response 26 of 112:

Aug 7 15:52 UTC 1996

If one does not want ones works plagiarized than don't scrawl when on the
walls of the commons.  A dilemma indeed since how else does one gain note?

response 28 of 112:

Aug 7 17:28 UTC 1996

My only purpose in proposing this was to provide a means for
people who discover Grex via the Web to get a sampling of a few
discussions that are currently active on Grex, to whet their
interest and perhaps help steer people who do take out an
account into the conferences, which is something we're trying
to encourage.

The program I wrote makes it easy to create a web-viewable
version of the Intro conference. Yes, if I set it up as I
originally envisioned, the items would be indexed by search
engines. However, the Intro conference is high-turnover, items
don't stay around very long, so any pointers returned by search
engines would quickly become obsolete.

Would it address people's concerns if I set it up so that:
(1) the web version of Intro is reachable from Grex's homepage,
without logging into Grex, but (2) the items would not be indexed
by search engines?

As Jan points out, material entered in Grex's public conferences
is hardly immune from copying, even if Grex itself doesn't make
it web-accessible. I did an Altavista search for "Rob Argy" the
other day and came up with a copy of some item on Grex in which
he had responded. Somebody had copied the item and posted it on
the web somewhere.

response 30 of 112:

Aug 7 21:37 UTC 1996

I should say, BTW, that if thisis limited to the Intro conf,
I have no problem with it, as long as Rob (or the FW at the time)
continues to mention links from Intro to other confs in the relevant
items.

I already said I have no illusions about the trustworthiness of Grexers, and
I don't believe the iteems in question (Jenna's) were posted on Grex, I
believe they were posted on other systems.  It's an ethical and legal issue:
if I post something here, I expect that the administration, at any rate, won't
go sending it out elsewhere.  If users send it out elsewhere, well, there's
not much I can do about it.  If the adminsitration is going to sanction this
wholesale Web access, though, then that's a violation of my intellectual
rights.  I'm sorry if you guys can't see that, and my complaint is based on
the expectation that, in six months, someone will say, "Hey, we're doing
intro, why not Agora?" then another six months, "Hey, we're doing Agora and
Intro, why not... and why choose at all, what the hey, let's index the whole
damn system!"  It doesn't seem, rereading the conversation, that the person(s)
involved are interested in doing this, and indexing the whole system seems
counterproductive.

I post my poems for the enjoyment of the community I allegedly belong to,
remember?  Maybe some members of that community xerox my stuff and send it
to friends.  I don't expect the mayor to be one of those people.

Great Gods, "People do it anyway"... sheesh, it makes you guys sound like high
schoolers.  

A final iteration:  items were posted with specific audiences in mind. 
Expanding that audience with the poster's permission is a violation of the
poster's rights.  If Grex is to have the policy that the poster's rights are
irrelevant, than I'll simply cease to be a poster.

response 32 of 112:

Aug 8 01:58 UTC 1996

I shouldn't have to, Mary.

response 34 of 112:

Aug 8 05:38 UTC 1996

Some people find it very difficult to do that. We wish to make conferencing
more accessible to more people. It is practically the purpose of Grex. It is
not the purpose of Grex to force people to wade through queues or otherwise
jump through hoops. Those are (at the moment) necessary evils. I would hope
we could ban some of them.

Let's assume that nothing posted on Grex will become indexed. That is not
difficult to arrange, and I think indexing is giving people a lot of trouble.

We are working on making the functionality of picospan available via web
access. Users will need accounts in order to use the system effectively. 
Anonymous use is possible, but it could be limited if desired to selected
conferences. My point here, is that the web is just another way to access Grex.
Whether the reader uses a web browser instead of a telnet client should 
not matter a bit to the poster. I think of all of these would-be 
web-conferencers as full participants. Why shouldn't I?

Jenna, what I am saying is that just because they come in from the web,
that doesn't mean they aren't Grexers in any way. Being a grexer is not 
about using telnet. It is about conferencing.

Grex very much cares about the wishes of its users. All of the users.
No one is going to make high-handed decisions about matters as important as 
this. This is where we talk about these things, and work them out.

It is probably going to be impossible to satisfy everyone, but I will be
sorely disappointed if there are more than just a handful who wind
up dissatisfied by whatever compromise we come up with.

(Let's try to be open-minded and listen to each other.)

response 36 of 112:

Aug 8 16:21 UTC 1996

If people coming in from the WWW would still require a Grex account (or
equivalent), I have no opposition.  My opposition came from an understanding,
perhaps a misunderstnading, that specific files would be moved, whole cloth,
to an html that would not require any sort of identification to access.  The
items are, in a roundabout way, already indexed anyhow, aren't they?  I mean,
isn't there a UNIX command for searching a conference for a specific word?

I don't know why the distinction matters to me.  I realize that users can
fabricate their information to get to Grex.  But or some reason I'd want to
restrict access to people who are at least willing to go through the bother
of filling out the Grex user creation process, even if they make everything
up.

But wouldn't Web access of the type described still require telnetting? 
Monolith BBS has a Website and Web access to its BBS, but when you click on
"Enter the BBS" in the Web browser, you get telnetted to monobbs, same as if
you'd telnetted in the first place (the only reason *I* have for taking the
route, for instance, is because the computers at school allow only Pilot and
MSU-Gopher telnets -- which lets me get on Grex, among other things -- but
full Web access).  Is this a quirk of monolith?

Maybe someone (especially that original poster here) should specify EXACTLY
what the idea was, because I'm all confused.
(As if you couldn't tell =} )

response 38 of 112:

Aug 8 20:31 UTC 1996

Yeah, I can understand reticence over letting webcrawlers copy poems and
stories w/o accrediting or paying for them..

I can also understand letting the web read Agora - it's the general conf,
after all.

I can also see a reason to make webcrawlin', websurfin' dingledorfs become
'newusers' to access anything else.

Actually, I begin to also believe that those poems/stories might be best
"protected" by not making them accessible to the web, or perhaps even to
readers.

*IF* the dating of the confs is over 98% accurate, then I'd suggest that
this implies copywriting an perhaps such a message should greet ever
user/crawler of those confs -- Perhaps this should extend to all the
confs, such that grex is aware that posting in the confs is copywriting
and that author permissions, where the author is still viable here, apply
to all extracts?

Bear in mind that anyone can xerox a page from the library, and can
retype/rewrite that page and turn it in - it's plagarisim and it's
frequent. It would be up to the publisher (grex?) or the author to
prosecute the plagarizer..

response 40 of 112:

Aug 9 03:55 UTC 1996

I don't think an item creator's permission is any more important than an
item responder's permission.

response 42 of 112:

Aug 9 05:11 UTC 1996

It supports Lynx, but is much better viewed through a graphical browser.

The original poster here is Remmers, who was discussing a temporary solution
to making conferences visible on the web, by making static copies. In his
first implementation of this , the pages could be indexed. He could easily
fix it so that they don't get indexed. His solution is a set of static pages
which are copied from picospans conference database, although they could be
recopied on a regular basis of desired, to keep them sort of current.

Backtalk alwyas produces web pages which are inaccessible to crawlers.
This is because its URLS are always cgi-bin executable URLs with "?"
arguments. Crawlers ignore these. Backtalk will always report current
responses, as it calulates the web pages on the fly on demand.

Backtalk can permit anonymous access, but without creating an account,
anonymoyus users get no participatino files, so everything always looks new.
Also , you cannot post that way. All conferences are read only when you are
anonymous. 
Anonymous access could be limited to selected conferences if desired, although
we don't do that on the HVCN Backtalk site. 

I agree with just about everything Brian said in #37.

response 44 of 112:

Aug 9 16:38 UTC 1996

Then don't Backtalk Intro, only Agora.

response 46 of 112:

Aug 9 23:21 UTC 1996

Jan, Backtalk involves copying files, does it not?
Files which are de facto copywritten, Jan?
Copywritten works whose creators have not consented to such copying?

response 48 of 112:

Aug 10 05:14 UTC 1996

*ponders*  O.k., NOW i understand...
then how could it index?