GrinnellPlans
From GrinnellWiki
Contents |
Uses
Plans are primarily means of self-expression and discussion with other Plans users, functioning in some sense as digital white boards. However, because each plan is fundamentally the same and because each Plans user has access to every plan, GrinnellPlans is especially notable for its egalitarian nature. Thus, discussions often not only bridge social groups but will, occasionally, include users who attended Grinnell at entirely different times and who know each other solely through their internet personas.
Plans is also frequently used by individual groups, and updates to schedules or events can easily be seen by interested parties through their autoread lists, which notify them when a group's plan updates.
History
The Roaring 90's and the VAX era (? - 2000)
Since the mid-1990s, Grinnell College campus email operated on an old-style, command-line VAX system. This set the stage for the birth of the original Plans structure, allowing students, faculty, and administrators to write their own plans and read other students' plans (though the original verb used was to "finger" others' plans; hilarity ensued). Eventually, features such as "autofinger" lists developed as precursors to the format Grinnellians know and love today. Peculiarities of the VAX system allowed students not only to see who had recently updated their plans, but also who was currently or recently online, from where they had logged in, and even to send each other early forms of instant messages.
Campus-Hosted Webserver (2000-2003)
In the fall of 1999, Grinnell switched to a modern-era webmail email system, and by the spring of 2000, VAX was being shut down. After a desperation-ridden and Plansless few months, Rachel Heck ‘01 wrote a web-based Plans application in the fall of 2000, and by the end of the semester the Plans culture had been reborn in HTML and was hosted on-campus in connection with the Math Department. The new Plans system allowed for the addition of new features, such as Plan Love (a friend's username inside brackets) actually resulting in a link to the loved one's plan (as well as novelties such as a Plan Love counter). Upon Heck's graduation, Plans underwent its first seamless transfer of power to "the Jonathans," Emmons '02, Kensler '04, and Wellons '04.
Off-Campus and Beyond (2003 - 2008)
As the popularity of Plans grew, so did its potential for controversy. Students, and even a former faculty member, were prone to posting comments that overly-sensitive administrators found potentially threatening or slanderous. As the current incarnation of Plans was hosted on college-owned servers, the college was technically responsible for its content, and began to view Plans as a liability. Kensler made attempts to make changes to Plans in order to increase privacy and more diligently police offensive content, but the administration remained unsatisfied. After sudden and hastily-written changes were made to the Academic Computer Use Policy strictly regulating "virtual communities" on July 21, 2003, Jonathan Kensler was told by ITS Director Bill Francis that he had 6 hours to take Plans offline. Kensler complied, and an online student uproar and petition ensued. Francis later posted a proposed replacement called "P-logs" that imposed sufficient oversight and restrictions (such as exclusion of alumni) to satisfactorily comply with the Academic Computer Use Policy. Kensler and the Plans community at large rejected these conditions as unacceptable. On July 25, Kensler announced the creation of the new GrinnellPlans.com, hosted off-campus and no longer officially affiliated with Grinnell College.
Plans Takedown of 2008 (Present)
On December 15th, 2008, the Plans website was disabled. The following announcement was display, instead:
GrinnellPlans, in accordance with a cease-and-desist notice, is suspended, effective Monday, December 15, 2008 at or around 7:30pm Central Time. Updates will be posted as they become available. GrinnellPlans' compliance with any extrajudicial notice does not indicate any admission of fact or practice. GrinnellPlans, its agents and representatives, reserve the right to seek all appropriate legal remedies, without prior notification.
On December 18th, 2008, GrinnellPlans came back online. During the downtime a legal structure was proposed. [[[Ian Atha]] revealed that the cease-and-desist notice did not allege libel or slander–instead it made allegations regarding practices of GrinnellPlans. The notes and secrets sections were temporarily disabled, presumably because of abuse.
On February 9, 2009 Secrets and Notes were re-enabled.
As of this writing, the details of the cease-and-desist letter remain unknown.
Links
Other Grinnell Online Services Not Affiliated with the College
- Grinnell Gallery - Website [here]
- GrinnellWiki
- Remote Grinnellian - Website [here]
References
- ↑ Etzioni, Amitai. The Monochrome Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. and A Sociological Study of Grinnell Plans::Plans: A Hybrid Community
