eppick77 wrote:
It's there and open for business.

Most of the people who have registered have already been set for
unmoderated posting - as those who have posted have already seen. I
simply don't recognize the remaining members. These people can lurk
and their postings will be moderated until someone determines there's
no need. That's the way this is supposed to work.

Just within the last few hours I've assigned eight members as Managers
and will be happy to assign ownership status to others as soon as
we're established. If anyone here does, or does not want elevated
status, please let me know. If you don't care for unacceptable
content, you may not wish to get such content in email with a request
to Approve or Reject.

This _is_ a community forum and people should feel comfortable that
it's not in the hands of any individual. So management is in the
hands of the community. Conversely, management access by too many
people is also bad for many reasons so I don't want to go overboard on
this. I hope everyone will be open to discussing concerns.

My friends, if you feel this isn't being done properly, or you feel it
should be done differently, or not at all, please speak up.

Thanks.
T

<snip>

I'm with Kevin on this one - While I detest spam, I am prepared to put
up with the minor inconvenience of blowing it away - a very easy
process using Forte Agent as a newsreader. Google groups suck from a
user interface perspective.

I also share the worries about ANYONE having the power to block posts
- if you disagree with anything I post you have the opportunity to
ignore it or refute it but my right to hold and publish an opinion
should be sacrosanct

It seems to me that this whole intiative has been triggered by a
flurry of posts from our friend Dan. However, its is hardly a regular
occurrence and easy to deal with, except if you are using Google.
Likewise the quantity of sales stuff that finds it's way here is
minimal - face it, this little group is a backwater and hardly likely
to be targetted by disruptive elements.

I would hate to see it die as I would be loath to deal with Google
Groups

Dave

Dave Goldfinch wrote:

You, Kevin, and I are a part of a small minority that uses a
newsreader, or even knows why one would use it.

ALL other MV forums use GG or email lists. We are in the minority.
Usenet is dead. The better technology has lost the war. It's time to
move on and fight with other weapons.

Agreed, so I use GG via email.

I think "worry" is usually based not on possibility but on
probability. All things are possible, but if they are not probable
then what is there to worry about?

All of the other MV lists are moderated to some extent by community
members. I have never once in all of these years seen a single
allegation of legitmate content removed for idealistic purposes.

IF this possible but Highly improbable event occurs, all moderators
have a copy of the content and can easily see what has happened - and
someone will repost the content.

This is a non-issue amongst friends in a small community.


And such rights will never be violated.

If there are still any doubts, I will be happy to provide you with a
list of all managers (and changes as they occur) so that you can state
which of our colleagues you don't trust. If I'm one of those people I
will be happy to pass ownership to someone else here and we can all
still move on.


That's a big part of it. I know at least two companies who will not
participate here purely because of him.

Here's a hypothetical scenario for you: You go to eat in a restaurant
and some guy walks in with a loudspeaker and starts shouting
obscenities. He gets removed and all goes back to normal, but your
meal is essentially ruined. The same thing happens a couple months
later. Are you really inclined to go back there even though you know
the chances are slim that this guy is going to walk in just when
you're there? Are you going to invite one of your clients there?
Probably not. That's what's happened to CDP.


Again, that's part of the problem. Most people actually do get their
CDP postings from Google anyway, but because it's unfiltered, most of
the people reading CDP can't avoid the rubbish. With this change,
these same people will be able to continue using their medium of
choice, plus they'll get the benefits of moderation and email. Yes,
we who use newsreaders are in the minority, but this change is
intended to address the majority - and right now frankly, we need to
pull together as much of the MV community as possible because this
group keeps shrinking all the time.


No disagreement, but I fall back to the above restaurant example.
We're a tiny target here but we're out in the open and people are
tired of being defenseless.

By "disruptive elements", I think some of this audience has also been
chased away by heated discussion. Most people say they just want to
talk tech and they don't want to deal with bickering. We have yet to
see comments from anyone who would welcome moderation of discussions,
not for content but for the manner in which the content is presented.
As examples we have my own unfortunate exchanges with Peter McMurray,
and a rare "FU" from someone else here. The tone in this forum used
to be quite high, and participation has dripped sharply due to a
change in character. I'm hoping we can fix that by welcoming people
back to a more friendly environment.



Dave, I sincerely hear you. David Ruggiero started this group in
1993. In 2000 we had an all-time high of over 1300 postings in a
single month. For the last three months we've had a flow of less than
100 per month. This is where we are. Change is required. I think
the change we need is to use what everyone else in our market is
using, and hopefully to bring people back by advertising some level of
moderation and "safety". If you have any better ideas, please put
them on the table.

After all of this, your vote carries as much weight as mine. No one
here is compelled to migrate. CDP is not going away. You can stay
here and never use Google for anything, if you wish. I'm just trying
to create another home for those who want it so that we can improve
our community. I have no doubt that some people will still post here
for as long as there are NNTP servers still running. And given our
collective tendency to eschew change of any kind, some people may use
both media, or this might only further fragment the audience as some
people move and others do not. I dunno. But I think we need to do
"something".

Your turn. What do you think?

T

Agreed, am also happy using NNTP. It is easy to block senders using a news
reader so am rarely bothered by spam.

Also I think that comp.databases.pick has been useful as an archive
resource. It would be a shame to lose that by forking new content to
another group IMO.

Brett

"Tony Gravagno" <tony_gravagno (AT) nospam (DOT) invalid> wrote

"Brett Callacher" wrote:
Thanks for your feedback, Brett. Most people don't want to have to
block individual senders, especially senders that come in with a
different identity every time. It's an imposition on one's time, time
which is better spent on other activities. A manager can filter out
content once and save all readers from having to do it manually.

CDP isn't going away, and neither is the archive, so we don't lose
anything in a move.


The following is for:
- Usenet/NNTP fans
- Anyone who loathes GG web pages (like me)
- Anyone who just wants to read/lurk and not post

GG supports RSS and Atom. For any common newsreaders that gets RSS,
like Thunderbird, use the following link:
http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbm..._v2_0_msgs.xml

For NNTP, you can point your newsreader to this server:
news.gwene.org
I have setup access to the MVDBMS forum so that you can see it as
Usenet forum gwene.comp.databases.pick. (Sorry I couldn't eliminate
the prefix.)

There are issues with that. All posts are in HTML - your Pine or
Forte FreeAgent won't open the content. Some news readers support
multiple servers, others not, and some of you won't want to switch
servers. Most (all?) posts contain a link at the bottom which opens a
browser to the GG thread to see quotes and other content. Posting
back to the server doesn't work because the user identity can't be
authenticated. This is a read-only solution.

About Gwene: Thousands of RSS feeds are supported via the Gwene.org
portal, which is associated with the well-known Gmane.org. You can
get the U2 forum there too (and posts going back to 2002) from group:
gmane.comp.db.u2.general. The RSS/NNTP portal is just a dumb Perl
script, available at github.

That is a useful, though not a great option, even if you just want to
read and not post, as most people here do. At this time I'm not aware
of a decent NNTP bridge into GG, or any newsreader that provides write
access via RSS (if that's possible??).

However, many news readers like Forte Agent and Thuderbird are also
email clients, and you can subscribe to GG via email. This means you
simply use an email folder rather than a Usenet folder in the same app
- and you get the same read/write ability that you now enjoy. At this
point it's just a different folder in the same app!

As I said, the number of people who use NNTP for CDP is very small
compared to the number of people who get their info through other
media. A lot of people these days want to participate in groups with
their Kindle or other mobile devices, and they're not going to use a
NNTP app. We're in the minority guys. The entire community,
(including newcomers to Pick who may have never heard of NNTP)
shouldn't continue to suffer for the wants of a few luddites who don't
want to move from our 17 year old technology - though there is some
irony to making that statement in this group.

It's time to move on.

T

So far the only objections I see are 1) from people who still like
NNTP, and 2) from people who are concerned about censorship as a
consequence of moderation. While it's valid to voice the concerns,
it's my assertion that the first group (including myself) is a tiny
minority, and the concerns of the second group are not likely to be an
issue.

With those concerns addressed, a forum migration still presents
benefits for a much larger audience, and for this reason I am
continuing to pursue this initiative.

So, I'd also like to hear from those who have in the past said they
use Google for CDP anyway, from non NNTP users, and from anyone else
who hasn't used CDP for some reason.

Are there any objections to this initiative other than what we've seen
so far?

Thanks!
T

T,

I understand the concerns of a few of the posters here. As a manager of this new group and owner of the jBASE and DesignBais groups, I can assure the members that the only posts that I will be removing will be spam, illegal content and offensive posts.

Normally, I don't read the entire post for content, I simply scan for offensive language and offensive intent.

Thanks for all of your work,

Rick

There are 139 subscribers to the MultiValue google group that I think Mike Preece started. Somehow I became a moderator on that. If I were able to make you one too, would you consider dropping the yet-another-attempt google group and using the one that was started some time ago? Is Mike still here?

Otherwise, sure, I'll play ball and join the new one.

--dawn

Dawn, Mike's group is "u2users", hardly appropriate as a
platform-independent community hub.

We've already got traction on this group, and the open community
mandate has been established. Please hop on board.

If there are other forums which were created for a general audience, I
hope the owners will offer to send a message to their groups to
encourage people to sign on here. Let's consolidate and grow the
membership under a single banner.

Thanks.
T

dawn wrote:

On 2011-12-28 14:22:19 -0500, Rick Weiser <rick (AT) designbais (DOT) com> said:

It's only somewhat reassuring Rick. As we've seen recently, you, as
the owner of the jBASE group, are banning people from positing T24
related information there and have asked those people to move to a new
group. FWIW, I never did like seeing T24 postings in the jBASE group,
but what you're doing is an example of a group being changed/moderated
by the owner.

I'm sure the T24 folks are unhappy about their archive of information
being split between a now "old" jBASE group and whatever new group to
which they migrate.

Perhaps in the case of the jBASE group, the community wanted that, but
I really don't know because, AFAIK, there was no community discussion
about it.

I'm on board with the new google group, but have reservations because
CDP is such low volume that I really don't have a problem ignoring what
I don't like to see.

--
Kevin Powick