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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!deccrl!news.crl.dec.com!decvax.dec.com!zinn!kgg
From: kgg@zinn.MV.COM (Kenn Goutal)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware,news.misc
Subject: Re: Using news for internal communications
Keywords: news; Participate; organizational structures
Message-ID: <1080@zinn.MV.COM>
Date: 29 Dec 90 03:30:17 GMT
References: <3602@jaytee.East.Sun.COM> <113@intrbas.UUCP> <20813@crg5.UUCP>
Organization: Zinn Computer Co., Litchfield NH
Lines: 191

[Poof!  I'm over here!  I'm goutal@intrbas, on vacation...]

In article <20813@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
>Good point.  The last mechanism (peer pressure) is probably the best
>and can work well in an environment where many of the people know each
>other.  One's reputation in one's company is more immediately important
>than one's reputation on the net.

Actually, I was speaking of *organizational* pressure, not peer pressure;
e.g.  "keep that up and we'll pull your net privs".  Like I said, draconian.

I would *like* to think that peer pressure would work well,
but in my experience peer pressure only works the other way --
pressuring them into behaving in ways they consider degrading
in the interests of survival.

Either way, you're right (imho) that peer pressure would be more likely
to work in organizations where everybody knows everybody.  However, is
something like 'news' more necessary precisely in those organizations
that are too big for this too be true?  That is, a company small enough
that everyone knows everyone -- say, 20 -- can get by fine on scribbled
notes on corkboards and maybe email, but a company of 20,000 cannot.
I mean, obviously, many such companies get by all right, but would stand
the most to gain by having e-news.  But then there's no peer pressure.

>Unfortunately, netters bring the "flaming" tradition from world news
>to in-house news, pounding on even minor mistakes of first-time posters
>in public.  This is bound to discourage posting by a large number of
>employees.

Agreed.  However, this particular vector is not the only one for this
disease.  Pounding on the minor mistakes of those foolish enough to 
admit their ignorance and ask for information is endemic, with or
without the vehicle of e-news.  Most organizations I've ever known
don't use e-news for internal communication, and in nearly all of them
it's commonplace to find individuals who, for one reason or another,
routinely dismantle other people for minor breaches of knowledge.

I had previously written:
>>Some careful planning of newsgroups and distribution regions
>>should be done.  It almost certainly will not work to make all
>>in-house newsgroups have a distribution of 'company-wide'.

And Nick replied:
>I disagree.  If we start distributing certain newsgroups just to 
>certain people, we might as well (except for the minor issue of
>resource usage) go back to using e-mail aliases.  A big advantage
>of newsgroups, IMHO, is that the *reader* has the choice of what
>to read, and the writer doesn't need to know who explicitly the
>audience is, just what the subject category(s) are.   This is
>especially important in a broadcast medium where the labor cost
>of reading is greater than the cost of writing (small-alias e-mail 
>is the reverse).

Ah.  Well.  Hm-hm.  Ho-ho.  I agree and disagree simultaneously.
First, I minor quibble:  I don't believe that resource usage is a
minor issue for many, if not most, organizations.  If it were, we'd
all have disks on our workstations, maybe even big ones, and point-
to-point connections with all other nodes.  We don't because resources
are expensive.  I have always thought of 'news' as having *two* equally
important benefits:  efficient distribution of msgs, and flexibility of
subscription.

But you're right, of course, that it is important that the writer need
not keep track of the readership, especially if all readers may also be
writers.

However, I don't see that it logically follows that all newsgroups must
be distributed to all machines in the organization, or be allowed to be
ready by all individuals in the organization.  But here I am beforked...
I'll explain in a moment (he said mysteriously)...

>Communications paths go along organizational structures only as 
>historical artifact.

Uh, well, yes and no.  True in organizations where communication is
constrained by fiat to follow well-defined organization paths.
False in the sense that communication paths *are* organizational structures.
In an org where everyone talks to everyone, there *is* no structure,
or if there is, it is only a facade to placate some external org.
Sorta comes to the same thing, eventually, but from a different perspective.

>In most companies, and nearly all the successful 
>ones, the communications structure is "matrix": you talk to whoever 
>you need to get the job done, without asking permission of or going
>through your boss or other authority.

Careful, now... I expect that you, as I, and perhaps others of us here,
*want* to belive that your stats are true, but I've seen nothing to 
confirm this.  Also, I think (not sure) that you're ignoring the fact
that while in many companies you *can* *talk* to whomever you want
in order to get your job done, that doesn't mean that they are talking
to you -- there is a lot of intra-departmental, inter-departmental,
and a-departmental communication going on that you and I never see,
precisely because the authors thereof don't *want* us to see it.
Again, more in a moment...

So, I think that for e-news to be an effective tool, there must be
some newsgroups whose distribution is org-wide (e.g. org.comp.languages,
org.rec.aardvarks) and there must also be some newsgroups whose distro
is limited to those machines where it is appropriate (org.BF1.hvac to
discuss the air-conditioning problem at the Bedford plant), and there
must be some whose distro is somehow limited to those *individuals*
for whom it is appropriate (e.g. org.vp.strategy, org.grunts.strike).

The implementations of 'news' with which I'm familiar have no concept
of limiting distribution to individuals, but I include it for purposes
of discourse.  I see this as distinct from a mailing list, where either
one member has to be the 'moderator' who takes in messages and forwards
them according to a privately-maintained list, or somehow that mailing
list has to be forwarded to all members of itself, and users must in
any case remember to use e-mail rather than e-news, which is awkward
as well as, depending on the number of members, inefficient.

I feel that e-news should have such a notion as a distribution list.
This list of members would be maintained by, probably, the Personnel
department.  Horrible thought, but some entity like that is the one
that keeps track of the place of each individual in the organization.
In some large companies, they don't find out until last, but they are
in any case the final authority re who has been promoted, transferred,
fired, demoted, what-have-you.  So they, perhaps via a Systems Manglement
entity, would tell the news software who was in a particular newsgroup
and who was not.  But the transmission mechanism, and the style of
posting, and the freedom from the knowledge of who the recipients are,
would be the same as for newsgroup distribution based on machine.

>News will not be popular with those who maintain their jobs by hoarding
>information, passing it only to those who do them favors.  This old
>style of "distribution lists" and locked doors just gets blown away 
>by a good electronic communications system.  Electronic communication
>goes so fast and costs so little, that the speed of communications in 
>an organization has become primarily a (inverse) function of that
>organization's information barriers.

ABSOLUTELY !!!!!!!!

I think that it logically follows that many people will needlessly
suffer from the lack of many of the benefits of e-news just because
there are some people in power in certain orgs who cannot afford to
allow a black-market infonomy that bypasses all their controls.

On the other hand, if e-news could be made non-threatening,
by (a) speeding up the existing communication channels a zillionfold,
(b) allowing denser networks of ad-hoc communications where they are
already allowed, and (c) still providing controls on information where
that is currently desired -- then e-news stands a better chance of
being allowed in the door, and many people in the org will benefit.

>Mimicking the paper trail and all 
>its politics with electrons is a dreadfully inefficient way to go.

I don't see how this is necessarily true.
I see that it is true if the existing paper trail and its politics
are inefficient (aside from the mechanics of paper).
I see no evidence that all 'structured' organizations are inherently
inefficient.  Bypassing the structure is more efficient than working
through it only when the structure is inefficient.

Well, when all is said and done, here is the dilemma I face:
One the one hand I place high value on free exchange of information,
and in breaking down barriers and controls on information.
I'm not sure I wholeheartedly embrace the policy espoused (and
implemented) by The Shockwave Rider, of unlocking giving *all* files
world-read privilege ... but close.  Certainly I've never understood
why information that belongs to a company should somehow belong to 
only part of that company.  If I work for a company X, and there are
plans to introduce a product Y sometime in the next three quarters,
I can see no valid reason why I should not be allowed to know this fact.
Of course, I might abuse this right, and pass the information along to
a customer, or a competitor, but that's a *separate issue*.

At the same time, I hate like the dickens the idea that the workers
in an organization would be deprived of many benefits of e-news
just because it would violate the communication paths imposed by
(or which impose) the organization's structure.

>Nick Szabo		szabo@sequent.com
>Embrace Change...  Keep the Values...  Hold Dear the Laughter...

-- Kenn Goutal

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