response 307 of 357:

Jul 7 15:18 UTC 2010

LOL

response 309 of 357:

Jul 7 16:34 UTC 2010

er...as in stale ass 10 year old "food"

response 311 of 357:

Jul 8 19:36 UTC 2010

grex = twinkies

response 313 of 357:

Jul 11 16:03 UTC 2010

Wow, you guys sure do write a lot while I'm gone.

A few short notes (I don't have a lot of time right now to get too deep 
into the weeds.  Such is life for me at the moment; at least no one has 
been able to kill me yet, though they've certainly tried).

First, regarding the valerie issue.  valerie mates wrote a script that 
deleted all of her posts in almost every Grex conference, save staff and
 maybe coop.  She then used root privileges to delete her `baby diary' 
items in the parenting conference, though to my knowledge, she didn't 
delete anything else there.  Grex staff was urged to restore those 
posts, but did not.  As soon as it became apparent that staff would not 
restore the baby diary items, John Perry requested his divorce item to 
be deleted, and it was by Grex staff (I do not believe this was done by 
valerie mates, who, I *think* had revoked her own root access by then, 
but maybe I am wrong).  It was requested that that, too, be restored but
 again, Grex staff declined.  This then led to a series of member votes 
aimed at restoring the items, none of which were passed, and the number 
and frequency of such votes then led to a proposal that a certain 
percentage of grex's members would have to back a proposal before it 
could be brought to vote by the general membership, which passed and 
became grex policy.

As I recall, both Mary and John Remmers were vehemently opposed to the 
deletion of the baby diary and divorce items and both lobbied hard to 
get them restored.

The facts of this are, simply, that Grex --- as a whole and as a 
community --- compromised its free speech ethic here by supporting 
censorship.  It really cannot be spun any other way.  Was it democratic?
  Yes.  But does that make it any less censorship?  No.  It just meant 
that the community democratically decided to censor itself.  I think 
it's sad, and that it has permanently diminished Grex's claim to freedom
 of speech, but in the end, it's what the community wanted.

Anyway, I just wanted to set the record straight on that.

The idea of a second system sounds interesting, but I'm not sure it will
 do anything other than dilute the already existing one.  That said, 
there might be a way to do both....

In order to explain that, though, one must ask the question, "What is 
Grex?"  Some say it's a community, but it's more than that, really.  
It's the union of the users who use it, the system itself (including the
 software that runs it) and the activities of those users on that
system.   Consider this: the Grex community could move to any other
conferencing  system, but has not.  Why not?  Because that wouldn't be
Grex.  So there  is something to be said for continuity in the technical
sense, since  that is part of the definition of the community.  That is,
the community  is defined, at least in part, by the system it exists on.
 For proof,  bear in mind that we actually lost a lot of users when we
moved from the  Sun to the current Grex machine (which was called
`NextGrex': That is,  the new hardware and the move to OpenBSD was the
NextGrex project, not a  re-invention of Grex as a system).

Now, in this, I'll say that I think the hardware is more or less 
irrelevant at this point.  We're running on x86 gear and will continue 
to do so probably until Grex ceases to exist.  There's just nothing else
 out there that's viable to move to.  So that part can be futzed with at
 will.  The software, however, is much more integral to what Grex really
 is.  People, for whatever odd reason, tend to get emotionally attached 
to software (be it operating systems, programming languages, or 
particular programs written in those languages and running on those 
operating systems).  I get a sense of nostalgia whenever I use VMS or an
 older version of Unix or an IBM mainframe because that's what I "grew 
up" on, so to speak.  Software has a much greater attachment than 
hardware for most people, and the Grex community is no different.  
Witness how many *years* it took to retire the PicoSpan program, despite
 having superior alternatives available.  There's still some nostalgia 
for that, I'm quite sure.

But here's the thing about software that, I think, is both interesting 
and relevant to the present discussion: software is *malleable*.  It can
 be modified and shaped to be, essentially, whatever one would like. 
Why  is this relevant?  Well, Grex is now running on all open-source 
software; there is nothing here that we don't have the source code to, 
and the only thing I think there's any question about whether we have 
the right to modify is the "gate" program, because it's not clear what 
license Jan Wolter applied to it when he wrote it.  Since it's available
 for download from his web site, I'd guess it's implicit that we can 
modify it as we see fit, but I really don't know if that's true or not, 
and I'm not a lawyer.  I sent him email asking him about it some time 
ago (because we made a local change to support job control under 
fronttalk on OpenBSD), but he never responded.  I doubt he cares, but 
perhaps someone who knows him better could ask....

Anyway, as I was saying, software is malleable.  Meaning that it can be 
molded to be, essentially, whatever someone would like.  All it takes is
 time and energy put into the software itself.  If Grex would like to
put  a modern face on itself, then there's no reason it cannot do so and
yet  retain compatibility with the retro feel that some value so dearly.
 All  it would take to do that would be some effort put into the
software  itself.  In many ways, this is exactly what fronttalk is: a
retro  frontend to backtalk, which is a web-based conferencing system. 
If  people want to extend the system in various ways, it's certainly 
*possible* to do so: just mold the software to be what people want.  The
 thing that's lacking here is time, energy, and people.

About a year ago, I wanted to do a lot of this kind of work, but, well, 
then I found out I'd be in Afghanistan, and here I am: typing this while
 leaning up against the side of a tent in Helmand Province, a 9mm
handgun  strapped to my hip with a couple of (loaded) magazines in case
the base  gets overrun.  I'm afraid I'm hardly in a position to invest
lots of  effort into re-working Grex's software for at least another few
months  (and if I take one through the running lights, then forever). 
That's  just the way it is.

So I think that, perhaps, a good question to ask is *why* Grex isn't 
attracting the type of people who would be interested in doing that sort
 of thing?  The answer to that is going to be a lot more illuminating, 
and I suspect that, in part, it has to do with the nature of the 
community itself.  People have drifted away, but few people ever ask 
why.  There's lots of speculation, but no one has polled those people to
 really get a feel for why they've moved on.  For instance, has anyone 
thought to poll people like Marcus Watts, or even Steve Andre?  Sure, 
the latter logs on, but only sporadically and he rarely participates in 
the BBS.

Anyway, I guess the point is this: recreating Grex doesn't require 
throwing away the existing system; it just requires another layer of 
abstraction.  Both can coexist happily on the same host.

Actually, that's something that's sort of always intrigued me: the idea 
of multiple communities existing within the same physical (or virtual) 
space.  I've thought about this quite a bit, and I know I've mentioned 
it here before (my "community of communities" idea); this grows out of a
 social observation I've made living in the physical world, that in any 
given physical space, there exist many, largely independent communities.
  Look around you sometime and you'll probably see what I mean; people 
with different friends and interests who comprise one community living 
next to another group, or hanging in some space that used by other such 
groups.  Why couldn't Grex be that for virtual communities?  Personally,
 I wish it was more of a draw for hacker types who are interested in
neat  technology stuff.  I see SDF as being something like that, and
wonder  why we're different.  I suspect that, at least in part,
historically the  Grex community has been so focused on making *one*
coherent community  versus fostering many using different software, etc,
on the same  machine.  This is what many people think is meant when Grex
says  something like, "we're a conferencing system" versus, "we're a
public  access Unix system" or just, "we're a public system."  Even the
name  implies a singular community.

response 315 of 357:

Jul 11 17:32 UTC 2010

Foobar formatting.  Sorry.

response 317 of 357:

Jul 12 05:50 UTC 2010

re #316 I think grex has forgotten the communal spirit in which it was
founded.  MNet had started as this liberal idealistic place, but then it
was bought by this guy who needed to see a return on his investment and
made business decisions.  Grex was started by disaffected MNet users who
wanted to be part of a community in which everyone could have an equal
stake, where one person didn't own it.  Where everything was shared and
the objectives were the common good, an internet community that users
could be part of and where nobody was more important than anyone else.
Grex was seemingly intended as a microexample of what society itself
could be if people worked together. 

What has happened is that the communal idea, of grex as a community
where the users collectively build something that is a whole of all of
its parts and everyone shares of what it becomes, has been overrun by
those with a libertarian ethic.  With all the freedoms it offered, Grex
has ended up becoming not the bastion for liberal idealism and community
that was intended, but rather a haven instead for those who don't want a
community, who don't care about a community.  The idealistic liberals
and progressives who founded this place and used to post here have been
replaced by libertarians and conservatives, those whose basic idea of
community is not to have one but to be left alone.  

Somewhere along the line Grex ceased being a community, and the great
idea behind its founding was lost.  Now its a place where right wingers,
libertarians and trolls, none of whom have or had any desire to see Grex
grow or thrive as a community, but all of whom can take advantage of
Grex's lack of moderation and censorship, are most of whats left.  

Grex was a great idea once.  But that was a then.  Now its just like an
old ship that lost most of its crew a long time ago and because it was
built sturdily and still sails, and hasn't sunk yet, pirates who
couldn't give damn of what it was built for are content to sail it
around until it sinks.

response 319 of 357:

Jul 12 13:29 UTC 2010

LOL...too little too late. 

gelinas is right...grex won't last the year

response 321 of 357:

Jul 12 14:54 UTC 2010

look,it's over. Times have changes it's time to move on. Or take 
tonsters offer and let him set grex up like m-net. Our dues are like 15 
bucks a year and we never go down.


thanks tony

response 323 of 357:

Jul 12 16:40 UTC 2010

Why don't we ask people to send in 3 months worth of dues?  That's 
currently $18.  According to our bylaws they will then be able to vote on 
a bylaw change to lower dues. The new, lower amount, could be made 
retroactive to, say, January 2010, so those that paid 3 months are now 
member for a year.

response 325 of 357:

Jul 12 17:04 UTC 2010

resp:324 I think that is a good idea

response 327 of 357:

Jul 12 17:55 UTC 2010

Rane. Don't walk...RUN... to the nearest movie rental place and rent the
1978 classic, "Animal House".

response 329 of 357:

Jul 12 21:08 UTC 2010

Re 324, so that's an excuse to repeat the mistakes of the past?  I don't
find that a credible argument.  Exceptional circumstances sometimes call
for exceptional measures but not necessarily now.  Honestly, if people
won't pay for a membership, even the Board, we are in big trouble.  I've
encouraged the Board to pay up to be in line with the by-laws.  We'll
see how that goes.  The idea of a 3 month membership that could be made
retroactive into a yearly membership sounds like a good idea to me, if
we can get the by-laws changed to allow that.  It would even apply to
the Board.