response 51 of 326:

Oct 3 21:36 UTC 1995

I was initially vaguely in favor of reserving ID's, and now I am even more
so.  selena's analogy of login id as body is FAR more appropriate than the
analogy of login as name.  as has been said, MANYmany ppl have the same name:
 How many John Smith's do you think there are in the US and UK alone?

But logins, combined w/ system name, are COMPLETELY unique at any point in
time.  Believe it or not, I once had trouble getting on an online service,
b/c someone already had "lilmo", and I didn't want anything else.  But I don't
think I would have wanted it if someone active had previously had it, and I
was likely to run into ppl who knew the other lilmo.  I would feel, as  in
selena's post, like I was animating a dead body.  *shudder*  No matter what
you say, rcurl, that is NOT a pretty situation, but I fully agree that if
mlady wants to keep her current login, she should.  Personally, I think that
she SHOULD change it, for her own peace of mind, and mailbox, but I will fully
back whatever decision she makes, and will defend it, if called upon to do
so.  (Unlikely though that is.)

response 53 of 326:

Oct 3 22:05 UTC 1995

Here's an idea that would preserve the id of people who would be missed
with a minimum of official action from the staff or board.

When a person dies, a friend of the dead person sends mail to staff. 
Staff verifys and then changes the dead person's password.  Staff gives
the new password to the friend.  Friend can then clean up dead's files,
remove dead from mailing lists, and tell others sending mail to dead the
bad news.  Friend can also login as dead before three months to prevent
the id from falling into anyone else's hands.  Friend could pass dead's
new password along to other trusted friends.  But three months after
friends have forgotten about dead, someone else can take over the id. 

Once this policy is publicized, if someone dies without the fact being
reported by a friend, it can be assumed that the person won't be missed
and someone else taking the id after three months shouldn't be a problem. 

response 55 of 326:

Oct 3 22:33 UTC 1995

It wouldn't be that hard to verify.  Drop an obit clipping from the
newspaper in the molecular mail. 

response 57 of 326:

Oct 3 23:47 UTC 1995

  Jeff, I don't think that's a bad idea basically (friends could wait
until the account expires and recreate it to avoid verification), but
if/when people forget about "dead," it will still be annoying for new
users who choose dead's login id.
  Dharma, I don't think the policy/charter is that rigid - we deny 
users the login id's "bye" and "help," without any amendments.  :-)
Grex is open in some ways and not in others; it's not that binary.

response 59 of 326:

Oct 4 00:25 UTC 1995

  I didnt know any logins were reserved.  Why dont we reserve any ids
that are four letter dirty words, or ids like "dyke" or "fag" or "hymie"
because they are distasteful and offensive.  I think any logins 
currently reserved should be unreserved.  Who cares if someone has the
login "root" or "bin"   As the american civil liberties union (aclu)
says, you cannot replace the law with the intent of the law.  To do so
compromises the authenticity of the law itself.

At any rate, you guys should probably table this discussion and bring it
up at a board meeting.  This is a little thing, but it is often the 
littlest things that can compromise the integrity of large institutions. 
This is a case where the principle is more important than the seeming ease
of the solution.

response 61 of 326:

Oct 4 01:08 UTC 1995

  Well I dont know enough about picospan, but if there are
technical reasons to reserve a login, like root, that is clearly
different than the case being suggested.  One is being reserved for
objective reasons and the other suggesed would be for subjective reasons.

If, god forbid, steve died tomorrow, would the policy be that no person
named Steve could use the "steve" login on grex ever again?  To me that
is a highly subjective stance, one that says grex staff exercises
not just operational but "editorial" control of this system.  And that
flies in the face of my understanding of what Grex wants to be...

response 63 of 326:

Oct 4 03:17 UTC 1995

i would like to say that retireing one login of someone who died horribly
and well before her time will not hurt, diminish, smudge, curtial, oppress,
depose, kill, maim, reak havoc upon nor endager anyone's well being.
i say have some respect for the dead
richard: don't be a heathen
listen, if/when i die in a horrible accedent at the age of 25, i want
hope people will remember me for longer than 3 monts 'till my account gets
reaped.
end of line

response 65 of 326:

Oct 4 05:57 UTC 1995

Re #62:  harsh, but quite amusing, and, I hope, effective.

> See shades of grey, and maybe in a year, we'll graduate you to color.

Heh.  That's pretty good, I'll have to remember that one.

Re #54:  As I stated earlier, names are not really analogous to logins; names
do not have to be unique, and aren't.  LOGINS do have to be unique, at least
on each system.  Also, in general, when parents name their kids after someon
famous, they know what they are doing.  If someone inadvertantly chooses the
login of a formerly very active Grexer, they would be HIGHLY unlikely to
realize what they are doing, and what they are getting themselves in for. 
As was mentioned above, logins are more like bodies; completely unique, and
the primary means of recognizing someone when you meet them in their
respective domains, (bodies in real space, logins in cyberspace).

Re #55:  This was discussed somewhat when Barbara died, but the appropriate
person to notify would be the executor of the estate, not some person who
CLAIMS to be a friend, which may or may not be verifiable.

Re #56:  Many small colleges claim to be "open access", but there are still
reasonable restrictions.  As others ahve said, with as many dimensions as
there are to consider, there is no simple "open" or "closed" classification
system.  If one were to follow your logic, would that not mean that anyone
who logs on should be granted root access?  And why should we limit new users
to inactive id's??  And let's not have permissions set so that only staff can
change the source code for PicoSpan, or newuser, or login.  And how can we
permit users to set the permissions on their files so that others can not see
them?  Oh, no, that would be closing the system !!!  Personally, I disagree
with you that being denied my first choice of login is being denied access,
or makes Grex a closed system.

Re #59:  Yes, I agree completely, the principle IS more important than the
ease of solution.  I think the relevant princiiple here is that we want to
be welcome to users, and the new mlady's experience clearly shows that
allowing id's to be recycled is not always an unadulterated blessing

Re #61:  I don't think anyone is suggesting that staff be solely responsible
for controlling DDthe content of the system.  I think it would be reasonable
for staff to inform the board of any such actions, whether we have an official
policy on this or not, and I think they would.  And yes, it will end up being
a bit subjective, but that's life.  It was a rather subjective decision to
found Grex.  Your choice of login was somewhat subjective, I would imagine,
as was mine, and just about everyone else that didn't follow the cookie-cutter
model.  LIFE is pretty darn subjective; even Constitutional laww,
interpretation of one of the world's most stable governing documents, varies
with who is on the bench.

response 67 of 326:

Oct 4 06:20 UTC 1995

I'm confused, first of all, on one point:  Isn't there a method of 
prevent logins like (pardon my French) fuck, shit, cunt, and so on?
One post seemed to suggest there wasn't, and if not, why not?
There *is* the login who, and that caused me an embarassment when I
accidentally sent him mail, when the system lagged and I typed 
who at more recepients? prompt.

At any rate, what's the big deal?  mlady died tragically, 
there are those here who were good friends of hers, and it makes sense
that the login should have been reserved.  Others who die deserve the
same respect.  The argument is that it wastes logins... well, as long
as llanie and shade and others can have double-digit numbers of logins,
that's hardly a valid argument.  I say start limiting people to 
reasonable numbers of logins before we start griping about the few
we reserve for the dead.

As far as affection over the Net, Katie, well, some of us get a lot
closer than others.  It isn't dysfunctional or insincere, it's simply
a different experential plane.  If you don't exist on that plane, well,
that's groovy for you.  Some of us (who have perfectly normal lives
outside of the Net) develop love and friendship.  Scan the poetry
conf for my poem In Memorium II for the poem I wrote for Mlady after
she died to get an idea of what I mean.

My initial shock at seeing mlady on the who list was one of sheer
panic... I thought I was seeing a ghost.  It's different for people
who just leave the system... then you caht and see if it's the same
person.  But you don't expect to see the dead hanging about.  Debra
and I talked for a bit about it, and seem to be getting along fine.
She seems like a nice person.  And  at this point, it seems like the
deed is done and it's better to be looking to the future to keep this
from happening again.  Truth is, the flak nearly scared Debra away.
And *that* we don't want.

How is a newuser who wants a particular login and gets it denied
to know that it's an unused login that someone once had, or a
used login of an active member?  Once they'vve been around long enough
to know the situation, they've been around long enough to know the
importance of such reservations to *some people*.

Violation of charter policy indeed, ker.  I guess that means,
since I want to use the login kerouac, and you're already using it,
then Grex should let us both use it, eh?
Otherwise Grex is blocking my freedoms.

response 69 of 326:

Oct 4 07:52 UTC 1995

The "hell", if any, that has been created by mlady(2) being chosen,
was created by those that make fetishes of logins. If noone did,
there would be no problem. It is apparent that users are divided
on this issue - and strongly, too. Therefore this is not something
for staff or anyone else to take action upon unilaterally. Any change
from the current practice of not preserving logins should be made
by someone writing up a proposal, for members to vote upon, in order
to establish a policy. (This should be done in a new Item.)

response 71 of 326:

Oct 4 11:59 UTC 1995

Also re way-back-there: Grex doesn't make any attempt to censor login IDs.
If you run newuser and tell it you want the login ID "fuck", so long as nobody
else is using it, it's yours.

response 73 of 326:

Oct 4 13:53 UTC 1995

In particular, re comments by (the current) mlady: because a bunch of jerks
hassled you, Grex has a *duty* to retire logins?  *I* don't think Grex's
job is to prevent people from doing things just because someone may object,
loudly.  Once we start accepting *that* logic, we'll never stop making
more rules.

It's a pity that you quite innocently got caught in the wringer.  The blame
is IMO squarely on jerks who are rude enough to hassle a total stranger over
something like that, not on this system for permitting you to choose a
particular login.