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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
kerouac
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response 250 of 624:
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Jan 6 16:02 UTC 1997 |
BTW, I think that if/when this comes to a board vote, the other board
members should request Janc and SRW to abstain.
They are the authors of backtalk, and as this directly relates to
that program, they have a conflict of interest. Whether they vote for
or against anonymous reading, being two of seven board votes they
could decide the issue. Since they stand to benefit longterm from
proper use and publicity of Backtalk, anyone who doesnt like the
outcome could accuse them of voting based on the interests of the software's
future and not grex's. Idont think they would personally, since they
seem to disagree on the issue as far as I can tell, but not everyone has
read this item or would figure that out.
It is just better for appearances sake if the4y abstain.
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robh
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response 251 of 624:
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Jan 6 16:48 UTC 1997 |
I have no problem with srw abstaining, since he's no longer a
Board member. >8)
OTOH, I certainly think janc should have a say in how his program
is used.
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kerouac
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response 252 of 624:
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Jan 6 16:57 UTC 1997 |
oops, I forgot SRW's term is up. I stillthink Jan should abstain
We dont let the accused sit on the jury in their own trials, and shouldnt
let authors of programs decide votes on usage andimplementation. Why?
Because people with a vested interest one way or the other are not
objective, and if Jan thinks that anonymous reads will negatively impact
Backtalk one way or the other, he cant be objective either. He has
a vested interest in Backtalk's future and should therefore abstain from
any votes regarding Backtalk's usage.
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remmers
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response 253 of 624:
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Jan 6 17:01 UTC 1997 |
I hope that the original plan is followed and the issue put to
a member vote.
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kerouac
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response 254 of 624:
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Jan 6 17:12 UTC 1997 |
A board vote is really symbolic at this point, since it is certain that
anonymous reading willbe approved and robh will then call for a member
vote.
Lets just have the board vote on rcurl's suggestion of adopting anonymous
reads for a 90 day trial period. After 90 days, the issue of making it
permanent canbe put to a member vote. The trial period can be announced
ahead of time so anyone can take down any of their items. Nothing is lost
by trying it on a trial basis.
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janc
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response 255 of 624:
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Jan 6 17:47 UTC 1997 |
I don't really know if I'd abstain if this came to a board vote. I'm not sure
that there is a clear conflict of interest here. I don't stand to profit
either way. I don't see how anyone could claim that I oppose turning on
anonymous reading because I wrote Backtalk. Of course, if we finally decide
to turn on read access for unregistered users, I'll be in the interesting
position of implementing a policy I don't fully agree with. I think I'd
rather see this decided by member vote than a board vote.
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raven
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response 256 of 624:
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Jan 6 18:37 UTC 1997 |
Is anyone willing to address the substantive issues I brought up in 243?
I think this compramise addresses the needs of people who see some confernces
as being a community that they don't want read anonymously while opening
up perhaps the majority of conferences to anonymous access.
If people would agree to this compramise and frankly I think it's the best
compramise we can get, then that just leaves the technical issue to be
addressed. Perhaps we should hold off on a vote untill we get the
hardware upgrade & better inter connectivity?
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raven
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response 257 of 624:
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Jan 6 19:16 UTC 1997 |
To make this a little more concrete I scanned the list of confernces and
came up with a list of 15 conferences where personel issues are discussed
where people might be uncomfortable with anonoymous reads. They are:
Poetry, Writing, Scruples, Cyberpunk, Synthesis, GLB, Homme, Femme,
Oathbound, Recovery, Sexuality, Inbetween, Cflirt, and Smalls. This is
out of a total of 92 (by my count) conferences on Grex. By my calculation
that means that only 16% of confernences on Grex contain material where
anonymous reads might be a problem. Ofcourse to get exact numbers we
would have to have discussions within each conference to see how
participants feel about their responses being read anonymously. Rcurl has
already started this discussion in the environment conf that he co-fws.
I am in favor of turning on anonymous reads for those confernces where it
is ideas and not feelings that are discussed. Some one puts a good
recipe in the cooking conf and it gets linked to some ones web page,
fantastic Grex is providing a service to the web community.
I am not in favor of anonymous reads for confernces like sexuality and
poetry where there is a community feel and people are revealing personel
information about themselves. If someone wants to particpate in the
poetry conf they can run newuser, it's simple and it makes them part of
the Grex community. This will also give people a little incentive to run
newuser after doing an anonymous read. They might think well I enjoyed
the intellectual stimulation in the world conf but I'd really like to see
that sexuality conf I guess I'll run newuser so I can see it, and
participate in it.
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popcorn
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response 258 of 624:
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Jan 6 20:10 UTC 1997 |
It's sounding to me like we might have a workable compromise here: Have the
participants of each individual conference decide if they want the conference
to be open to anonymous reading on the web.
Jan: Is this a change you could and would be willing to make to Backtalk?
Maybe add a fair witness command so the fw can control whether the conf is
anonymously web readable, based on what the users think?
Robh/Jenna/Brighn/etc: Is this something you think you could live with?
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chelsea
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response 259 of 624:
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Jan 6 20:29 UTC 1997 |
I'd be happy to sponsor the membership vote if rcurl
would come up with the appropriate language for the
policy. I think he feels about the same way I do
about this and his draft would probably work a lot
better than anything I could come up with at this point.
But I too think a membership vote is the best way
to go.
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popcorn
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response 260 of 624:
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Jan 6 21:08 UTC 1997 |
Ya, I'm thinking to put the compromise in #258 up for a membership vote, too,
if most people seem to think it's workable.
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robh
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response 261 of 624:
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Jan 6 21:51 UTC 1997 |
I could live with the #258 compromise (is that the name for it
now? Like the Charlottestown Accord that Canada voted on few
years ago? >8) though I'd probably reduce or end my participation
in open conference, just as a matter of personal taste.
The biggest problem I see with it, though, is that we'd need to
come up with a policy on linking items between conferences, and
it would need to be enforced.
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raven
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response 262 of 624:
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Jan 6 22:10 UTC 1997 |
I also think this item should be linked to agora so we could get the
input of the vast majority of Grexers who aren't reading coop.
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kerouac
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response 263 of 624:
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Jan 6 22:31 UTC 1997 |
The problem with the #258 compromise is that there is a lack of consensus as
to whether a fair witness owns his/her conf and has the right to make
any decision about whether a conference is closed to anyone. Since
current policy doesnt allow fw's to close their conferences, suddenly
allowing them to close their confs to anonymous readers is inconsistent
I think if you give fw's that right, you impy the right of fw's to
close their confs to any group of users to whom they dont wish to have access.
If fw's can close their confs to anonymous readers, the same reasoning
should allow them to close their confs to non-members. Allowing
grex's confs to be closed for any reason is contrary to what grex is
about. As a conf fw, I dont wish to be forced into making a decision that
I dont have IMO the right to make. Giving the fw the option of
censoring all the material in a conf is simply not a good idea.
And since anyone can get a login with a bogus id and bogus name, the
idea that even confs like recovery and poetry should expect to be a closed
and private group is ludicrous.
I'll repeat what I said earlier, that if a conf wishes to not be
open to grex web access policy, that conf doesnt have to be offered at all
via backtalk. That is a reasonable compromise.
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raven
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response 264 of 624:
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Jan 6 22:55 UTC 1997 |
re # 263 Not allowing anonymous reading is not censorship. I have fought
to keep *any* form of censorship off Grex for years. I was very opposed
to a proposal to give fws censorship power over conferences when that was
debated a couple of years ago.
I am saying the users of the conf should decide whether it's accessable
anonymously through backtalk. I would say it should be put to a straight
vote in each conference except I want to be able to listen to *every*
opinion expressed within the conf if one person *strongly* and for good
reason opposes anonymous reading of confs then I think the fw should
have the *option* of making the conf only accessable to users and members.
Like it or not the fw does act as something of a gaurdian/carekeeper of
a conf. If that causes problems then the particiapnts in the conf can
always ask staff to remove the fw.
BTW there is no "grex web access policy" a policy is what we are trying
to determine with this discussion.
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kerouac
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response 265 of 624:
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Jan 6 23:11 UTC 1997 |
I still think its a bad idea. Grex does NOT need every conf that
it has developing its own access policies. That would make things
too confusing and is not conducive to a stable environment. Grex
needs one set of policies that all of its confs have to live with and
conform to. That is the only way to control the productthat grex
offers.
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raven
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response 266 of 624:
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Jan 6 23:27 UTC 1997 |
Grex is not offering a uniform product it is offering *92* conferences
that talk about everything from peoples most personal activities
(recovery, poetry, sexuality) to the utterly trivial (vomit, the zone,
etc), to abstract ideas (world, agora, science, etc).
Each conf will not developing it's own access policies all conferences
will be open to users and members and *all* people can run newuser.
The only thing that is causing an "unstable environment" on Grex are your
pointless and unsubstantiated arguments.
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popcorn
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response 267 of 624:
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Jan 6 23:35 UTC 1997 |
Re 262: I did put an announcement in Agora to point people over to co-op to
see this item. At this point, I'm not sure it would be terribly useful to
plop a nearly-300-response item into Agora to ask the non-coop-readers to
catch up with it.
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kerouac
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response 268 of 624:
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Jan 7 01:43 UTC 1997 |
#266...if each conf gets to decide whether it will allow anonymous
readers access, they ARE developing their own access policies. Some
confs willbe open to all users and some will not. This is what grex
has labored long and hard to avoid, why closing any of the confs has
not been allowed. Once users of a conf can close their conf to one set of
users (anonymous ones in this case) where does it stop? You open
the door a little bit, you open it all the way. Grex is either
completely open access or it is not.
I submit that if any grex conference is allowed to close its conf in
any way to any group of users, grex's identity is changed. If any user
(anonymous or otherwise) tries to access a conf here and gets "sorry not
allowed, unless you do this or that", grex wouldnt be unique anymore.
Itwouldnt BE Grex. It would be like a thousand other boards where you
have to jump through hoops to get the simplest levels of access.
And when you get different confs setting up their own rules and deciding
who can read and who cannot, what you end up with is cliques. Not a
community of conferences that have anything in common. If an anonymnous
reader cant read one conf, heshouldnt be able to read any of them. If he
can read one, he should be able to read all of them.
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janc
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response 269 of 624:
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Jan 7 02:47 UTC 1997 |
Any of the compromises suggested could be implemented in Backtalk. Technical
considerations of that sort shouldn't be a problem.
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popcorn
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response 270 of 624:
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Jan 7 02:49 UTC 1997 |
Richard, you're rigidly sticking to your own idea instead of helping to look
for a compromise that everybody can live with. Part of what Grex is about
is finding solutions that work for everybody, rather than doing it the way
some one person thinks is best.
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kerouac
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response 271 of 624:
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Jan 7 02:51 UTC 1997 |
#269...Jan, does that include my suggestion of putting a button on the
Backtalk item posting screen so the author himself/herself can decide if
they want anonymous readers to read the item they are creating?
This seems bureacratically simpler than letting confs create their own rules.
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kerouac
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response 272 of 624:
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Jan 7 02:54 UTC 1997 |
Valerie slipped in...but what if there is no solution that works for everyone.
I think that is the case here. Sometimes hard decisions have to be made.
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chelsea
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response 273 of 624:
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Jan 7 03:41 UTC 1997 |
If a fairwitness wanted a conference available only to verified
users would that be a problem? Even if the majority of those
expressing an opinion on such restricted access agreed they wanted
it so? On what basis would we be able to say no to this and
yet say it's fine for a conference to not allow anonymous Web
reading?
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cmcgee
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response 274 of 624:
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Jan 7 04:21 UTC 1997 |
To repeat:
I'm puzzled by the way the "some open, some not" scenario might work. I have
no problem with the PFC conference being totally open, but what happens to
an item in a non-open conference that gets linked to an open conference?
Does
the fw of the non-open conferece give permission to link? the author of the
item? total concesus amoung respondents? Or could one respondent say, "Not
my posting!" and keep the link from happening?
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