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Grex > Coop > #284: Grex Town Hall -- How do we move forward? - Fall, 2010 |  |
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| 25 new of 334 responses total. |
kentn
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response 5 of 334:
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Sep 26 16:20 UTC 2010 |
Yes, this item was meant for agora (at the Board's request). We wanted
to capture ideas for improving Grex on an on-going basis. Of course,
people tend to use the item for announcements and off-topic questions,
but that's par for the course around here. The idea of putting this
item in agora was to get it wider exposure, since most users don't read
the coop cf.
As to linking to coop, that can be done (and has: see coop item 284) if
we want to collect ideas in a place where they won't disappear with the
changing seasons (actually they don't disappear but they become harder
to find).
If you'd like to see what the previous Town Hall item was about, see
coop item 278 or the previous agora (summer item 6). There are a lot of
discussions and ideas there. If you'd like to continue them, feel free.
Old coop items are also good for ideas if you'd like to resurrect them
here. You'll find that many of the current ideas have been discussed
for years and years already (with the same results).
What Grex needs to do is move beyond the discussion phase, choose some
reasonable ideas, and start implementing them. As I've said before,
many ideas which have been proposed to date are ones we can try and then
remove or modify, if they don't work as expected. So, keep an open
mind.
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keesan
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response 6 of 334:
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Sep 27 13:02 UTC 2010 |
Email would be more usable if grex would dump any mails with Subject:
=?koi8-r. At least 90% of spams recently are from Russia, and it would save
a lot of disk space not to be storing them in multiple mail accounts. I do
get Russian mails from real people, with real subject lines, never this one.
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richard
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response 7 of 334:
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Sep 27 16:05 UTC 2010 |
the web page needs to be more interactive. web email. web chat .etc
Need to face the fact that only minimal users now access grex in any
other way.
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rcurl
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response 8 of 334:
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Sep 27 17:18 UTC 2010 |
Does that make me a "minimal user"?
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keesan
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response 9 of 334:
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Sep 27 21:00 UTC 2010 |
I must also be minimal. I hate web access.
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tsty
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response 10 of 334:
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Sep 27 22:42 UTC 2010 |
guress i;m monimal as welll.
that said, web access does need ot improve considerably, imo.
cli access is plenty good, but it;s rally fallen out of favor for the
majority of surfers.
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richard
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response 11 of 334:
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Sep 27 23:32 UTC 2010 |
re #8,9, sorry but yes you guys are minimal, you guys are unix
dinosaurs. grex can only ever be signficant again if it moves into the
modern era.
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keesan
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response 12 of 334:
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Sep 28 00:24 UTC 2010 |
Dinosaurs take up a lot more space than a text file.
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nharmon
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response 13 of 334:
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Sep 28 02:14 UTC 2010 |
You know, if I were to sum up modern web design; minimalist, simplified,
and streamlined would be words I would use.
Richard doesn't know what he is talking about.
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keesan
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response 14 of 334:
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Sep 28 02:31 UTC 2010 |
I see a lot of really bloated websites.
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nharmon
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response 15 of 334:
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Sep 28 12:15 UTC 2010 |
A lot of websites need modernization.
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richard
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response 16 of 334:
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Sep 28 14:47 UTC 2010 |
re #13 neither does nharmon if he doesn't realize that grex will never
get new users, younger users, without a new approach, more interactive,
to its web page.
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keesan
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response 17 of 334:
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Sep 28 15:00 UTC 2010 |
Modernization is not always an improvement. A seed saving organization that
I belong to has its catalog on the internet now. It shows only the first few
sentences of four entries from each page (which has dozens of entries) and
is 200K in size because of all the fancy programming and their insistence on
including a long list of all the varieties offered, on each page (instead of
a link back to a list). Contains about .5K of useful info, then you need to
go to another page to see the rest of the entry. A lot of the users live in
farm country and could not get broadband if they wanted it. Dialup was taking
40 sec to load each page (with 2 pages per entry). The fancy fonts,
backgrounds, etc. for each variety wasted a lot of this space. Plain text
(or plain HTML) could have produced a page listing everything about 30
vegetables in 2K or so that everyone could have read. Form over function.
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twinkie
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response 18 of 334:
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Sep 28 16:37 UTC 2010 |
re: 16
How do you suppose a whiz-bang web page is going to entice new or younger
users, when there's already an oversaturation of places to talk about whatever
you want, through the magic of PHPBB?
I don't mean that to take a shot, but setting up a web BBS is literally as
easy as clicking "Install" and slapping a logo on top of a premade skin.
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richard
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response 19 of 334:
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Sep 28 16:45 UTC 2010 |
I'm saying that in the situation Grex is in, there is no reason NOT to
overhaul the web page. There is no status quo here to fall back on.
Grex is either going to change to survive or it isn't. The stats
clearly show that very few people dial in or telnet in anymore. Any
improvements have to be geared toward those using the website.
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slynne
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response 20 of 334:
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Sep 28 17:01 UTC 2010 |
Well richard, I am sure that if you would like to overhaul the webpage
and then submit your designs to the board, they will be fairly
considered.
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richard
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response 21 of 334:
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Sep 28 17:09 UTC 2010 |
re #20 I didn't say that I had the expertise to do this myself. It is
useless to "ask for suggestions" in my opinion, when the board won't
even consider the suggestions and then says, 'do it yourself' This
attitude gets grex nowhere. Why even enter this item if nobody wants
to change anything?
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mary
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response 22 of 334:
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Sep 28 17:35 UTC 2010 |
We want to move forward. We don't have any volunteer movers at present.
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slynne
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response 23 of 334:
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Sep 28 17:51 UTC 2010 |
FWIW, I am not on the board and have nothing to do with this item. I
just find the way you make your suggestions to be kind of obnoxious.
That is my own opinion and doesn't represent the opinions of anyone
else.
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nharmon
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response 24 of 334:
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Sep 28 18:16 UTC 2010 |
Yes it does, slynne, it represents my opinions too.
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kentn
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response 25 of 334:
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Sep 28 18:19 UTC 2010 |
The board is considering the suggestions you and others have made. What
makes you think we won't? I think updating the web pages and adding
more web apps would be a good idea. It's not so much that there are
plenty of other places with fancy web pages to visit, but that there are
few any more who like to use the command line and probably take a look
and run away fast. We'll never know what will work if we don't try and
I have to admit, it's more than a little frustrating to see every idea
torpedoed before it gets tried. At this rate, we won't do anything. We
can always ask for help in getting things done, but without a clear idea
of what we want to do, it will be frustrating for any volunteers.
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twinkie
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response 26 of 334:
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Sep 28 20:37 UTC 2010 |
re: 19
Since you've admitted that you don't have the background for doing it, I think
it's worth pointing out that overhauling Grex's web presence is not an
insubstantial amount of work.
There has to be some compelling reason to be here, though. And from what I've
seen, that reason is largely nostalgia. With the exception of zulu, there
haven't been any names in BBS that strike me as being new.
Years and years ago, you could have played the "Ann Arbor Flavor" card, but
that's largely gone now, and available elsewhere.
Having a flashy web site isn't enough these days to answer:
*Who do you want to attract?
*How will you attract them?
*Why do you want to attract them?
*What unique or compelling reason will they have to stay?
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tod
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response 27 of 334:
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Sep 28 20:55 UTC 2010 |
And how many pieces of flair are you wearing
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kentn
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response 28 of 334:
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Sep 28 21:17 UTC 2010 |
So, since a flashy web site isn't enough, what is? Any suggestions?
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bru
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response 29 of 334:
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Sep 28 23:10 UTC 2010 |
I would rather have a simple system than a fancy one that takes time to load.
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