Minutes of the National Capital FreeNet Board Meeting of 18 July 1995 held in the Honeywell Room, RMOC Headquarters The following Board members were in attendance: Julie Chahal, 2nd Vice President, ab161 Jessica Cohen, aa724 Brett Delmage, aa693 Rosaleen Dickson, ac174 Yvonne Dionne, ao594 Chris Hawley, ah654 Andrew Patrick, 1st Vice President, aa118 Dave Sutherland, President, aa001 Richard Taylor, Secretary, aa333 Stephen Toy, aa102 Absent: David Blackwood, aa332 Scott Catterill, aa355 David Loan, aa112 Richard Mount, aa009 1. INTRODUCTIONS 2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF 20 JUNE 1995 Moved by A. Patrick seconded by J. Chahal 3. AGENDA as written. 4. OLD BUSINESS a. 2 HOUR LIMIT AND USAGE REPORT Ian Allen presented the usage report (now on-line) and some speculation concerning how the imposition of the 2-hour time limit affected usage. Some problems with resolution on vertical axis of graphs were noted. It is difficult to predict how things will change in the fall. Adjustments to peak hour times remain the responsibility of the Executive Director and System Administrator. b. NOMINATION FOR VACANT BOARD POSITION Chris Hawley reported that a process of finding a suitable candidate is under way. A list of qualified candidates has been compiled and the nomination committee is now contacting candidates for more information. Nomination will be at the next Board Meeting or possibly on-line. 5. RESEARCH PROPOSAL Celeste Wincapaw presented a proposal for a survey of lesbian users (see on-line proposal). The purpose is to expand a study of lesbian visibility in urban areas to electronic areas. There seems to be a tendency for lesbian discussions to be less visible than gay men's discussions. This survey will investigate how lesbians find each other and use NCF newsgoups. It is under supervision by Carleton University. The results will be published as a Masters thesis and possibly journal articles (possibility of publicity). Questions and Answers (Board Members identified by initials; questions from the floor identified with a "Q"): AP - did survey recently - can offer tips on encryption for security. Strongly supports the proposal. Approves of the careful attention to proper process. Q. Unsolicited e-mail? A. No. Only postings and word of mouth. Offering information on lesbian activities on networks. Q. - has heard feedback from women that some of the designated newsgroups are "hostile". A. will also use listserves. **Note there is a posted policy actively discouraging listservers - need to revisit the policy? CH - should there be a menu item in the SIG? A. Trying to balance amount of publicity with amount of negative feedback. Q. Do all requests for a survey have to come to the Board? A. No - but good to keep Board informed. AP Risk of over-surveying. Would be a good idea to have coordination. At the moment it would be nice to keep the Board informed. RD - notes that Seniors' SIG is often subject to informal surveys. They are usually dismissed by participants. 6. WORLD WIDE WEB See on-line background. MOTION that NCF implement increasing access to, and visibility from, the World Wide Web. Moved by Julie Chahal seconded by Richard Taylor Discussion: RD - what reasons? JCh - some aspects have already been done in test mode, it's time to formalize. The rest of the world seems to be moving in the direction of WWW. RD - complete Web or not? Why does it have to be part of the FreeNet? JCh - recomendation is to make WWW available immediately in text-only form but further investigation of improved access. CH - this makes official our participation in the broader on-ine community. Q - would this make NCF a provider of info to the Web? Competition to others providing this service for a fee. JCh - many levels of service. We don't base our decision on competition. YD - we will always be much more severely limited than commercial service providers. AP - seven issues: 1 - text only browser, policy issues: limits on what restrictions on access to certain types of info. eg binary 2 - requests to install info external to our system targeted to non-NCF audience (ie only in WWW form not in FreePort menus) 3 - graphic files are in a form not usable by FreePort users 4 - loss of NCF identity 5 - impact on in and out-bound Internet connections. There has been a request from Carleton U. to restrict telnet URLs. 6 - for on-line users, is WWW better than FreePort? 7 - this project should have a budjet attached. There is a significant amount of staff resources needed. JCh - point of process: why didn't AP bring up these points on-line. Many of the points could be addressed with minor modifications to the action items. BD - supports the motion likes incremental implementation RD - being happy with a particular mode does not mean we are ignoring other possible modes. WWW does not help with the things NCF already does well. Lynx is not user-friendly. WWW is easier to use with a graphical interface like Netscape. We don't have to include everything. YD - NCF newsgroups are a more active medium and better at community building, WWW is better at providing information (more passive). Info providers seem to be moving towards WWW - we may be losing this part of NCF. Free equal access - we should be showing our users some of this service free. DS - calls the question of the overall direction - motion as stated. Motion CARRIED DS - brought up the issue of possible off-line newsreaders as a technology related to WWW implementation AP & IA off-line newsreaders may change the community feel of NCF CH - responses to AP's concerns. We don't have a policy re people putting things on NCF not usable by NCF members. Yes, there may be a problem with loss of identity. Other issues are already present in current implementation. Impact on Internet link is a function of our growth. Board Planning Committee is working on defining who and what we serve. Focus is on this region. It's not important which method is used if we know what we are here for. Public domain software like Lynx etc would be easier to support. YD - what we are - a space for communication and info sharing and mutual help. Discussion of suggested actions: 1. Make Lynx browser official. IA - need to move code out of a personal test area into an official software area, upgrade the version, fix a few problems. Current version is very restricted in access to non-text info. As policy is developed, services could be expanded. Fortunately customizations are fairly small. Estimate 1 week's work. AP - need for user documentation. IA - some on-line info is available in the test area. 2. FreePort to WWW translation software. IA - Again need to move from personal test area to an official place. Estimate 2 days work. 3. Design overall look of NCF on the Web. Menu Design Task Force feels this is beyond their mandate. This brings up a lot of AP's issues. Needs to be done but we haven't identified a group to do it. 4. Learn from Chebucto. Note we could also learn from Blue Sky FreeNet. IA note that Chebucto FreeNet is specifically NOT allowed to offer SLIP service. At the moment we are already offering everything Chebucto is. 5. Investigate alternatives to Lynx. eg "WWW" (HW/SW Committee) 6. Non-FreePort alternatives for other services. IA - we should also investigate more "standard" software. eg PINE. Could replace existing S/W with something better. 7. Assess impact on costs and system loads. IA - there are definite problems with the existing Lynx re use of memory for large HTML files. SD - it could be better to off-load browser load onto personal computers. 8. Distributing client software to our members. Matthew Darwin - a volunteer is already looking into this. (John Meyer). 9. Develop a communication plan. 10. Reports on progress and impact. (Exec Director) 11. Investigate funding. (Development Committee) AP - need to address policies eg restriction policies, space limitations, formats allowed, what info should be on NCF 7. REPORTS a. Board Planning Committee (Julie Chahal) BPC has been discussing priorities amongst what we serve and who we serve. We are now trying to compile a list of issues and previous and upcoming policy decisions to see how we are setting priorites at the moment. b. Executive Committee (Dave Sutherland) on-line report Expiry of newsgroup statement is incorrect. Actually the expiry issue was only concerning the Board newsgroups. It is now suggested that these be archived and expired after 60 days. Need for an archive browser. BD - suggests 75 days would be better. Newsreader doesn't work properly when the number of messages gets too large. Move to on-line discussion and vote. Fee for Internet connection is being changed. Flat fee to Carleton to May 96. Then we should renegotiate and will probably have to pay for our portion of our usage of the Carleton link. c. Operations (Lisa Donnelly) on-line report Note: Board members should reassess their commitments to liaison with the various committees and task forces. Some discussion of the operational indicators. d. Menu Design Task Force. Miranda Gray: 2 requests to remove, 6 or 7 really like it, the rest haven't commented. Discussion of implications of moving menus and directories that have URLs. e. Development report is now on-line. VISA donation method is now working well and is making it easier for people to donate. CH - asked if we should be looking for a "figurehead" Board member. Miranda Gray points out that by-laws insist on a certain level of participation. f. Financial Report (Jeff Bossert) - on-line report In future, financial report will be delivered at the Board Meeting. Finance committee looked at cash flow. We can afford up to $50,000 in equipment now. Some grants will be specifically applied to buying more modems. CH - why is public access expenditure so low? JB - plan for more public access terminals has not happened. There is also a lot of donated equipment. We can't have public access terminals without another terminal server and everything else. Public access committee has therefore suspended activity until the system upgrade. BD - could a batch of modems be set aside for public access? Need to start planning allocation of resources. AP - should we be spending more money on staff - extra resources to make our system work better rather than adding equipment to do more of the same? JB - should also look at getting office space for core staff and for volunteer meetings. 8. ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (Lisa Donnelly and Jeff Bossert) AP - didn't we agree that this should be posted on-line? RT - it will be in the agenda and moved to minutes. AP - should also be posted in Board-moderated. Discuss on-line and bring to next meeting. 9. Next meeting Tuesday August 15, Honeywell Room, RMOC HQ. 10. Evaluation of Executive Director: In camera: Board plus Jeff Bossert (Treasurer).