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From: db@helium.East.Sun.COM (David Brownell)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.groupware
Subject: Re: Using news for internal communications
Message-ID: <3602@jaytee.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 90 03:37:58 GMT
References: <20665@crg5.UUCP> <276561BC.419@intercon.com>
Sender: news@East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: db@east.sun.com (David Brownell)
Followup-To: news.misc
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Billerica MA
Lines: 32

Comparing spreading information via mailing lists and via local
news groups, a few issues come to mind:

- You can't "make" people read news in the same way you
  can do with mail ... too much fluff in most newsgroups,
  vs. most organizations using mail having reduced fluff
  of necessity.  (Maybe the adaption could work either way,
  though; I've worked mostly in email-intensive places.)

- Being a broadcast medium, news is to some degree less
  secure.  Information that would comfortably go to one or
  more workgroups by email would seem more prone to going
  astray over news ... e.g. orgchrarts to head hunters,
  plans of one group to another (yeech, politics!), and
  a variety of suchlike restricted data.

- Again related to being broadcast, there are some parts of
  the work life that people feel uncomfortable broadcasting.
  People feel very different about admitting ignorance (e.g.
  by asking a question) to various groups.  Some people feel
  uncomfortable asking questions of anonymous strangers, some
  people feel uncomfortable asking them from people they know!
  (E.g. I know folk who just can't post to USENET.)

So, how to use news within an organization?  Let me ask two
related questions:   What varieties of social arrangements is
netnews best suited for?  Where do those arrangements show up
in a particular workplace contemplating using news internally?

- Dave

One of the Million monkeys ... see, here's my keyboard!