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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
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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kerouac
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response 286 of 624:
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Jan 7 21:08 UTC 1997 |
If we have anonymous reading via backtalk, would we then have "guest"
login access via picospan too?
This is blown out of proportion because right now backtalk is too slow to
make it reasonable for an anonymous person to read entire confs through it.
One suggestion would be to *rotate* the confs that are offered for
access to anonymous readers, say monthly. This way anonymous readers will
have access to all of the confs at one time or another. Agora, Coop
and INtro can beoffered all of the time. The other confs would rotate
in groups on and off the "anonymous access" list from month to month, beingon
the list like every third month or so.
And the anonymous access list (of the confs currently being offered
for anonymous readers) can be kept in a public file so that users can know
before they post anyting if their conf is on the list for that month.
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valerie
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response 287 of 624:
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Jan 8 00:12 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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kerouac
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response 288 of 624:
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Jan 8 02:06 UTC 1997 |
I think the "rotating confs" idea does answer their concerns in a way. If
they know ahead of time that a conf is going to be on the "unregistered
users access" list for thirty days, they can remove any item for that
period and then if they choose put items back once the list has rotated
again. As long as users have the opportunity to remove their items or
refrain from entering items, by knowing in advance which month
unregistered users can read a particular conf, I think it answers the
basic objections to unrestricted access to all theconfs all the time.
I'm thinking of breaking grex's confs into three groups and every month
unregistered users would have access to a different group. This also
answers Jan's concerns that unregistered users be encouraged to register,
because they will never be able to read a conf for more than a month at a
time without registering.
This also accomplishes the purpose of letting unregistered users get a
true taste of grex and its confs, without anyone deciding arbitrarily
which confs are available or unavailable to unregistered users.
One side of this debate wants unregistered users to have access to all the
confs. The other side wants to be able to post items without worrying
about users having such access.
This compromise answers both concerns and is reasonable IMO.
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tsty
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response 289 of 624:
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Jan 8 02:08 UTC 1997 |
?????????POST? i thought you said "read?"
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kerouac
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response 290 of 624:
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Jan 8 02:13 UTC 1997 |
I did say post, for registered users, not unregistered users.
Addendum to my proposal: I suggest their be one conf and one conf only
that unregistered users not have access to. That would be the
storage conf, so that Jenna for instance, if Poetry is going to be offered
on the unregistered access list for the month of May or something, she can
link over all of her poems to storage and then link them back when the
list rotates again.
I also think that as such, all current fw's should be given co-fw status
in the storage conf so that the current storage fw's dont get overwhelmed
with requests.
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kerouac
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response 291 of 624:
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Jan 8 02:22 UTC 1997 |
oh, and as for older messages..I think any fw who has a conf with potentailly
sensitive mateiral should archive and restart their confs before a new
unregistered users policy begins. Poetry desperately needs a restart anyway
and
most of the other confs wouldnt be hurt by a re-start if it was deemed
neessary.
(note that Storeage conf is there to save archived material and that
unregistered users wuld not have access to storage)
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kerouac
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response 292 of 624:
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Jan 8 02:55 UTC 1997 |
Even better addendum.. Instead of rotating the confs monthly,
break the confs into *four* groups and rotate seasonlly and
do it in conjunction with each agora restart. This way
each conf would be available to unregistered users only at once
specific period each year (poetry and sexuality in the summer,
politics and history in the fall, .etc .etc)
This might even be better because unregistered users could read a
conf for a whole season before having to register to read it further
(surely noone reading a conf for that long is going to want to wait ayear
to be able to readit again!)
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jenna
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response 293 of 624:
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Jan 8 03:04 UTC 1997 |
I think Kerouac, your idea is more of a pin in the ass
to everyone than even the rules and bureacracy remmers
dreads. I know that if you do this, I'm delteing my items
permanenlty, period. I don't have time to link and unlink
hundreds of items every three or four mnths, I'm a full-time
student, as I get oler i have more and more to do and
less time for Grex at all.
--
The 90 day trail as proposed would be 90 days of objectionable
behavior. That's hardly a trial. How about a 90 trial
of allowing the conferences to decide. That seems like a more usefull
trsiakl (god I hate ntalks)
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kerouac
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response 294 of 624:
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Jan 8 03:16 UTC 1997 |
Jenna you have to compromise...anything that allows you to decide permanently
is not ac ompromise any more than if all the confs were available. This
allows your conf to be unavaialble to unregistered users three fourths of the
year
How much more reasonable could you want that that?
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raven
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response 295 of 624:
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Jan 8 03:29 UTC 1997 |
Kerouac *you* are the one not compramising here, my compramise would allow
for aprox 86% of the confs to be anonymous access all the time and it
protects the commnuinty feeling in poetry, sexuality etc all the time.
Plus it's simplicity compared to your byzantine rotation structure. :-)
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janc
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response 296 of 624:
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Jan 8 04:12 UTC 1997 |
I just ran into something interesting. While doing an Altavista search
I ran across this:
Backtalk Crash
Backtalk Crash. Oops. Backtalk has encountered a internal error. ERROR:
Undefined symbol 'login' in pistachio/chpwform:2. Stack:...
http://www.hvcn.org/cgi-bin/bt/pistachio/chpwform - size 2K - 3 Dec 96
The interesting thing here is that Alta Vista does seem to index cgi-bin
program output, at least sometimes. Here Alta Vista's web crawler seems
to have tried to change its Backtalk password on HVCN, which didn't work
because it wasn't authenticated . Alta Vista then merrily indexed the
error dump page.
It also seems to have indexed one of Backtalk's help pages, and some of the
Welcome pages. It doesn't seem to have actually indexed any items on HVCN
(or Grex) even though HVCN has unregistered reading enabled.
I'm still pretty sure none of these thinsg will index the conferences with
unregistered reading enabled, but they sure are weird.
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valerie
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response 297 of 624:
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Jan 8 04:55 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 298 of 624:
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Jan 8 07:08 UTC 1997 |
Just to toss another spice into the kettle...how about a 90 day trial during
which 50% of the conferences *chosen at random* in a double-blind design
are opened to anonymous reading? The question is - can anyone tell if one
is or is not? (I realize the paranoid could connect anonymously to see
if this or that cf were available - we'll have to agree to play by the rules
and not do that... heh.).
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chelsea
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response 299 of 624:
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Jan 8 16:24 UTC 1997 |
After we settle this could we then move right along into some type of
Confcom discussion? (We are clearly following in M-net's footsteps.)
I too would rather we keep things as they are than get into complicated
compromises. Soon, we will be so busy meta-organizing conference
administration that we'll only attract folks who like to meta-organize
conferences.
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