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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
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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janc
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response 275 of 624:
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Jan 7 04:38 UTC 1997 |
Re #271: Anything is technically possible. Your suggestion of asking
the person who enters an item (or responses?) if it should be readable
by unregistered users would be more difficult than others because it requires
changing both Picospan and Backtalk, since items can be entered from either.
Limiting the list of conferences that unregistered users can read requires
much smaller changes to Backtalk and no changes to Picospan.
Technical issues aside, I'd oppose that solution because it seems absurd to
bother users everytime they enter an item with the question of whether
unregistered users should be allowed to read the item. It elevates a
relatively trivial issue to rather high visibility.
Re #273: On the basis that becoming registered requires about 5 minutes of
time, and the surrender of no information whatsoever, while becoming
validated may require weeks and the surrender of some real personal
information. Thus one is much more clearly an act of censorship than
the other.
I think people are playing a little fast and loose with the term "censor-
ship" here. I could claim the Ann Arbor News censors all stories not
printed on the front page, because they make the stories unavailable to
all people who can not or are not willing to open the newspaper. Certainly
"censorship" is the act of making certain information more difficult to
obtain, but we have to differentiate by the degree of difficulty injected.
There is a very big difference between requiring registration and requiring
validation.
If some version of unregistered reading passes, I expect I would implement it
with lots of lures to tempt people into registering reading. For example:
- At the bottom of each page, where the "response" text entry box normally
would be, you'd see a message something like:
To post your own response to this item, you must first LOGIN TO GREX.
If you don't have a grex account, it is very easy to GET AN ACCOUNT.
If you click on "LOGIN TO GREX" you'll be prompted for login and password
and be popped right back to the same page, now with a response box. If
you click on "GET AN ACCOUNT" you'll go straight to the web newuser form.
- When you ask for a list of conference, any conferences not open to
unregistered users will still be listed. If you try to join them, you'll
get a message similar to the one above, inviting you to register and
login before you can proceed.
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jenna
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response 276 of 624:
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Jan 7 05:01 UTC 1997 |
I reall fail to see why a compromise won't wrok, and a compromise
such as has been discussed would be fine with me.
The thing is.. if poetry decided to stay closed and somebody,
say Kerouac, wants an open poetry he can come to coop and ask
for another poetry conference whihc is open, or he can bring the issue
back up in the poetry conference and see if more people support him.
I assume it wuln't be set in stone.
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valerie
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response 277 of 624:
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Jan 7 05:50 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 278 of 624:
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Jan 7 07:00 UTC 1997 |
I guess that would mean that the intro conference could only link items from
conferences readable by unregistered users. That could pretty seriously limit
its mission.
(Janc persists earnestly saying "unregistered" instead of "anonymous" even
though it clearly isn't catching on.)
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remmers
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response 279 of 624:
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Jan 7 12:29 UTC 1997 |
I can't work up any enthusiasm at *all* for a "compromise"
that destroys the simplicity and hassle-free character that's
always been a nice feature of Grex conference structure.
Here we are talking about putting in a system that requires
getting a "concensus" of conference participants (how do you
measure that?), instituting "rules" about linking, probably
would require a committee to resolve disputes, and in general
invites politicization, bureaucratic entrenchment, and
continual hassles. GREX DOES NOT NEED THIS.
Grex used to pride itself on being a system with few rules.
Why are we even considering going down this road?
Of the three choices: (1) anonymous access to all conferences,
(2) anonymous access to no conferences, and (3) the "compromise"
currently under discussion, choice (3) comes in dead last for
me, by a wide margin. Let's not do it. I think it's a really
really bad idea.
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valerie
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response 280 of 624:
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Jan 7 16:11 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 281 of 624:
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Jan 7 16:45 UTC 1997 |
(I'm finding myself being tugged this way and that, and being persuaded
alternately by each of the three choices. My preference at the moment
is the *90 day trial open access*.)
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janc
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response 282 of 624:
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Jan 7 17:01 UTC 1997 |
I mostly agree with John that the compromise creates too much bureaucracy
around too small an issue. I think the status quo is just fine.
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kerouac
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response 283 of 624:
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Jan 7 17:10 UTC 1997 |
I dont think there is a compromise right now. Any compromise that allows ANY
of the conferences to be closed to any group of users while others are open
simply doesnt work. The board should simply vote on the basic issue
I think more people want anonymous reading than dont. If Grex is run by
consensus, and the consensus is there, go for it. Doing it on a 90
day trial basis seems perfectly reasonable.
I'm curious...werent there more people as strongly opposed to going on
the 'net? And wasnt concensus reached then without a compromise?
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raven
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response 284 of 624:
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Jan 7 17:35 UTC 1997 |
re #283 No one is being closed out. *Anyone* can register using newuser.
If we go with completley open access we will make many users extremly
uncomfortable, we will lose the fw to the poetry conf along with about
1/3 of the items in the poetry conf, and we will most probably lose a
couple of our vetern users who have been on this system for years.
There is an issue of respect here, if we go with completly open access we
are *not* respecting the feelings of those who feel that having anonymous
(unregistered) users violates the community feel of certain conferences.
Under the compramise 86% of the conferneces will be open to anonymous
access. I counter propse that we try the compramise for 90 days with an
informal agreement among fws that permission be asked of the fw of a
conference without anonymous access before it's linked to a conference
with anonymous access.
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albaugh
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response 285 of 624:
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Jan 7 19:07 UTC 1997 |
I still think we could interest a potential new grexian enough to register
by just showing a list of conferences and the items in them, instead of making
the actual items themselves available for unregistered reading. Is there any
benefit to grex and grexians by encouraging web lurkers? If grex's objective
is to improve things for grexians, then encourage nongrexians to register.
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