Re: your mail

[Dan Brosemer <odin@cleannorth.org>]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 04:16:30PM -0000, steve lewis wrote:
> Sounds fairly close to what we did.
> thanx to you and dave for your time.
> 
> 
> >From: Dan Brosemer <odin@cleannorth.org>
> >To: steve lewis <loki2607@hotmail.com>
> >CC: techies@lists.cleannorth.org
> >Subject: Re: your mail
> >Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 11:32:54 -0400

Inserting this in the list archives at the same time as doing some
user-education...

Steve.  There are many good reasons to use the email lists rather than send
mail directly to me.

1.  There are other people than me who can be just as, or more, helpful.
This case is a perfect example.  Did I come up with _any_ useful
information?  No.  Not a shred.  The useful guidance came from Kathie and
Dave who both found the problem independently.  Dave found it two hours
earlier, and, so, had the two of you been communicating throught the list,
you'd have had your printout two hours earlier, not wasted my time, and
probably freed up some of Kathie's as well.

2.  I get on the order of 500-6000 messages/day depending on the day.  To
deal with this, I set up filtering rules, and mail coming over the Clean
North lists gets a certain precedence.  You bypass that when you send to my
personal address.  That creates more work for me, and it's annoying.

This is why I said on Day 1 that the best ways to reach me are:
  #1 email the appropriate list (http://lists.cleannorth.org/ is a list of
  lists)
  #2 email me directly
  #3 icq for the ~4 hours/day I can be reached that way (2624301)
  #32767 phone

3.  The lists are archived at http://lists.cleannorth.org/.  Anyone can
search them.  This is useful if we get the same problem occurring down the
road.  Right now, there are three messages in there on this topic... they're
all from me.  I have received another six that should be in there.  After I
send this one, that will be four in 10 messages searchable.  That seriously
reduces the quality of that archive.

4.  It's not hard!  Just hit "Reply All" instead of "Reply"!

5.  It makes you think more before shoving your problem on someone else.
It's all too easy to just fire off a question to an individual, but when
you're sending to a group of people, and your message is going to be
publically archived forever, you tend to to try a little harder to be clear,
concise, and intelligent.  (ie, you're more likely to report all error
messages, and the exact details of what you're attempting to do).

6.  I don't have time to do all the admin work at the office, and it
shouldn't be expected of me.  See Mark Verber's article on how many
full-time admins a site needs:
http://www.verber.com/mark/sysadm/how-many-admins.html

We weigh in at:
.5 for users
6 for OSs
1 for machines
0 for tight coupling
5 subsystems
0 additional segment
8 security
---
20.5

"Junior admins can handle 4 units. A really good experienced admin can hack 
8-12 units."

And that's expecting someone working full-time!!!

So why do people expectg me to be doing all the admin work enough that
rather than emailing the _email_list_of_admins_, _I_ get the email???

.5 for users
3 for OSs
1 for machines
0 for tight coupling
5 for subsystems
0 for additional segments
4 for security
---
13.5

That will, by comparison, be relaxing.  Maybe by Monday!

My point?  Other people don't mind putting in a little time too, as Jim and
Dave, especially, have demonstrated.  

So when I ask you to send to the list, and not to me directly, please,
_please_, just send to the list!  I don't think that's too much to ask.

-Dan

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