response 51 of 135:

Jul 28 00:17 UTC 1996

(Gate reads the number of columns from your "stty" settings.  Apparantly
Richard not only has an oversized window, but a telnet smart enough to pass
the window size through to Grex.  Probably Gate should use a default column
size of no more than 80, even if the user has a wider window.  In fact, I
thought I'd programmed it that way...but I guess I didn't.  So using gate
doesn't help Richard's line length problem.  Until I fix this (and even after)
adding the following line to your .login should solve the problem:

   setenv GATEOPTS "maxcol=79 hotcol=75"

)

response 53 of 135:

Jul 28 01:20 UTC 1996

Responding to #49:  Why are you screaming for user input and veto power? 
Haven't we just seen an item full of user input on the multiple login zapper?
Hasn't the staff installation of the multiple login zapper been vetoed?
What more do you want?  Why do you need to insist on things that seem to be
to be already here?

What people are calling for isn't "user input" and "veto powers".  We
obviously have those.  What they are calling for is a more rigid procedure
in which staff members have a fixed set of bureaucratic hoops they have to
jump through in a fixed order.  If they don't do them in the "right" order,
they get their hands slapped by being called Nazis all over the system.

The benefit of a nice clean bureaucracy is that you will never be surprised
by any change in the system.  This has nothing to do with democracy, but it
is comforting for the users and radiates oodles of professionalism.

The disadvantage of a nice clean bureaucracy is that all the staff will
disappear, so there will be no changes, and no maintainance.  Basically,
M-Net.

I repeat.  This isn't a democracy debate.  The staff has always listened to
and acted on user input.

response 55 of 135:

Jul 28 04:40 UTC 1996

        until he started using gate, I COULDN'T read kerouac.

response 57 of 135:

Jul 28 06:36 UTC 1996

I would like to suggest, to add to Mary's #54, that not only should there
be the "What I did" items from staff in coop, but also "What I'm thinking
of doing" items.

My response to Jan in his #s 44 and 53, is....let's not get all excited. 
No one is (or should be) "accusing" staff of anything. Certainly all I
have been asking is that staff talk to us users along the way as they come
up with ideas and work on them. Jan has been very willing to discuss with
us some justifications for acting first and discussing later, but it
really is very easy to discuss first and act later. This order of things
allows the interested users to at least feel involved, even if they are
not doing the work. They might, of course, contribute some good ideas,
just as a bonus. 

Do you know why I keep pursuing this issue? Because I have been led by
other users, staff and board members to accept the idea of Grex at least
acting as a cooperative, and pursuing decisions by consensus. I spent some
time suggesting a more efficient - and formal - decision making process
(shhhh...rro...), which few found acceptable or even desirable. So, I've
been grexified. But lo - what do I then see? Even some of those that
grexified me appear to be acting outside "cooperative" and "consensus". I
don't shift my perspectives without a lot of consideration, so having
shifted *one* way, I'm resisting shifting again by giving up "cooperative"
and "consensus". 

response 59 of 135:

Jul 28 06:48 UTC 1996

(And my previous comments about gate not responding right when you have a
 wider than normal screen were mistaken.  Gate does just what it should and
 will never default to more than 80 columns, no matter how my columns your
 screen has.  Kerouac has evidentally done !use_gate six times.  He can stop
 once was enough.  He is using gate.  My best guess is that he is firing up
 an editor out of gate, and since pico happily uses every column on your
 screen, as long as he is in the editor, he can merrily enter 85 character
 lines.  Gate autowraps lines for you at the > prompt, but it won't reformat
 stuff you have entered in an editor.)

response 61 of 135:

Jul 28 07:51 UTC 1996

(curious here ... PicoSpan indents responses by 1 character ... suggest
making 78 the max-number of characters)

response 63 of 135:

Jul 28 16:54 UTC 1996

Re 60:  Yes, I think it's OK for the staff to make system changes without
consulting the users.  So long as they remain open to user feedback, and are
willing to back out or adapt the change in response to that feedback.  Sure,
in many cases it is nicer if staff consults with users first, but it is not
a major problem so long as in the long run the board remains in control and
the users remain in the loop.  Day-to-day autocracy is OK, so long as week-to-
week we operate democratically.  I think this way of thinking about it is a
good way to allow staff the short-term authority to correspond to their short-
term responsibility, but still keep the system working fundamentally
cooperative.

So we allow staff the authority to use their best judgement day-to-day, the
coop conference discusses and considers things week-to-week, and the board
makes official decisions month-to-month.  Anything the staff does can be
influenced by user discussion, or overruled by board vote.  Sometimes that
happens before the change, sometimes it happens after.

We've been working like this a long time.  It works fine.  What's wrong
with it?

response 65 of 135:

Jul 28 22:52 UTC 1996

ludicrous..

response 67 of 135:

Jul 29 17:28 UTC 1996

Seems to me that the staff is of volunteers, while the Borg is elected...

Why didn't more people run for the Borg? Why where their not more offers
of staff-volunteers.. Why are the Board unsuitable to be staff? Are they
raising the taxes?

response 69 of 135:

Jul 29 18:43 UTC 1996

#68...exactly...I think the only way to solve the
situation where staff members end up being the ones elected to
board seats, simply because theya re they most visible, is
to either disallow staff members from running for the board, or
limit the number of board openings available for staffers.

With all the members of grex, there are plenty of people besides
the eleven members of the staff who should be able to serve on the board
but will never be able to because they just arent ever going to be as
visible.  Someone like Sidhe never had a chance to get elected
to the board, becuase he simply isnt involved in the day to day
operations in the way robh and scg are.  rob and steve dont neee
er...need to be on the board to have influence.  They are on staff\
and had their voice in these matters already.

Every staff member who ran for the board last time won.  Its basically an
incumbency advantage, something that discourages other people from even
running at all.

response 71 of 135:

Jul 29 20:54 UTC 1996

I'm curious.  I looked.  I tried to find something.  But I can't, so I thought
I'd ask.  Was there anything substantive in the last 20 posts or so that
wasn't a direct response to Kerouac making the same silly "This is a volunteer
organization but I still want this place run like a for-profit
staff-get-pai-$60K-a-year" comments?  I note some of the longest posts along
the lines of refuting those being some of the people who in another item
informed us so eloquently of the twit-filter capabilities of Grex.

I would rather not have to start forgetting co-op items, but this is getting
absurd.
Kerouac is obviously *not* going to learn a sou about what most of the people
here think this system is all about, so why, for Great Gods' sakes, WHY is
everyone rushing to spam responses to sway his oxen mind?

response 73 of 135:

Jul 29 22:53 UTC 1996

        This item is making me SICK.  How dare you criticize staff like
that?  This system is FREE to the public.  Let me say taht again, this
system is FREE to the public.  If you want internet access, you can have
it for 6 dollars a month.  Do you know of a different place where you can
get a shell account with full internet access for 6 dollars a month?  The
staff here volunteers their time to keep this system up and running 95% of
the time.  Do you know of many people who can secure a unix system so that
it is protected from hackers or other people who just want to cause
trouble?  Many systems consider giving shell access to users a
security hole.  The staff here gives shell access to ANYBODY.  THey don't
have to fill out a form, make a phone call--or anything.  All the person
needs to do is telnet to grex.cyberspace.org and type "newuser".

        If you don't think Grex is run "democratically" then leave.
Perhaps m-net will be sufficient. (Gag)

In summary, this staff has done a DAMN good job keeping this system up and
running, and nobody has a reason to complain.