response 35 of 73:

Jan 9 03:00 UTC 2004

Re 33> If that was a response to my post, I meant that the author should have
control over who could respond to their individual blog in the conference.
(If we decie to have individual conferences for individual blogs, yes, then
the FW)

I know it's not Grex policy to do that, and I don't want to see that happen
either. But without such a provision, we're going to have pretty unhappy
bloggers. Which is why I don't think the conference is such a good idea. But
I'm willing to see it as an experiment. But then I wouldn't participate in
it, except to read it.

response 37 of 73:

Jan 9 05:18 UTC 2004

I believe my suggestion of making a separate filesystem for the blog 
conferences, and having separate conferences for each blog, is 
workable on Grex using Picospan.  There are no obvious technical 
obstacles to it.

A conference on Grex is a subdirectory of /bbs, and also a line 
in /bbs/conflist.  For example:

   ag_ora:%agora48

The line in /bbs/conflist can point to directories which are not 
subdirectories of /bbs.  I don't recall the exact syntax, but I 
imagine it would look like this:

   jep:/blog/jep

The biggest obstacles are not the space or separate directory required 
for the conference itself, it would be the participation files.  A 
different participation file is needed for each conference you read.  
If blogs, using my proposed format, become common, then some users 
might have thousands of participation files for them, with each 
consuming 1 block of disk space and 1 inode.  I speculate a block on 
the home filesystem for NextGrex will be 1K, so 1000 participation 
files would occupy 1 MB.

There's nothing preposterous so far.  Disk space is really, really 
cheap these days.

If blogs using this system become really popular, it might be well to 
automate the creation of the blog conference directory and entry 
in /bbs/conflist.

Now for the advantages.  The powers suggested for the blog conference 
are the same powers a fw already has.  A fw of his own blog conference 
can make use of the rc, login, logout, index and bulletin files to 
customize his conference.  He can remove -- but not edit -- responses 
or items.  It would be possible, if the cfadm set it up that way, to 
have lists to permit or restrict individual loginids access, or write 
access, to the conference.

As I said previously, I am not familiar with blogs, but it seems to me 
this ought to add up to a pretty reasonable capability for producing a 
blog.

response 39 of 73:

Jan 9 15:10 UTC 2004

Is there no way to disable the link capability for the fairwitness of a 
conference?

response 49 of 73:

Jan 9 21:29 UTC 2004

You folks are setting yourself up for disappointment
here.  If you enter text in a blog conference, with all
kinds of special rules about how you'll be in control
of your own text, etc., etc., you be begging folks to
save copies of your items just because they can.

Doubt it?  Check out M-net about a day after you 
start feeling comfortable with your new control.

Grex is public.  You shouldn't enter anything here
you don't want public.  If you do, the system is
gracious enough to allow you to remove your words.
But we can't go any further and it's unrealistic to
expect we can make your mistakes go away.

response 53 of 73:

Jan 9 21:44 UTC 2004

Mary's got a good point about control of text.  On Grex or on any other 
system, there is no way for information to be both public and 
controlled.

I don't think that means a blog conference or system can't be part of 
Grex.  I think people just need to be aware that that's the way it is.

response 55 of 73:

Jan 10 01:07 UTC 2004

re50:  

/shoots fresca out of nose!

response 57 of 73:

Jan 10 02:25 UTC 2004

OOOh, what a Great Idea!

response 59 of 73:

Jan 10 11:39 UTC 2004

and it is FASTER.