Talk:GrinnellPlans

Folks, please remember that Wikipedia strives toward a neutral point of view. If you don't know what NPOV is, please read this entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npov

I realize that there is more controversy over the elections than I included in my edit of the last paragraph. I don't intend to commit a lie of omissions; I just don't have time to comb through the details right now. I encourage someone to include specific, neutral facts pertaining to the election. This is not your soapbox -- if you want to air 'your version' please do so on your own webpage.

--Userpong

Merge

This was set to merge for a long time. I'm going to do that soon unless I hear otherwise. I'll probably be cutting it down significantly in the merge, as most of this history isn't that notable. Blade 02:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Do it. I'm ready. Jacobko 15:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I did it, merged to Grinnell College and redirected there. God have mercy on my soul. I'm pasting the old contents of the article here. Blade 21:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

GrinnellPlans is a virtual community of Grinnell College students, staff, alumni, and friends. It had 2,994 members as of June 2006[1].

The GrinnellPlans community is supported by a collection of PHP scripts that generate the Web pages containing the members' communications and providing other community services. These scripts are free software, licensed under the GPL[2].

History of GrinnellPlans

Prior to 2000, Grinnell College offered students, faculty, and staff access to a VAX server, which hosted users' files and e-mail accounts. Using the Finger protocol, VAX users could view one another's PLAN.TXT files, and a self-referential culture of communicating through these files developed. A student group known as VAXGods introduced a program called AUTOFINGER, which allowed students to track the plan changes of selected users.

In 1999, Grinnell College computer administrators announced that they would shut down the centralized e-mail system on the VAX computer system and move to Web-based e-mail. Even after VAX e-mail was shut off, however, students continued to log on to the server to communicate via plans until the VAX was completely disconnected in spring 2000.

GrinnellPlans was created by Grinnell College student Rachel Heck, '01, to provide a Web-based interface to replace the expiring VAX software. ("VAXless Plans" was an early name for the software.) Her interface added to the functionality of the old VAX system, making it more user-friendly and conducive to community interaction. See Where did Plans Come From? and A Long and Biased History of PLANS.

On July 21, 2003, Bill Francis, Director of Information Technology at Grinnell College, ordered that GrinnellPlans not be hosted on Grinnell College property because of the College's concerns regarding possibly illegal content on the system, causing an eleven-day outage. Notably, this announcement caught the attention of internet advocate Lawrence Lessig, who posted a discussion of it on his blog.

On August 2, 2003, GrinnellPlans moved to an off-campus host under the domain name grinnellplans.com. It was and is supported through user donations and is not funded by, maintained by, or affiliated with Grinnell College.

In June 2005, the registration of the GrinnellPlans.com domain expired, and the administrators did not renew the name. The domain was then claimed by a previous Plans administrator, Sechyi Laiu (Grinnell '04), who had previously been denied access to the server due to personal disagreements. Laiu pointed the domain to his server, on which he had set up a duplicate of the database and code. The renewal was made using an anonymizing registrar and was announced several days later. Laiu announced that he was holding an election to select a new student to administer the community. As one of the conditions of the election, Laiu declared that the election would only be valid if more than half of currently active members voted in it; however, fewer than half submitted a vote. Soon after the failed election, Laiu designated student Nathalie Lauze to assume the role of Plans administrator.

Late in 2005, Lauze transferred to the University of Iowa, and designated Eryn O'Neil (Grinnell '07) as administrator. Currently O'Neil administers the community along with Megan Goering ('08) and Sidonie Straughn-Morse ('08).