response 76 of 110:

Dec 13 03:59 UTC 1994

   I think we should try and help Chris out too, in whatever way we can.
It sounds neat.
   But Grex can still have a "focus", and I'd like that to be conferencing.
If we don't make a speciality here, then what do we have to offer, really?
We can't do net oriented things as fast as an "Internet provider" can.
The speed of our system will never be as the big guys are, so if we don't
have a focus I think we're doing something wrong.
   COnferencing *is* something that we can do well.

response 78 of 110:

Dec 13 06:01 UTC 1994

The government *GENERATES* more written information on itself everyday
than grex could download in 1 day.  There is no way grex can or should
become a government information clearinghouse.  It would make as much
sense to use an eye-dropper to empty a fire hydrant as it would to use
grex to disseminate information on the gov't.  It's also completely
unnecessary; there are plenty of people who are pushing the gov't to
make much of its information available electronically.

There is one sense in which grex can become a useful political resource
- and that in terms of providing a public forum for debate.  Something
like the coffee houses of 1790's america.  But that's not treating grex
as an information clearing house, it's encouraging people to think of
grex as a place where they can chit-chat about inconsequential political
things along with everything else.

k12 is certainly an attractive community project; we all know how lousy
our schools can be, and we all know what a powerful tool computer
conferencing can be in terms of writing & communicating.  But that's
only a bare beginning; there's a lot more ground you have to cover
before you've got something real.  One of the most important factors is
the actual people involved; without supportive people who understand the
technology and its potential, any such project is doomed.  In fact, you
have some formidable obstacles there: public schools are not necessarily
noted as bastions of progressive thinking, and most public schools are
part of large systems that have their own kind of inertia, at best.

We all like to think of children as little sweet innocents, but in fact,
children are generally every bit as bright as their elders, considerably
less principled, and considerably more adventerous.  That means, not
only are children not likely to behave the way you expect, but they are
rather more likely to behave the way you least expect them to behave,
and can be the the way you'd least want them to behave as well.
Computer conferencing is not a risk free environment; it is a dynamic
system that is inherently unstable.  That is to say, it's composed of
many unpredictable components (people) who interact in a fashion to
change each other (socializing, communicating) and those changes affect
future interactions to a large extent (there is a lot of feedback in the
system, & the system is constantly evolving as its components change).
A lot of the traditional solutions we've all learned for how to "manage"
problems don't work in this new environment.  Since children are people
too, all of those "problems" are rather likely to happen, if you don't
watch out.  The last thing I'd want would be for grex to be picketed by
angry parents.  Not long ago, apparently some people started a k-12
usenet group.  I don't know the whole story behind it, but I do know
they ran into these problems, and it sounds like the result was a
complete disaster, at least from "their" standpoint.

What this all means is that a k-12 project is not a small undertaking;
it's probably more & harder work than grex itself is.  The grex founders
were certainly interested in this, but realizing that it would not be
possible to do a good job on this and grex, they decided to concentrate
on grex first.  Now that grex exists, such a project could be a good
spin-off project; but it should be just that; a separate entity that
shares resources where appropriate, and is independent where not
appropriate.

That is not to say that grex should not be involved with these projects;
indeed, I'd certainly like to see Chris try to collect some information,
and grex could be a valuable collaborator in a k12 project.  Where grex
can be the most useful here is in terms of providing a place for a small
community of users to share a highly interactive forum; not just a face
but many faces.  I think it's already been a valuable political
"coffee-house"; and I think it could certainly be useful to a k12
project, both to provide a place to organize such an undertaking, and in
terms of sharing technical expertise to run the hardware to make such an
undertaking possible.

response 80 of 110:

Dec 13 07:23 UTC 1994

As a member of the computing staff at Community, I'd welcome any help we
can get in getting our computer room first running properly and then
connected to the Internet.

response 82 of 110:

Dec 13 20:40 UTC 1994

Perhaps we could be a clearinghouse for some other type of information?
Or a specialized set of government information?  Chris, do you have
any ideas of a reasonably-sized specialty in terms of government info?
In other words, we don't have to carry every living last thing the
govt. puts out (even the govt. can't seem to handle that).

response 84 of 110:

Dec 15 01:43 UTC 1994

Ok, I've several responses to the intervening 9 messages posted since I
launched my manifesto.  First to my government clearinghouse idea.

It was never my intent to suggest that Grex store the terabytes of info
the gov is putting out.  But one of the neat things about HTML is that you
can create big resources with small onsite storage needs, since the heart
of the system is the distributed nature of the data.  What I'd envisioned
was a friendly way to access some main distribution points, with some
informative text about them so people with little or no experience in the
arcane discipline of Government Documents (and it's a specialty at the
School of Information and Library Sciences at the U) could use to find out
about their favorite bill, check a local regulation about easements, find
out how to contact their state senator, etc.  I think the actual disk
requirements would be small in comparison to the actual data they would
make accessible.

This is something I'm willing to work on as I have time to do it.  I think
it's bloody important.  We (and I mean a much more cosmic We then just
Grexers) have got to find a way to make our political system more
accessible to more people so that there is more participation.  This is a
worthy goal that Grex could help.

Now to the more abstract issue.  Steve Andre, in most things I respect
your opinions, and I never disagree with you without first re-evaluating
my own position to see if it's still reasonable.  On this one though, we
disagree.  To talk of conferencing as the focus of Grex is like saying
that we should teach C to everyone who wants to write letters on their
favorite word-processor.  In both cases ends and means are confused.

I'm not sure that's a clear analogy, so let me try again.  I think that
Grex's focus has been social interaction and information exchange, not
necessarily in that order.  The conferences are a wonderful way to do
that.  But they're not the only way anymore.  What I'm saying is that a
lot of people seem to take the view that they should remain more important
than all other ways combined to the extent that if something might just
possibly threaten conferencing even a little, then we should shy in horror
from it.

Now this is a theoretical discussion, so don't anyone go crying foul
because of current technical limitations.  I'm talking an ideal here, and
perhaps a paradigm re-evaluation or shift, not demanding a revolution in
which we nuke Picospan and turn over all its disk space to an anonymous
FTP area or something like that.  I want conferencing to stick around.  I
just don't want it to be a sacred cow anymore, but one of as many info
resources and social gathering places as Grex can stomach.

Someone said that the conferencing was the unique thing that Grex had to
offer.  I disagree.  It's the people that make Grex what it is.  The
conferences are just tools.

     Chris

response 86 of 110:

Dec 15 18:14 UTC 1994

I just tried it.  Works like a trained pig.

response 88 of 110:

Dec 16 06:00 UTC 1994

Why is Picospan so relatively rare?  It does work very well.

response 90 of 110:

Dec 16 16:51 UTC 1994

   No Chris, conferencing like PicoSpan isn't common.  It's exceedingly
rare.  Having been a Confer II user since 1976 and a BBS user/email user
since 1975, I think there are less than eight reasonable conferencing
systems out that that are usable by non-technical people.  The continuity
that the Confer II/PicoSpan paradigm provides is vastly better than most
other software.  Vastly.
   At least thats the world as I see it.  I'm now fairly curious if
others see this too.  Perhaps it is my long term of trying conferencing
systems that have led me to my conclusions.  And, if anyone can show me
where to look for conferencing systems as good as Confer/PicoSpan, I'd
be glad to look at it.
   Lastly, wether or not conferencing systems are common, I think that
conferencing makes Grex look best, in terms of how outsiders see our
system.  [Get ready to flame me for this next statement]  As an example
of something I am *not* impressed with, I can point to party.  People
who have looked at Grex and saw party first have consistenly thought
less of our system than those who were more exposed to PicoSpan.  Among
these are two employess of the Ann Arbor Observer, who in mail to me
said that Grex was 'nice', but they wished they'd seen more mature folk
on.  In querying them, they both saw party, and that that was what Grex
was, basiclly.  One of them I got to get into PicoSpan, which improved
Grex's standing; the other I couldn't.  If there are party people reading
this, I'm sorry if I've offended you but I'm simply not enamored with
what I've seen there lately.

response 92 of 110:

Dec 16 19:08 UTC 1994

WRT #78, et al., and also potential 501(c)3 status, there is
a necessity, it seems, for +some+ facility "to reduce the burdens
on government." (aaron the legal-beagle on the M-b0x is the
secondary source for that quote). While I might argue the reverse,
that gummint ought to reduce their burdens on us, if Grex were
to be a local repository of *limited* gummint information, within
our capabilities, that +might+ be a mark in our favor, perhaps
small due to our resources, but a mark in our favor nonetheless.
  
On a related note - I ALWAYS refer to Grex a a conferencing
system and also refute the statement that Grex is a bbs at the
same time so there is no confusion from these quarters. 
  
If newusers (the most needing assistance) were actively exposed
to conferencing first - and let them find out about party later - the
initial exposure, I think, would be different. 
  
As mdw said elsewhere, used to be that techno-geeks were the
only ones with modems. Techno-geeks are, i think, in the minority
now since anyone with $100 (and little else) can "get here."
  
As we have seen from the multitudes of "welcomes following
frustrations" in various conferences, it seems to me that the
entire newuser interaction/interface needs serious updating.
  
<<btw, if we were picketed by a bunch of angry parents, the
solution I would enact would be to +give+ them a 1200 baud
modem and GET them signed on, yes, go to their house and
do it right before their very eyes.>> In response to an anticipated
question, yes, I +have+ done this.

response 94 of 110:

Dec 16 23:23 UTC 1994

OK, I'll be a heritic...

I LOVE Grex, and think that it is quite unique, however, I must concede that 
I see little or no difference between Picospan and many multi-user BBS
systems.  You can do the same things there as here, and it is more menu
driven (read easier for newbies) on most BBSs.  Frankly I find Picospan to
be a bit arcane rather than user friendly as it is being touted.  (No 
disrespect to mdw intended).  I'd say that it is fairly user friendly by
UNIX standards, but what most people here often seem to forget is that most
of the world has never even HEARD of unix.  Unix is considered by most of the
world as incomprehensible.  Picospan is VERY flexable, but flexablity is not
what the average BBS user is looking for.  They want their hand held all the 
way, and picospan does not do that all that well.  

As far as this discussion, I think that conferencing is one of our strongest
suits (due to the people not the software) but I think we should not put
all of our eggs in one basket either.  We could certainly use more
specialties, because even though we do conferencing well, Conferencing
aint all that special in the world (just on the internet :) )

response 96 of 110:

Dec 17 00:05 UTC 1994

I know I have a different idea of what "user friendly" means than most.
To most people, "user friendly" means easiest to learn.  The simplest
measure of that might be how much a person can do after 20 minutes of
exposure to the program, starting "cold" (zero initial exposure).  What
that tends to mean is a predominance of on-screen visual cues and
single-letter key combos, and the absence or hidden functionality of any
feature that is not immediately obvious or might require any amount of
thinking or sophistication on the part of the user.

But I wasn't interested in users who only used PicoSpan one time.  What
I wanted was something that would bring people back, again & again.  So,
to me, "user friendly" meant something quite different.  I wanted
something that would be easy for the frequent user to use.  That means I
wanted to put in the kind of power features a frequent user might
appreciate, and while I did not necessarily want to make PicoSpan hard
to use, I did not want to clutter up the screen with more "useless"
stuff than necessary.  I think learning should be driven by the user not
the software, so my aim was to give the user an environment where they
could explore the functionality of the software, and a reason to explore
that functionality, all at once.

Many people seem to be concerned about the mental limitations of users,
but not very concerned about any possible technical limitations of the
user's hardware.  I've always been more concerned about the latter;
that's why PicoSpan is not full screen, and is designed to be used with
something as crude as a hardcopy terminal at 300 baud.  (This was still
relatively common when PicoSpan was designed.)  Even today, I think
PicoSpan's user interface still offers more options than a full-screen
interface would, & makes better use of the bandwidth we can get through
our tiny internet link.

Undoubtedly, in part, this "filters" the kind of people we get on Grex.
There are also plenty of social & non-technical "people filters" - and
it would be quite impossible to design any social system that does not
select or "filter" for certain kinds of people.  It's difficult to say
how much of a factor the technical aspects are, but by the testimony of
other people here, it would seem that PicoSpan filters for a more mature
crowd than can be found in party.  (Whether that's good is not a
judgement I'm willing to make.)

Someone here indicated that they didn't like newuser, but didn't offer
any details on what their objections were.  That's nice, but not enough
to go on.  There is no way newuser can be "perfect", but I would like to
think it's the "best" compromise between many conflicting design issues.
I have not heard or seen any other system that I think is better; the
general freenet solution seems to involve forms, paper, & snail mail;
which I would call barbaric.  I would certainly like to know something
more concrete about that person's objections.  They could have a valid
point; and I'd certainly like to see how those objections can be woven
into the web of compromises that comprise newuser.

response 98 of 110:

Dec 17 02:51 UTC 1994

re 96:
        Thank you, Marcus.  I wish more programmers shared your
philosophy.  I really like being able to configure PicoSpan in ways that I
would never be able to configure other bbs software, and it's also really
nice not to have to watch an entire screen of menus scroll by before I can
do anything, which is a fairly common problem with other software.