!dpc Item 265. Minutes of the Grex Board of Directors Meeting of April 19, 2005 David Cahill (dpc) Tue, May 3, 2005 (15:41). 80 lines, 13 responses. Attending Board Members: slynne, mary, dpc, polygon, vanloons (by iChat from India) Non-Attending Board Members: gelinas,bhoward Attending Non-Board Members: remmers, aruba The April 19, 2005 meeting of the Grex Board of Directors was called to order by President slynne at 8:11 p.m. at the home of John and Mary Remmers, 19 Westbury Ct., Ann Arbor. Treasurer's Report: Assistant Treasurer Aruba reported that we are in the black for March. We took in $593 and spent $110. The report is posted online. We have received $100 so far in April. There is no word from CoreCom; we assume here is no problem with the cancellation of our account. Aruba said he had not yet ordered the new disk. The Board authorized asking Leeron Kopelman (lk) about the right kind of disk to order. Staff Report: The Board discussed the recovery from the crash. One SCSI disk failed, and newuser was not working. STeve investigated, and Grex would not reboot. STeve then went into the hospital. The Board authorized buying a new disk via e-mail. Janc felt thee was enough spare room on other disks to move all the data over. Janc and remmers went to Provide.net and managed to get the data transfer. Remmers went back, and go Grex to boot from a second SCSI drive. The staff then worked remotely, and got Grex back up. Provide.Net was very cooperative. Aruba asked if the Board could do anything to make things run more smoothly. Vanloons asked if we use RAID. Remmers said no. We tried software RAID, and it had a big performance impact. We might try hardware RAID in the future. The Board thanked all the staff for its excellent work in recovering from the crash. Schedule Next Meeting: The next meeting will be on Tuesday, May 24, at 8:00 p.m. at the Remmers'. Open Newuser and Twit Filter: Nothing has yet jelled. A member vote would be needed, and code would have to be written. Janc is thinking about being able to easily borrow someone else's twit filter - a meta-twit filter. Vanloons asked if we are thinking about changing newuser. The general consensus was no. Mary said it was great that janc was thinking about this. Blogs: Mary moved that as a complement to conferencing, we add blogging capability to Grex. Polygon seconded. The motion was carried unanimously. Remmers said that janc was envisioning blogging through Backtalk with the same interface. On telnet, a blog would look like Picospan, but would be user-controlled. Slynne said that the difference with blogging is that people delete comments. The freedom of speech is that everyone can start their own blog. Mary said there are limits on social behavior everywhere. Slynne said why do fair witnesses have the technical capability to edit items in their conferences if they can't use it? Dpc suggested that we should see what will happen. Mary said the hard part is integrating blogs without ruining the rest of Grex. Continued Discussion of Twit Filter: Aruba said that any twit filter would have to presented simply to any new user. Remmers said that maybe we could use a "recommender" system like Amazon. Polygon said that if we did this, it would be like slashdot, where people wind up voting on responses, and the negatives fall by the wayside. He said it would be confusing for new people. Remmers said in those circumstances threads tend to get confusing and disjointed. Vanloons said he felt janc should concentrate his work on configuring Grex for blogs. He said we need more discussion on twit filters. Remmers said that in newuser, we should make it clear that Grex is uncensored, and that if you find some users offensive you will be able to screen them out. Mary suggested that we model a twit filter after spam filters. People could choose some filtration, or only to see material posted by people who are approved. The meeting was adjourned at 8:50 p.m. 13 responses total. !naftee ---------- (265) #1 Arc! Sin! Weld! (naftee) Tue, May 3, 2005 (19:59). 1 line. what on earth is iChat ? !mcnally ---------- (265) #2 Mike McNally (mcnally) Tue, May 3, 2005 (20:05). 1 line. Wouldn't uLike 2Know? !naftee ---------- (265) #3 Arc! Sin! Weld! (naftee) Tue, May 3, 2005 (23:40). 1 line. i hope GreX isn't endorsing Mac products :( !gelinas ---------- (265) #4 Joe (gelinas) Tue, May 3, 2005 (23:51). 1 line. Not endorsing. Just using. !tod ---------- (265) #5 Tod Wilkinson (tod) Wed, May 4, 2005 (12:18). 1 line. What's wrong with !talk ? !nharmon ---------- (265) #6 Nathan Harmon (nharmon) Wed, May 4, 2005 (14:30). 2 lines. !talk is limited to 2 people (IIRC)... better to use !ytalk !naftee ---------- (265) #7 Arc! Sin! Weld! (naftee) Thu, May 5, 2005 (20:02). 1 line. Next, GreXer staffers will be bringing iPods to board meetings :( !cmcgee ---------- (265) #8 C. S. McGee (cmcgee) Thu, May 12, 2005 (22:02). 3 lines. I'd like to announce, that thanks to Aruba, your coop fairwitness is back. Thanks, Mark !mary ---------- (265) #9 Mary Remmers (mary) Fri, May 13, 2005 (07:23). 3 lines. Were you having account problems, Colleen? But I'm glad you're here. Thanks, Mark. !aruba ---------- (265) #10 Mark A Conger (aruba) Fri, May 13, 2005 (11:31). 2 lines. Colleen's .cfonce file had a bad "pager" line. It proably worked fine on OldGrex. !scholar ---------- (265) #11 By the way, this item has been archived offsite so you cannot erase it. (scholar) Fri, May 13, 2005 (22:42). 1 line. thanks, colleen! !naftee ---------- (265) #12 Arc! Sin! Weld! (naftee) Sat, May 14, 2005 (22:39). 1 line. thanks, scholar ! !cmcgee ---------- (265) #13 C. S. McGee (cmcgee) Tue, May 17, 2005 (18:51). 2 lines. Well, I haven't been able to read bbs since oldgrex. that qualifies as a problem, I think.