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Grex > Agorage > #6: Member initative: Allow members to host images | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 183 responses total. |
aruba
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response 92 of 183:
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Sep 20 03:29 UTC 2006 |
Dan - it doesn't appear that more than a handful of Grex members support
this proposal; otherwise there would be enough to force a vote on the issue.
So your beef is not with the board and staff, but with the (vast majority of
the) membership. I say, if you really feel this is a good proposal, you
should make it your goal to convince a couple more members to endorse
bringing it to a vote.
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cross
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response 93 of 183:
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Sep 20 03:40 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #90; It is a discussion, but the points are mostly technical in
nature, for sufficient definitions of what technical mean. In this case, this
involves legality among other things, not just the gearhead computer aspects
of it (which I would expect to be uninteresting to most except you, myself,
and perhaps a few others).
I don't think anyone is saying, "M-Net does this, therefore grex should."
I think what they *are* saying is that, "because M-Net does this, it does not
follow that grex cannot, or that the potential problems are insurmountable."
I know that that's what I'm saying, at the very least.
Regarding #91; I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one, Steve,
because that's what you say, even though your dislike for the proposer is well
known (and was aluded to in one of these threads - of course, his antagonism
toward you is well-known as well). Is that true for everyone who's chimed
in here?
Regarding #92; With all due respect, Mark, I'm willing to bet that the vast
majority of the membership is completely unaware that this discussion is
taking place at all. Part of that has to do with who started it. Part of
it has also to do with where it's being discussed (how many members venture
outside of agora on a regular basis?). For the record, I do think it's a good
proposal that would benefit grex, but unfortunately, these posts in and of
themselves take enough of my already taxed time that I cannot do more
cheerleading for it. I would suggest that scholar post a notice in agora that
this discussion is going on, or request the agora FW to link this item there
to give it more exposure. I would also like to point out that the grex
membership is a very, very small percentage of the total number of users.
I'm not sure that really matters all that much, but in general, the membership
is not at all representative of the overall userbase.
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steve
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response 94 of 183:
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Sep 20 03:49 UTC 2006 |
I'm not sure about that Dan. Grex members do all sorts of things on
the system, just like the entire population. Except of course, they
care enough to send in money.
I will point out that I haven't heard a large number of Grex's
members asking for this. That I can remember, this is the first
such proposal in a while. I don't think its that big an issue here.
I mean, if it were, I would think that we'd be seeing more
comments here. As it is, there aren't enough people to support
this to go up for a vote, are there?
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cross
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response 95 of 183:
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Sep 20 04:26 UTC 2006 |
I'm not sure; I haven't been keeping track of that. But then, if it's not
a big issue, is there a reason *not* to do it? I think Nate had a good idea:
try it for a month and see what happens. Leave in a provision that it can
be turned off at any time if the flood gates open and it looks like the dam
is about to burst. Would a test-run be bad?
And again, I'm not sure most of the membership even knows this is being
discussed....
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naftee
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response 96 of 183:
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Sep 20 04:33 UTC 2006 |
i think most of the membership is asleep right now, cross.
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cross
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response 97 of 183:
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Sep 20 05:10 UTC 2006 |
Quite possibly.
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mary
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response 98 of 183:
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Sep 20 10:51 UTC 2006 |
Quick question - if we hosted erotic images that were visible to anyone,
would be be obligated to somehow put them behind a click-though where
viewers stipulated they were 18 or over? Would we need to comply with laws
stating all models were 18 or older? Can we get around any liablity of
facilitating a minors access to these photos simply by stating we don't
censor anything our users want to upload?
And as to our modeling ourselves after other systems, well. it's
always useful to see how it goes when others do it differently, but
we need to think it through, for ourselves, and first and foremost
do what works for Grex.
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nharmon
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response 99 of 183:
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Sep 20 12:14 UTC 2006 |
IANAL, but I think the common-carrier status that Mcnally talked about
would say that Grex does not need to put click-throughs for the images
because basically the content would be owned by and the responsibility
of the user.
So, the two only choices is either allow all legal graphics with zero
censorship, or none at all.
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cmcgee
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response 100 of 183:
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Sep 20 14:00 UTC 2006 |
I suspect that a lot of members who read Coop are not even commenting on this
thread. If a member wants this to die a natural death, the best way to do
it is 1) not endorse the proposal; and 2) not contribute to the arguments on
either side.
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trig
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response 101 of 183:
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Sep 20 21:01 UTC 2006 |
why can you make it so that users have to put a warning to images, ie: you
can't have them on your homepage and any links that will lead to an image must
have a warning that sex is on them? If a user fails to do so then his account
is locked until the issue can be resolved -- IE: the agree to the rules or
all images are taken down?
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tod
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response 102 of 183:
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Sep 20 21:07 UTC 2006 |
Mentioning how M-Net gets things done around here is like telling Kirk how
Klingons get things done. You're not going to make friends nor impress
anyone. Pity.
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steve
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response 103 of 183:
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Sep 20 21:08 UTC 2006 |
Well, one problem is that so far in the history of Grex being on
the net, people a) don't read anything that newuser says, b) often
ignore notice files put in their home dirs telling them to stop
importing eggdrop or whatever, and frequently ignore FTP sessions
that get killed and start doing whatever all over again. Given
this, I think we'd be in for a lot of work.
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cross
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response 104 of 183:
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Sep 20 22:34 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #98; I too am not a lawyer, but I think Nate is right: it'd be up
to the individual user. You just need to say, "don't do anything illegal."
Regarding #100; I think it's a shame if a member does that. I suspect a lot
of it is that they saw that Polytarp did the initial post, said, "eh, he's
a pain in the ass...." and forgot the item. If they read coop at all.
Regarding #102; Right.
Regarding #103; (did you notice I skipped every other post in my replies up
until this one?) Still, putting it in newuser and having a positive
acknowledgement of system policies as part of the account registration process
is a legal butt-covereing measure. After stating a policy, you just wash your
hands of the matter. Like Pilate.
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steve
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response 105 of 183:
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Sep 20 23:36 UTC 2006 |
Hmmm. Except that we then have to deal with stuff, meaning that the
disk starts to get more full and someone has to deal with it.
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cross
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response 106 of 183:
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Sep 20 23:46 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #105; Is there any evidence that this is going to happen? On grex
under OpenBSD, we have disk quotas that keep one user from filling up the
filesystem. By your own statements, there may not even be that much of a
demand.
I thought Nate's suggestion was good: let's try it for a month and see what
happens. Leave a disclaimer that the plug can be pulled if it becomes a
problem.
I'd rather see some experiments that yield some data off of which we could
make a decision rather than just go on people's guts.
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gelinas
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response 107 of 183:
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Sep 21 01:21 UTC 2006 |
(On the question of members reading coop: I suspect most people find coop
before they decide to pony up the bucks for membership.)
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cross
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response 108 of 183:
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Sep 21 01:49 UTC 2006 |
I don't know; do they then follow it regularly, like, say, agora? Do we have
numbers on who reads what?
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aruba
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response 109 of 183:
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Sep 21 03:49 UTC 2006 |
I think that if images become a problem they might easily take more than a
month to be so. It could be 6 months or a year before we have issues, and
by then people with images on their websites would have installed a lot of
links that would break if we turned images off. They would be
understandibly pissed. So I don't think it's realistic to think we could
back away from this policy once we open the door.
Or, to put it another way, once we start allowing images, it will take
something truly heinous before we'll have a good reason for stopping.
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scholar
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response 110 of 183:
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Sep 21 05:55 UTC 2006 |
By the way: People should keep in mind that the official proposal I entered
allows only MEMBERS of Cyberspace Communications Inc. to host imaged.
Not many people, not much policing needed.
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nharmon
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response 111 of 183:
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Sep 21 12:08 UTC 2006 |
Yeah, I think if you allow members outbound net access, then allowing
them to host images should be a no-brainer.
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glenda
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response 112 of 183:
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Sep 21 14:37 UTC 2006 |
And what happens if a member has a bunch of images and links to said images
and then lets the membership lapse? Does the keeper of the membership rolls
have to be root staff such that he/she can delete the images of said lapsed
member or does staff get a list of member lapses each month and have to delete
the images? What if a membership lapses and the images are deleted and a
two or three weeks later the membership is renewed? How do we keep it from
becoming an administrative nightmare and timesink?
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steve
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response 113 of 183:
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Sep 21 14:51 UTC 2006 |
I'd forgotten that aspect of the proposal so thanks for the reminder in
#110.
Still, Glenda's comments are valid, and the larger issue of not wanting to
offer more special things for members remains.
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nharmon
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response 114 of 183:
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Sep 21 15:44 UTC 2006 |
> Does the keeper of the membership rolls have to be root staff such
> that he/she can delete the images of said lapsed member or does staff
> get a list of member lapses each month and have to delete the images?
I'm not sure you understand how images are presently restricted, Glenda.
You see Apache, our web server software, is configured to redirect HTTP
requests for files with certain extentions. Here is the relevant part of
/var/www/conf/apache.conf:
<Directory /[abcdefghijklmn]/?/?/*/www>
RedirectMatch \.gif$ /white.gif
RedirectMatch \.jpg$ /white.gif
RedirectMatch \.jpeg$ /white.gif
RedirectMatch \.png$ /white.gif
</Directory>
Thus, what we would need to do is find a way to disable this redirect
for users who are members of the 'members' group. I'm not exactly sure
how to do this as yet, but it shouldn't prove to be difficult.
In other words, chances are; No, the person maintaining membership rolls
will not have to delete images.
> the larger issue of not wanting to offer more special things for
> members remains.
How is this an issue? And who doesn't "want to offer more special things
for members"? You? Are you a member? Because it seems to me that the
membership of Cyberspace Communications should be the ones who decided
whether or not more special things are offered to members. And this is
exactly what is going on in this item: A member is proposing for a
membership vote on offering more special things for members.
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nharmon
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response 115 of 183:
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Sep 21 15:50 UTC 2006 |
By the way, the notion of a "larger issue of not wanting to offer more
special things for members" sounds like the "resistance to change" stuff
that Dan was talking about in #81.
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krj
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response 116 of 183:
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Sep 21 16:20 UTC 2006 |
Not wanting to offer more special things for members is one of
the core founding principles of Grex. It was adopted as a position
in explicit contrast to The Other System.
Repeating myself: outbound telnet for members is a historic quirk,
not a model we should follow again.
In 2006, Grex should not become a fee-for-services organization,
in part because it doesn't have the resources to provide reliable
service to people paying money, and in part because those services
are easily available elsewhere for little to no cost.
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