according to a study I read about that.

response 40 of 63:

May 25 18:26 UTC 1996

   Again, I flatly disagree with that.  Indians want to talk to people.
I have had more than *100* Indian users talk to me--I have a little
card right here next to my terminal, where I've been keeping track of
the ID's that write me.  It might even be more than that, since this
card doesn't travel with me to the Dungeon and I get written there
all the time.
   When I do things like w and ps, I see Indian originated writes/talks
to all sorts of people, of both sexes.

response 42 of 63:

May 25 23:52 UTC 1996

Maybe they just don't like me, then.  =}
I've gotten talk requests from maybe four Indians in the last 
four months...  and I'm usually on when they're at their thickest.

response 44 of 63:

May 26 01:53 UTC 1996

(Actually, a student from India chatted me in a bookstore a few weeks ago.
Very interesting, he just wanted to *talk*, etc.

response 46 of 63:

May 26 02:20 UTC 1996

  Add me to the males who get many chat requests from Indians.  It
seems odd to me that I can't recall the last time I've gotten a
general chat request from someone *not* from India.  Sometimes they do
a "write help" to talk to me, but just want to chat in general.  I'm
surprised Paul has found communication impossible with most people
from India, as I've had no real communication problems in my talks.
If I don't feel like chatting, I try steering people to party if
they haven't already discovered it, and most people who are chatting
random individuals don't seem to know about it yet.

response 48 of 63:

May 26 06:37 UTC 1996

Maybe all the Indians on could be persuaded to pass the hat and pay your
way?