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23 new of 52 responses total.
russ
response 30 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 6 16:26 UTC 2003

Re #17:  Try using Pine instead of Mail; Pine handles
attachments in a reasonably-sane manner, though I think its
pager leaves a huge amount to be desired.
twenex
response 31 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 00:26 UTC 2003

I meant X as in ther X Window System, which is the graphical part of UNIX.

Russ: did you mean to mention that bit about X in the demographics item here,
instead?
mynxcat
response 32 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 01:25 UTC 2003

Aaah. Ok, thanks
jmsaul
response 33 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 01:33 UTC 2003

I think the best way to deal with the huge number of conferences would be to
have a command that shows you which conferences have had recent activity. 
richard
response 34 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 01:51 UTC 2003

why couldn't all the dead conferenes be put in a seperate section, with a
separate menu, and then only keep live current conferences in the main menu.
A picospan I and picospan II
gelinas
response 35 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 02:01 UTC 2003

Probably because we can't agree on what is "dead," richard.

Yes, some way of getting a list of

        all conferences
and
        conferences with "recent" activity

would be useful.
mynxcat
response 36 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 02:04 UTC 2003

There isn't really a "dead" conference, only dormant ones. All conferences
can be revived if given enough time and activity. (Unless you can freeze a
whole conference?)

I like the idea of being able to view the conferences with recent activity.
rcurl
response 37 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 04:23 UTC 2003

Of what significance is it to a user that a conference is "active" or not
if the subject of the conference is of no interest - and if it is, any
user can make that conference active? 

mynxcat
response 38 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 12:55 UTC 2003

The concern with the dormant conferences is that when a new user reads through
them and sees that the last post was sometimes in 1999, and further, if he
comes across ultiple conferences like these, he's apt to dismiss the whole
of bbs as a dead feature that is no longer used. 

Also - can we do something about the conferences who's FW's ar eno longer grex
users? Either give them toother FW's or retire them or something?
jmsaul
response 39 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 15:59 UTC 2003

I'd suggest an option that lets you get a list of the top ten conferences in
terms of activity, when you log in.  I suspect that would drive more traffic
out to those conferences.
remmers
response 40 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 17:25 UTC 2003

M-Net tried that at one point.  How did it work out?
rcurl
response 41 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 7 19:38 UTC 2003

Anyone that enters a new and interesting post in almost any item in almost
any conference, no matter how old the last response was, will get a
response back. What does create a little humor is a response to an
obsolete subject, but few newusers do that. 

jmsaul
response 42 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 01:57 UTC 2003

Re #40:  It had a slight effect for the brief period we did it, but the main
         problem is that it was manually generated every week or so (Leeron
         might remember, because I think he generated it).  I'm talking about
         something that's automatic and up to the minute -- similar to how
         some web-based BBSes (e.g. phpBB) list threads in order of most
         recent activity.

         Incidentally, phpBB blows the doors off Backtalk, but I don't know
         whether it would scale for the number of conferences and items Grex
         or M-Net has.  I suspect it wouldn't, because the one php site I've
         seen with a truly massive amount of content was very slow.

         Anyway -- have it generated automatically, viewable at login and
         on demand, and see what happens.
bhoward
response 43 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 02:18 UTC 2003

Yep, that is the sort of thing I was getting at in item 19 (response 139,146).

Better tools to help people know where the action is on a given day.
jp2
response 44 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 03:43 UTC 2003

This response has been erased.

aruba
response 45 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 15:58 UTC 2003

Re #23 (tod): To get your session to drop when you log out, instead of going
back to the login prompt, put the line
/--------------------------\
| stty hupcl               |
| /----------------------\ |
| | in your .login file. | |
| \----------------------/ |
\--------------------------/
jp2
response 46 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 16:09 UTC 2003

This response has been erased.

gull
response 47 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 17:03 UTC 2003

Re resp:29: I'd hate to see old stuff weeded out. I find the old
discussions in the micros conference really interesting, for example. 
It's easy to forget what things were like when 386 desktops were new and
cost $10,000. ;>

Re resp:34: Part of the problem is conferences that appear dead are
often just dormant.  A lot of conferences that don't get much activity
are in my cflist.  They might be dormant for months but then someone
will post something that sparks a lively discussion.  If you move
conferences like that to the "dead pile" you just kill them off by
ensuring they'll never be active again.

Re resp:38: I'm not sure how anyone could get the idea that bbs is dead
that way, seeing as they generally have to come in through agora first.

I think the current scheme of having a main conference that gets rolled
over on a regular basis to stay fresh, and a bunch of other conferences
that mostly archive their content forever, is a pretty good one.  I
think what richard has is a solution looking for a problem.

We aren't, incidentally, the only site that works this way.  LiveJournal
does not remove dormant journals.  They move them to a seperate cluster,
for load balancing reasons, but they're still accessable.


Way back up there someone suggested SSL support for the web interface. 
I'd like to see that, too, but we'd have to think carefully about the
performance impact.  It may be a bit steep even for NextGrex.
katie
response 48 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 22:32 UTC 2003

HOw do I change to pine?
gelinas
response 49 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 8 22:49 UTC 2003

Try "pine" at the % prompt.
bhoward
response 50 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 9 01:20 UTC 2003

Katie uses "/b" as her login shell.  "!pine" should work
a little better for her.
tpryan
response 51 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 12 23:13 UTC 2003

        Can dead items be moved from the current confernce to
it's companion 'old'conference?
        Say like the music to grex by and the on stage items in
music should get linked to oldmusic, then the link destroyed in
the current conference.  That way you don't get the stark
barren wasteland of a empty new cf, when one is restarted.
gelinas
response 52 of 52: Mark Unseen   Dec 12 23:33 UTC 2003

That's an interesting idea.

To me, a conference covers a period of time, like a checkbook register.
When it gets filled, it's replaced with a new one.

Still, I can see the value of having a conference with just "current"
items, and another with "past" or "archive" items.

The drawback, though, is that then the conference loses the serendipity
of someone seeing an old item with new eyes.

Even for things like "Grexers on Stage", the old items show us a facet of
someone that we might not otherwise see, especially if they only perform
once or twice.
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