response 75 of 113:

May 6 16:58 UTC 1996

        Well, I hope never to be caught without an opinion (and an
accompanying prediction)...
        Users with .cflists (me, for one; most of us here) will continue to
use Agora as the general conference.  Newusers, and if Intro is the
default conference, those without .cflists will use Intro as the general
conference.  There will no longer be a common general conference for Grex;
there will instead be two more or less separate groups of conference
users.  I think they'll be about as similar to one another as the M-Net 
users and Grex users are now.  Most "old timers" just aren't going to make
a new conference, intended for "newcomers", their primary hangout, or even
a regular stop.
        But that's just a prediction.  It's probably right, but no one knows
yet.  Jan has the right idea; it's worth an attempt.  We forefront of
technology, living on the edge types tend to be Luddites about new ideas
that aren't computer hardware.

response 77 of 113:

May 6 21:28 UTC 1996

I see now problem with that. Intro would be a "waystation" before a
newuser moves over to (probably) using agora as the login cf. I don't
think anyone will use intro for very long as the login cf. Agora will
remain the general cf. I've put intro in my .cflist, but have forgotten most
of the items in it, as I see them on my .cflist. What we could do is make
it very easy for newusers to set up a .cflist with a selection of
favorite cfs.

response 79 of 113:

May 6 23:45 UTC 1996

I believe this all started as an effort to help make the introduction
to conferencing more user friendly, so it doesn't just get reserved for
stoics like Mary.

response 81 of 113:

May 7 02:04 UTC 1996

I think it would be hard to have intro in my .cflist, since it'll be forever
showing up with "new" items that actually I've already seen in other
conferences.

Rane, I think you're giving newbies *far* too much credit when you say you
expect them to go find agora.  People just aren't that motivated.

I'm going to try to shut up now, though, because I am curious to try the intro
conference idea and see how it works.

response 83 of 113:

May 7 08:30 UTC 1996

It is up, and has been for several weeks.

response 85 of 113:

May 7 12:59 UTC 1996

Well, I do consider myself stoic at times but this doesn't
have a whole lot to do with my concern over this new default
intro conference.  

What intro looks like to me is a "collection" conference. Which
is fine.  But when it becomes the default, where all newusers are
dumped until they can figure their way out...  Well, then it 
becomes something of a censorship issue.  Someone else will decide
what items a newuser will find interesting.  Will robh accept all
requests for links?  It already sounds like folks won't be able
to enter items directly.  So it comes down to a person or panel
of people deciding what's appropriate content for all newusers.
For a while at least.  Talking about filtering for a type of user! 

Just so we know this is a significant change in policy.
And everything we've been saying about fairwitnesses and
censorship goes right out the window on this one.

response 87 of 113:

May 7 17:31 UTC 1996

I have intro in my .cflist. I have forget-ted (?) all items that I
read in other cfs (long ago I wrote the alaias fo for forget - it
saved me *hours* on m-net ;->). Today intro started the English-
as-the-first-language item, which I would not have seen in politics
(which I avoid). I then linked that to language, where I will follow
it (and others can too). I think that the utility of intro will
lie more in how it is *managed* than just in what it is. As a conventional
cf it would be a bust, but as an actively moderated introductory cf,
I think it can make Grex a much friendlier place. Sure, someone is
deciding what newusers will find interesting - because newusers don't
know, if they haven't conferenced before. But so long as intro keeps
pointing newusers to the cfs themselves, urging them repeatedly to
run help conferences, and helping them make .cflists, etc, I think it
will be a success. 

response 89 of 113:

May 9 14:12 UTC 1996

Rob is pretty good about announcing in each item "This item is linked from
the X conference to intro.  Join the X conference to learn much more about
X, Y, and Z".

Also, there's a *big* problem with having both intro and agora show up for
newusers: That's *two* conferences, but you can only put people into one
conference automatically.  Either newbies are put into intro, or into agora,
but it's not possible to put them into two conferences at once.

response 91 of 113:

May 11 17:36 UTC 1996

Re #89:  Sure no one can be in two conferences at once, but can't we give
newusers a choice of which one they'd like to default to?  Like I said in
item 63, the choice between a moderated forum and an unmoderated one is a
choice that Usenet people will understand right away, and I think we can make
it clear to anyone else in a sentence or two.

response 93 of 113:

May 12 14:39 UTC 1996

hmmm, guess i didn't look all that closely .. my commen - even having
run through intro.cf once - was in regard to the generic link, not 
something special you added. An addition, btw, which is VGood. 
  
I'll go look again.

response 95 of 113:

May 12 16:19 UTC 1996

Mark, I like your idea about asking new people about which conference they
would like to be their default conference.  It's a minor pain to figure out
where to put code to do that, but it could be done....

response 97 of 113:

May 13 01:37 UTC 1996

I think it is premature to ask a user about that sort of thing, because the
user will have a grand total of zero experience in conferencing.

I think they should go into intro, but since intro will discuss agora, it can
have explicit instructions on how to cut over to agora when the newbie
graduates and doesn't need intro any more.

Thus intro remains good for newbies, and agora eventually gets most of them
anyway (but now they come in educated). Won't this work?

response 99 of 113:

May 13 05:36 UTC 1996

Steve said in #97 what I wish I could have.  He's very smart, you know.