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| Author |
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| 25 new of 171 responses total. |
danr
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response 50 of 171:
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Dec 26 14:49 UTC 1994 |
re #41: Ahhhh. I see what you're after. In fact, I have requested more
input on our hardware and software wants and needs, so we could do
better financial planning but have been unsuccesful in getting it.
You've done better in this item than I've been able to do in person.
re #45,49: Cyberspace Communications, Inc., is a non-profit
corporation. Being a non-profit corporation is a different than being a
business, but doing some things in a business-like manner is the right
thing to do.
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andyv
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response 51 of 171:
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Dec 26 15:14 UTC 1994 |
Well Dan, maybe we have grown to the point where this type of discussion
can't be put off any longer. I have a few problems with procrastination
myself so I can't be too critical of any procrastination on Grex. Hopefully
we now have reached a critical mass to generate some goals.
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kentn
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response 52 of 171:
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Dec 26 18:14 UTC 1994 |
Cyberspace Communications, Inc. aka Grex, is a *business*. We are
a nonprofit business and we are a charitable business, yes. Still a
business. Try that "we're not a business" argument in tax court
some time (which you may if you truly feel you don't have to even operate
as a business).
As your organizatitino grows, changes in its business operation will
become necessary. You don't have to change the Grex philosophy (although
that is also changing) of *doing business* however. You'd (the Grex
chaotic organization that is rapidly becoming incapable of making
a decision) better come to grips with this and start planning for the
future of this organization in other terms than "oh, I've thought about
it, and it'd be nice, but I'd rather not deal with that now". We can't
even keep up with the day-to-day problems of running Grex (no, we can't;
disk problem isn't fixed, new ROMs aren't in, News has been down for
months, we've been paying rent on the Dungeon for many months and still
haven't moved, etc.). Laissez-faire management only works so far...
we've gone beyond the point of no return on needing to apply business
management principles and tools.
We *can* go back to that nice, small, homey, little Grex conferencing
system of 3 years ago--just pull the plug on the Internet. We'd lose
a lot of diversity, a lot of neat people and their experiences, but so
what? We'd be able to avoid the dirty word "business" and we could go
back to a system that a small group (inner circle) can maintain.
We *can* NOT plan, NOT manage with forethought, if we want. But we
will keep bumping up against big problems that we hadn't anticipated
and then we'll scramble around for weeks or months (while people wait
for the Real People In Charge to give the okay to apply the fix that
most people could see from Day One). We'll saddle some poor soul with
putting together a tax return and hope like hell that we don't owe
anything. We'll grow a bit more and maybe get that T1 connection. Gee,
that'd be great. But we'll have so many people coming through every
day and so many problems we never expected (more hackers, well we expecte
that, possible lawsuits, etc.) that the current ("we don't want or need
to train more staff") staff will be even more laissez-faire (out of
necessity--if it doesn't fix itself, I don't have time to fix it"). If
you think that turning off the Internet would be a disaster, imagine
what things would be like around here with *more* commands broken more
often, even *less* new versions of software, more twits, etc.
The problem here is that Grex's growth is not matching the expectations
and the abilities (in terms of hours in the day, not skills) of the
staff. Sounds to me like you have a management problem, you need to
get more serious (read formal) about planning and operations.
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mju
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response 53 of 171:
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Dec 26 20:49 UTC 1994 |
Kent, reading your tirades without any offer of help is getting
tiresome. If you think there's a problem, then offer to help fix it.
That's the way Grex works. Nothing will get done if people sit in
the gallery and point at things and say, "That's broken", and sit back
and wait for someone to fix it.
"You" do not have a management problem. "We" have a management
problem. Grex is not some third party, Grex is you and me and all the other
users. There is no "you" here, only "us".
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andyv
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response 54 of 171:
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Dec 26 20:57 UTC 1994 |
Kent, pulling the plug on the internet connection is an option. The end
result of which wuld be to limit the growth. If that option isn't
acceptable to the membership, then how much growth can be handled if any?
What percent of the membership logs on from the internet i.e. are the
internet members paying the bills?
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kentn
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response 55 of 171:
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Dec 27 00:18 UTC 1994 |
Actually, I *have* offered to help. But I can see that it does little
good to do so. If you all find that to be a "tirade" then what is
all this talk about listening to the users? Some users are upset.
You've got to see past the anger and figure out what's wrong. Putting
down my statements and opinions as a "tirade" sounds to me like I'm
being ignored. If that's so, I'll stop contributing my opinions, and
I suggest others do likewise. We see the same issues come up again
and again, and it's not just me bringing them up...
andyv, I threw out the option of pulling the Internet plug because it
*is* an option, especially since you/we/Grex seems to have a problem
with growth. I think it's still possible to retrench back to where
we were years ago, but I don't think that's a realistic option. To me,
it doesn't look like "we" can go back, and "we" don't seem to want to
stay in the place where we're at, so we're moving "forward". But we
are essentially travelling blind.
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andyv
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response 56 of 171:
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Dec 27 00:55 UTC 1994 |
Kent, I didn't take your comments as a tirade. I don't get too upset about
how we name ourselves e.g. business, corporation, non-profit, etc..
The point is, we are in for some change one way or the other. How are we
going to deal with that change? Can we anticipate the change as a result
of a series of reactions and as a result of some plans; choose which way
we want to attempt; commit ourselves to a goal? The discussions hopefully
will continue along the way.
I am concerned that we will not be able to formulate a plan people can agree
on which will leave us discussing, reacting and hopefully staying afloat.
I am not much for buzz words but Covey coined proactive in THE SEVEN HABITS
OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE. Proactive or reactive, which one do we choose?
Since I am rather new here and I don't know where to get the info which would
give me a clue about the activity on Grex since the beginning, I am asking
people to fill me in.
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srw
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response 57 of 171:
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Dec 27 00:55 UTC 1994 |
Kent hasn't been completely on the outside and limiting his contributions to
criticising what the real contributors have been doing, Marc.
He helped us get the dungeon wired, and I'm very appreciative, because
otherwise who know how much more time we would have lost.
Some of Kent's points are well taken...
We have royally botched the dungeon.
It's a major fiasco, but we're finally coming out of it.
I figure it will have cost us $300 in rent for space we never used,
plus the efforts of volunteers to make the room suitable again.
The Rom may be a total loss, no one knows. Without updated ROM, the disk
may be usable only in this lame fashion. It's pretty sad.
But how can we turn criticism like that into something helpful?
It isn't helpful to complain that things aren't going well without
offering alternatives. We need people to pitch in and make things happen.
None of us has enough time to do more than a small part of the work.
I have hopes that with the dungeon as Grex's new home, that good things will
happen. We need someone with some experience running a news machine to set
up another computer in there as an nntp server, with a uucp link to its feed.
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andyv
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response 58 of 171:
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Dec 27 16:28 UTC 1994 |
I must have missed the latest financial report somewhere. Is it possible to
get an update?
When a check is received at Grex without an account designated, does any
of it get automatically get applied to the membership?
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tsty
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response 59 of 171:
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Dec 27 22:11 UTC 1994 |
mju, you have publically bitched out loud and nobody stomped
on you - why do you seem to be so hostile to someone else?
kentn's help has, now and then, been "accepted," as has mine, now
and then - as has yours. What's the problem?
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andyv
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response 60 of 171:
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Dec 28 02:24 UTC 1994 |
Happy New Year
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davel
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response 61 of 171:
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Dec 28 02:43 UTC 1994 |
I don't view what Kent said as either a "tirade" nor as unhelpful even as
it stands, ignoring other areas where he's volunteered help. I have in the
past, on other matters, but not this time. But it would be nice to discuss
*issues* without the need to jump on Kent for raising them, or even to defend
him for doing so. Also, personally, I have neither an attachment nor
an aversion to the word "business", but arguing about whether Grex is one
seems singularly pointless in this item.
SET DRIFT=OFF
I don't entirely agree with everything Kent said, but much of it is on target.
We are at the point where more administration (management) - and more
formal administration - is going to be needed. But we do need to be asking
what parts of The Grex Way Of Doing Things have got to vanish in view of
the fact that this isn't the system it used to be. Andy's done a nice job
here of getting a more coherent discussion than we've had in a while of
where we need to go in hardware terms, & boy do we need more of this; but
how we're going to manage this bigger, faster, *bigger* Grex has to come
into it too.
A bunch of people (I'm one of them) have indeed offered to move into more
staff-related technical areas. Some of them have no experience to speak of,
others have some; I doubt that too many have the kind of background that STeve
& Marcus & Greg & Mark & ... let's just say the current main techies ... have.
But there's quite a pool out there. Part of the problem has been that training
is *always* painful & expensive; part, though, is definitely that our
management style has been crisis-based for as long as I've been here. I
for one don't know how Grex is going to be able to survive a transition to
something else.
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danr
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response 62 of 171:
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Dec 28 05:03 UTC 1994 |
re #58: I'm sorry. I was waiting until the winter Agora got started to
post the November treasurer's report, and then forgot to do it. It is
now posted as item #33 in Agora.
When someone sends me a check without a login id, I can usually find out
who they are by using the finger command along with a first or last name.
I've never failed to identify a donor.
re kentn's comments: Your points are well-taken kent, but I think
the tone of your response was a little too inflammatory. The board
does meet monthly and DOES deal with these issues. If you don't feel
we're doing a good enough job, you certainly have the right to run for
office and campaign to replace us.
Having said that, I do agree that we need to take a step back and
take a look at where we are and where we are going. I'd almost say
that we need a "constitutional convention" to rethink Cyberspace's
reason for being. Only then can we make rational decisions on what
hardware and software we need to achieve our goals.
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andyv
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response 63 of 171:
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Dec 28 14:52 UTC 1994 |
Sorry for not wording my question better, Dan, but I meant to ask, Does
a person's contribution automatically get posted as dues for a membership
when not indicated otherwise. I want to find out if we are getting members
who in reality are just donors. Can I get a list of the services which are
available to members only also?
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danr
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response 64 of 171:
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Dec 28 15:23 UTC 1994 |
Yes. When someone sends a check, I assume they want to be a member,
unless they note that part of the money is purely a donation. Very
few people do this; you are the exception rather than the rule. :)
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cel
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response 65 of 171:
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Dec 28 20:42 UTC 1994 |
kent's remarks and #62 (danr) clearly illuminate the dilemma. grex is
experiencing a crisis of identity. i applaude andyv's efforts, but it
seems like some fundamental decisions and discoveries need to be made
before determining how to implement the next six months' hardware changes.
one option i haven't heard mentioned here is to use available budget to
fix the disk problem instead of improve other hardware situations. why
not sell the offending disk and replace it with hardware known to work?
or use budget to create a small Sun test system?
instead of responding to the growth pattern by expanding, why not
try to stabilize the situation? are there ways to stabilize the
growth, provide more reliability, make everyday operation easier,
build in some safety nets? arguably the most successful system
change in the last 6 months didn't involve new functionality or
more hardware -- it was the switch to sendmail!
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steve
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response 66 of 171:
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Dec 29 01:50 UTC 1994 |
Chuck, any disk thats big enough to help out out (> 1g) is probably
going to have the problem because of the controller(s) issue we face.
We need to drop back to two SCSI-3 creatures or switch to just the one
SCSI-3; right now when we try we can't boot sd0a from the new controller.
Access & time is the issue right now.
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andyv
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response 67 of 171:
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Dec 29 04:28 UTC 1994 |
Cel, would stabilization of the situation mean trying to control the growth
temporarily so we can get situated? Is it possible to stabilize on the fly?
I don't know if the growth is exponential, but the hardware and software people
need to stick their necks out on this one.
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steve
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response 68 of 171:
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Dec 29 04:58 UTC 1994 |
We're near to the amount of growth we can possibly handle. I don't
think that we can get much beyond where we are now, physically, with the
current speed Internet link. Yes, after getting a different routing system
in place, we'll have *some* more bandwidth, but that will be eaten up.
Grex has something like 700 people on each day during the week, and we
handle about 2500 pieces of mail (last time I looked, so that might be
off--haven't done a long term look at that) each day.
We'll grow, but I don't think by more than 25% or so.
Controlling the growth won't change the disk problem too much--when
it is less used the problems are less, but still there.
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andyv
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response 69 of 171:
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Dec 29 05:40 UTC 1994 |
When will we realize the 25% growth by? Will that 25% mean we will level off
at a level of use? Really? Doesn't sound like much growth unless it 25%
per week or month ;-)
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steve
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response 70 of 171:
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Dec 29 18:24 UTC 1994 |
Probably within the next few months. Growth has been climbing at
a steady rate. But there is only so much bandwidth on our Internet pipe,
and we're going to hit that. "Hit That", in the sense that as we get
more people on, things get slower. I think there will be an interesting
and largely uncalculable barrier where when it gets slow enough, people
just won't use Grex.
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cel
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response 71 of 171:
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Dec 29 20:08 UTC 1994 |
what i intended when i said "stabilize the growth" was this:
evaluate (or re-evaluate) the assumption that grex should continue
to grow in an unbounded fashion. clearly (#68) grex doesn't have
the financial or hardware or staff resources to provide a 24/7
unix system that can support, say, 1200 users a day at this time.
you've been discussing the option of how to get to that capability
without really considering whether you want to be there or not.
(although, i haven't been privy to in-person conversations, either).
it might be reasonable to control the amount of growth for a while
until grex has a better financial and hardware infrastructure (see
below). i don't think it wise to allow all these new users to push
grex, as a community, into decisions and situations it is not ready
for or may not want. i get the impression that many current members
liked the smaller system for many diverse reasons.
---------------
by better hardware infrastructure, i mean things like:
a) better access to the hardware [and that's coming soon]
b) a test system and spare parts
c) uptime commitments for the system and the net link
d) CPU and disk response time commitments
e) more trained staff
f) regular and reliable backups [perhaps also coming soon?]
you can probably fill in many more. i think this kind of thing should
be included in budgetary planning, along with a hardware wish-list.
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danr
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response 72 of 171:
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Dec 30 00:57 UTC 1994 |
re #70: We've actually reached that point, imho. Severeal people that
I've tried to get interested in becoming Grex users, have told me that
it's not worth the effort because Grex is just too slow.
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andyv
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response 73 of 171:
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Dec 30 01:01 UTC 1994 |
Since things will be slowing down in the next cuople of months because of
the steady growth without any change in policy, I think a policy change
is in order soon. I don't see why the paying members should have to suffer
because of uncontrolled growth and be paying for it with their money.
Maybe we should consider regulating how many nonmembers and newusers can
log on at the same time. I don't know if this could be done even. Or
possibly have a system of bumping nonmembers when members need to use a
slot.
Providing a public service is ok but not by damaging the effectiveness of
the whole system.
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robh
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response 74 of 171:
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Dec 30 01:17 UTC 1994 |
YUCK!
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\ V /| | | | | | ' /| |
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|_| \___/ \____|_|\_(_)
The minute Grex limits the number of non-members who can be signed
on is the minute I leave Grex for good.
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