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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 61 responses total. |
remmers
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response 27 of 61:
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Jan 7 13:59 UTC 2005 |
By the way, here are some statistics I ran across on the current state
of the blogging phenomenon:
By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a
key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet
& American Life Project in November established new contours
for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they
have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and
now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users
say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news
and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich
Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users
have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62%
of internet users do not know what a blog is.
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp
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mfp
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response 28 of 61:
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Jan 7 15:25 UTC 2005 |
Hi, Mr. Remmers!
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richard
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response 29 of 61:
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Jan 8 02:47 UTC 2005 |
ah, maybe Im just too attached to the old ways of doing things. Obviously
there are people who come here now and to them Grex seems like a quaint old
site. People won't drive old cars without air conditioning so you have to
put air conditioning in'em, no matter how nice the car is. Same thing here.
The bells and whistles become more important to buyers than anything else
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jep
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response 30 of 61:
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Jan 9 03:30 UTC 2005 |
re resp:27: I have briefly looked at blogs, but have never
participated in one more than that. I don't really know what the
excitement is all about. I keep seeing mentions of blogs, even in
newspapers, but that's the extent of my knowledge.
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jjnoyles
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response 31 of 61:
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Jan 9 10:51 UTC 2005 |
In response to richard (#29), at some point, the bells and whistles
become necessities. When I bought my Vic-20, I never imagined ever
being able to buy a computer with 1.5GB of RAM and a 120GB disk. At
that time, a 5MB drive costs close to $500.
But I wouldn't have purchased this PowerMac that I'm writing to you
from if it didn't have what I couldn't imagine then. I even got
dual processors!
It's really not about what you can sell, it's what you need to get
the job done.
Can Grex support blogs? That's the question upon which all others
hinge...
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lowclass
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response 32 of 61:
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Jan 11 03:02 UTC 2005 |
How much setup time and work, and how much maintainence?
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mooncat
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response 33 of 61:
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Jan 11 14:50 UTC 2005 |
If perhaps a couple design options were created- so that people could
just pick the one they like. Give the 'blog' owner the ability to
delete other people's responses (for innappropriate behavior if nothing
else).
It shouldn't take too much work/maintainence after it's all set up.
People with coding knowledge will likely play with the layout of their
blogs, other people will want a simple design that requires no tweaking.
As for set-up time, no idea.
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dpc
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response 34 of 61:
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Jan 11 16:00 UTC 2005 |
I like the blog idea a lot!
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krj
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response 35 of 61:
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Jan 12 03:04 UTC 2005 |
My thinking is that Grex either moves into blogs in a big way, or
else it becomes even more of a hangout for antiquarians than it
is now. I've been finding that even more of my long-time
friends are turning up at LiveJournal; unfortunately it seems to
take a death in the "family" to bring all this activity to my
attention.
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sholmes
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response 36 of 61:
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Jan 12 03:20 UTC 2005 |
I "think" most blogs also allow posting of pictures, so guess then grex would
have to allow too , else there would always be better blog sites which allow
pictures to be posted. And only bloggers we would get prolly would be current
bbs users , so few new guys maybe.
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janc
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response 37 of 61:
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Jan 12 03:31 UTC 2005 |
If you've never seen a blog, here is an example from an author familiar
to most grexers:
http://www.potifos.com/polygon/
No, blogging is not new. New is not the only possible virtue an idea
can have.
I would be amazed if this killed the old style Grex conferences. But if
it did, then it would indicate that old style Grex conferences aren't
working very well for people. I'd rather have people abandon
conferencing on Grex for blogging on Grex than have them abandon
conferencing on Grex for blogging elsewhere. I don't think either will
happen though. Conferencing still viably serves a niche.
I would initially not allow pictures. That is, I would not allow
pictures that are stored on Grex. Pictures stored elsewhere can already
be included in Backtalk postings, in conferences that enable that.
Can't remember if this one does.
As for storing pictures on Grex, we need to make some policy decisions
about that. Backtalk already has some support for attaching arbitrary
documents to posts (images, Excel spreadsheets, whatever) that is not
turned on here. I'd need to do some more work on quota code to make
that viable here.
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malymi
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response 38 of 61:
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Jan 13 09:55 UTC 2005 |
blogs and the conferences are similar in how they work, posts by people
which over time tend to form communities. if the original suggestion
that they be tied together is consider then would there not be blogs
named 'spring' and 'coop', just as there would be a new conference
'malymi' were i to create a blog? (there are some glitches i see in
this -- are there any existing collisions?) but i don't see the danger
to the conferences in general. there certainly may be danger to
particular conferences -- are not those in the most danger already
virtually dead? must the virtually dead be maintained forever merely
because they once had a following? even so, the conference/blog would
exist and some effort by the existing community could help make it
flourish again (just make a post a month may be sufficient), via the
magic that is indexing (and aggregation), something that is impossible
for the conferences as they stand. i.e., today you must have learned
that grex exists and come here and look before you can 'test the
waters', while being indexed via the blog interface (or a more open
backtalk) would mean that many more people might find the discussions,
the community.
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mary
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response 39 of 61:
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Jan 16 00:47 UTC 2005 |
This response has been erased.
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mary
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response 40 of 61:
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Jan 16 00:54 UTC 2005 |
I'll try later. The system seems broken right now.
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naftee
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response 41 of 61:
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Jan 19 08:25 UTC 2005 |
Yeah.
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mary
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response 42 of 61:
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Feb 10 23:37 UTC 2005 |
I'm hoping this topic gets added to the next board meeting agenda.
Adding blogs to Grex's mix could be a very cool. From reading over
the past 40 responses, it seems there is support for us to give this
a try.
Maybe we could start with a board vote endorsing blogs on Grex? I
suspect we'd need such a vote as administering blogs will give users
a much enhanced level of control over their journal or blog than
we've allowed in conferencing. Usually a blog's owner can decide
whether to allow comments from others. If comments are allowed, the
blog owner reserves the authority to remove comments and block some
users from posting. In essence, it's the blog owner's journal and
he or she makes the rules. I guess the only real limit I'd like to
see imposed is that the blog must be readable by all Grex users.
What do others think? Does the board need to authorize this? Am I
right in my sensing most of those here would like to try this tried
on Grex?
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scholar
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response 43 of 61:
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Feb 11 14:58 UTC 2005 |
yawn.
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remmers
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response 44 of 61:
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Feb 11 18:03 UTC 2005 |
Since support for blogs would add a significant new communication
avenue to the current conferencing/party/mail mix, and *could* have
an impact on those (especially conferencing), board endorsement would
probably be a good idea. I'm leaning towards handling this the way
the internet connection was handled when Grex first got one in the
early 1990s: Authorize it for an initial trial period (6 months? a
year?) and assess the impact at the end of that period.
I don't know the current position of this project in Jan's priority
queue (he's the one who suggested doing this and volunteered to do
it), but I'd encourage him to proceed, as I think it's a really good
idea for Grex.
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aruba
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response 45 of 61:
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Feb 11 22:33 UTC 2005 |
I still think it's a good idea too.
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mooncat
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response 46 of 61:
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Feb 15 17:08 UTC 2005 |
As do I.
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dpc
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response 47 of 61:
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Feb 16 00:11 UTC 2005 |
Me, too. I agree with remmers on how to handle this.
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gregb
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response 48 of 61:
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Feb 17 19:29 UTC 2005 |
I don't see there's much difference 'tween blogs and conferences. Both
are started by soneone about a topic, and both allow people to respond,
including the originator. So what's the big draw?
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mooncat
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response 49 of 61:
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Feb 17 20:06 UTC 2005 |
Blogs tend to be more personal, stories from the blog owners own life
rather than just 'on a topic.'
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tod
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response 50 of 61:
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Feb 17 21:14 UTC 2005 |
The "ridicule" factor as jep puts it might deter people from using them.
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mooncat
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response 51 of 61:
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Feb 18 02:31 UTC 2005 |
Perhaps- but if, as we've mentioned, there is more content control the
blog owner would be able to delete comments they didn't like.
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