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Grex > Coop9 > #27: Motion: To allow anonymous reading via Backtalk | |
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| 25 new of 624 responses total. |
jenna
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response 325 of 624:
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Jan 10 00:17 UTC 1997 |
I also think no conferences should choose, actually perhaps the person
who]proposes the new conference shoudl propose which way they want ti to be.
if the eventual users
change their minds, they can change there minds. I ALSO would like to add a
.. wait alright
lets thin logically here jenna.
I think the part about not allowin new conferences to be grex-only
should be scrapped, that old conferences restarting is not an acceptible time
toopen the conference to the web, and that AT any time anybody in a conference
can start an item discussing changing from the status quo. Such as:
if the cooking conference has been on th web for three months but some people
decide
they hate being on the web, say a majority, and express it in an item,
hopefully their fairiwtness
can and will change the status of the conference. I don't think ti needs to
be a permanent thing.
Maybe the new conferences won't want to be closed, never having had the
concept of it in
the first place. (I think it oulwd be great if my sense of the lind
ending kinda shifted a few words to the left ;<)
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kerouac
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response 326 of 624:
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Jan 10 01:43 UTC 1997 |
#325...this is not about confs being or not being on the web, they have all
been "on the web" since Janc installed Backtalk. My feeling is that
putting those confs on the web was a system decision, and making them
available to unregistered users should also be a system decision.
The central flaw in rcxurl's plan, as it was in raven's, is that letting
theconfs decide makes Grexitself hypocritical. Grex would be saying that
on the one hand, under no c ircumstances may a conf close itself to
registered users, but on the other hand, with *other* users it can make
its own choice. If this is allowed, then Grex would have no argument for
those who ask why they should not be allowed to close their confs to any
user, registered or otherwise.
This is like a states rights issue with Grex as the federal government and
the confs as states. Unless you establish who has jurisdiction, yoiu can
ne ver make policy. Determining levels of access is a system-level issue,
and falls beyond the jurisdiction of the conferences themselves. The
conferences were created on grex, not the other way around.. So saying
that users of individual conferences or fw's of said conferences, have the
right to determine who can or cannot have access is giving them
jurisdiction they do not have. Grex would live without the poetry conf.
The poetry conf could not exsist without grex.
So my feeling is that any compromise that blurs the lines of jurisdiction
on a permanent basis shoshould be unaccceptable. At some point those
boundaries have to be made clear or the board and staff may as well
abolish themselves, because users of the confs will decide they can always
make up their own rulesand never accept outsidejudgements and authority.
Grex will collapase, as m-net already is, if it does not have a strong set
of central operating guidelines and clearly set out rules of access that
all conferences follow..
So I dont think any of the compromises, including my own, are ultimately
acceptable and that there should just be a straight vote, "make the confs
available to unregistered users (yes or no?)"
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raven
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response 327 of 624:
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Jan 10 02:29 UTC 1997 |
re # 326 You sure *don't* know your history part of the reason that m-net
has seen better days is because they have a centralized confernce structure
(called conf admin) like you are proposing. M-net has endless arguments
in the policy conf because they try to run things in a centralized fashion.
If you would give democracy and decentralization a chance I think you
would find it would run smoothly and most importantly make people on
Grex happier. Why not give the people (in the confs) what they want
instead of dictating a bunch of rigid rules from above? Your imagined
slippery slope about conferences closing themselves to registered users is
just that imagined, if any conference tried to do so I'm sure that would
not be allowed by staff as *open access* is a part of the Grex by-laws.
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nephi
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response 328 of 624:
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Jan 10 02:50 UTC 1997 |
Two words: Pandora's Box.
I think that this compromise will start a contentious beaurocracy
that will later come back around to haunt us. And I can't agree
more with raven's "inflexible overgeneral rules" statement. Do we
really want to get entrapped by arbitrary rules? That is so not
us . . .
Also, if I can I will link all the Grex humor items to a page on
my web site. This page will probably get indexed by webcrawlers
as "humor" and other popular key words. Lots of people using
Webcrawler will come across my page and hit Grex with hundreds
of http requests. It is quite likely that they'll only read a
tiny percentage of what they made Grex serve, and it is exceedingly
unlikely that they'll ever jump to Grex so they can become a part
of our community. Additionally, they'll get a very skewed image
of what Grex is by the few items that I'm likely to link. Any that
decide to take on a Grex account based on what they see on my pages
will probably leave shaking their heads. Is this the sort of
advertisement that we want? What will happen when dozens of people
start linking their favorite items to their homepages -- when the
webcrawlers start indexing those pages, too? What happens when
someone decides to link an item about sex from the Agora conference
and that gets indexed? Are we willing to let our little system
become flooded by people who most likely won't wait for an item to
finish downloading before they head on to the next page Webcrawler
served up?
And what if I decided to put the "Kerouac Item" on my homepage and
get that linked to the webcrawlers under Richard Wallner's name?
Or what if I decide to take some other item out of context and link
it to my website to embarrass someone? All of this becomes entirely
possible and incredibly easy for anyone to do when we allow
accountless reading via the web . . .
Hmm. That's not quite all of it -- just some stuff I thought up
off the cuff. I'm not feeling particularly creative tonight. I
bet that some of our 13 year-old users will find much more creative
uses of this new feature if enabled . . .
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jenna
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response 329 of 624:
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Jan 10 03:56 UTC 1997 |
Kerouac, do you know how much fuss this country has always had about whether
to have
strong centralized government or not? after England the colonies
were so reluctaant to embark on central government they irst set up a
confederacy. After awhile that didn't completely work out, and some
compromises about who had power over what were struck up. NOwadays most people
think of themselves as Amrican anyway and consider the federal governemnt
the big one, but for a ,ong time this was a huge issue. There;s no reason not
to give the conferences some power over what happens to them.
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e4808mc
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response 330 of 624:
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Jan 10 05:29 UTC 1997 |
How much of nephi's vision is possible? If it is as easy as he indicates, I'm
more concerned than I was about unregistered people being able to read, post,
or especially, link Grex items to their home pages.
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rcurl
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response 331 of 624:
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Jan 10 07:00 UTC 1997 |
That would not be true for the sensitive/exempt cfs under plan "B". In all
the cfs in which I am involved I have no problem with users doing that.
That's just more communication and information distribution, which I
favor. (Actually, it would make me regret even more that the "exempt" cfs
are exempt, since if anything the world needs more sensitive discussion of
sensitive subjects, not less - but unfortunately everyone doesn't see it
this way.)
So, where do we go from here? As things stand, this is Valerie's item and
it's her option to pose the final wording of her motion. Since Grex does
not follow ROR, only she can pose the final wording of *this* item for a
vote, but anyone can start another item with a differently worded motion,
which I am inclined to do for my proposal, which I think attempts to
address the disagreement, even if not perfectly (which doesn't sound
possible). However that would be confusing. I'd therefore like to ask
Valerie what she intends to do.
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valerie
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response 332 of 624:
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Jan 10 07:01 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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valerie
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response 333 of 624:
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Jan 10 07:01 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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valerie
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response 334 of 624:
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Jan 10 07:07 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 335 of 624:
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Jan 10 07:18 UTC 1997 |
Re #332 re #319 re linking re.... my modified proposal says no exempt cf
items will be linked to other cfs. However than cannot be done
automatically. It could be the policy, but someone is sure to violate it.
Hence, someone would have to kill the link, and only staff can do that. It
should be hardly any work, and also, more staff could be appointed for a
minor chore like that (or it could be the cfadmin's jo). I'm trying to
keep it simple....
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kerouac
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response 336 of 624:
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Jan 10 17:01 UTC 1997 |
#334...I dont hate everything...I just think taht if the purpose of anonymous
reading is
to give potential registered users a sampling of what grex is, that it would
hurt grex to have some of the confs available and others not. It would give
a skewed view of grex, and doing that defeats the overrall purpose.
If noone would be satisifed ever to have a situation where only SOME
of the confs were available to registerd users or members or any other
type of user, why is it suddenly okay to discriminate against
unregistered users?
What makes unregistered users lower forms of life than other users?
Either give them access to all of the confs or dont do it at all. I
agree with Janc, the status quo is infinetly better than any compromise that
would only serve to satisfy a dozen or so objecting users.
I tihnk a flat vote should take place to determine if there is a
true desire for a compromise. I think most dont want a compromise.
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kerouac
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response 337 of 624:
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Jan 10 17:22 UTC 1997 |
This is a few people on grex saying "let us discriminate against
other users on grex"
"Let us close our confs to other users on grex"
The minute the board says "Yes you may", then Grex is no longer
completely open-access. I cant believe most here wo uld want it to come to
that.
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valerie
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response 338 of 624:
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Jan 10 18:41 UTC 1997 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 339 of 624:
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Jan 10 18:41 UTC 1997 |
I don't think it would "hurt grex". We would be providing more open access
- a step in the right direction (IMHO) - while at the same time we would be
dealing with an issue within the current Grex community. We are not beholden
to anyone to provide unlimited open access...we have to deal with the world
as we find it. Besides, no conferences would be closed to anyone - every
conference would be just as open as it is now - or more. (As has been pointed
out repeatedly.)
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kerouac
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response 340 of 624:
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Jan 10 21:03 UTC 1997 |
Wouldnt it be prudent to have a vote first on whether to give
unregistered users access and THEN (assuming that is an affirmative
vote), have subsequent votes at a later time to determine compromises
with regard to methods of implementation?
It seems like getting ahead of ourselves to be voting on compromises for
something that itself hasnt been voted on.
(And I dont hate everything Valerie! I like everything mostly. Certain
things, like Grex, I like so much that I dont want to see its integrity
comprised. I dont think its possible to run a board like grex for any
length of time without some users being alienated and leaving. Its
normal. Sooner or later, it becomes apparent that trying to make
everyone happy, makes noone happy. )
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dpc
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response 341 of 624:
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Jan 10 21:36 UTC 1997 |
I think this issue is tangled beyond belief. I'll just wait with
Buddha-like patience until we're ready for a member vote (if ever).
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kerouac
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response 342 of 624:
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Jan 11 01:15 UTC 1997 |
Here'sadifferent idea. Whynotinstead ofmaking all of the confs
available to unregisteredusers, justhavea
"Conference of the Month"
Where one different conf each month is chosentobe available
on the web for reading andposting by unregistered users. Users are
more likjely tokeep reading if they can post, and since it
wouldbe a different conf eachmonthIdontthinkitwould
be much of aproblem.
This spares all thebureacracy oftryingtomake all or most ofthe
confs available tounregisteredusers atanyonetime.
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srw
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response 343 of 624:
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Jan 11 03:57 UTC 1997 |
Woah! I haven't had time to read coop since I went to Virginia to be with my
mom, and I come backto *THIS*! Very impressive, folks.
For the record, I personally believe that unregistered reading is a good
thing. I admire Richard's unswerving defense of it. However, I deplore the
unworkable suggestions. Rotating conferences, including the proposal in the
above response, are not a particularly workable or satisfying solution. No
one has proposed or supported them in any form except Richard. Let's drop that
idea.
While I think that there are important reasons to permit unregistered reading
(already expressed by Rane, Remmers, Mary, scg, and others) I do not think
it is an important enough issue to pay for with the better part of several
of our active conferences. Let's find a compromise that retains all of the
best of Grex (including Selena, Brighn, Jenna, et. al.) and still allows us
not to stagnate, but rather to grow.
I believe that Mike (nephi) is wrong about what will happen if (say) he puts
in a link to the humor item. Anyone who can find Mike's page of links will
indeed be able to follow the link to read the item. However, while his page
will be indexed, the humor itself will not be. I agree with Valerie that this
will work to bring in new conferencers. This will be a good thing -- not just
a drain on our resources.
I support the compromise, optimistically believe that all fws will respect
the restrictions on linking, and believe that it should be worded for a
membership vote as soon as is practical. It is optional (IMO) that it be
written as an experiment or permanent policy. We can always vote again.
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ladymoon
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response 344 of 624:
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Jan 11 05:38 UTC 1997 |
I support the compromise, grudgingly, but wholly. Raven, nice work. I do think
that new conferences should be able to decide, though, what they want to do.
Oh, and Richard- you have no linked item in Sexuality II. What were you
referring to?
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mta
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response 345 of 624:
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Jan 11 06:34 UTC 1997 |
This community never fails to astound me! A week and a half ago, had you
asked me about the likelyhood of a progressive and comfortable conclusion to
this issue, I'd have had to say I was sadly pessimistic.
But you've done it again! You've talked and talked and brainstormed and
shared your concerns until you've gotten this close to what looks like an
acceptable and reasonably comfortable compromise for almost everyone.
I'm impressed and proud to be one of you. Thank you for this inspiring study
on the best of human nature after a *very* bad week!
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rcurl
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response 346 of 624:
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Jan 11 07:51 UTC 1997 |
Thanks Misti but...uh...which compromise are you talking about? ;->
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mta
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response 347 of 624:
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Jan 11 08:00 UTC 1997 |
No particular compromise, Rane, just the changed mood of the item that says
a compromise is now within grasp.
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davel
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response 348 of 624:
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Jan 11 13:46 UTC 1997 |
What Misti said.
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jenna
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response 349 of 624:
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Jan 13 23:02 UTC 1997 |
And we had to argue and scream and yell to do it. it's the way we work.
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