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From: selmer@hpcuhc.cup.hp.com (Steve Elmer)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: Re: Using news for internal communications
Message-ID: <102350001@hpcuhc.cup.hp.com>
Date: 11 Jan 91 04:28:20 GMT
References: <20665@crg5.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 42

PHEW!  Just finished reading these postings and want to add my two bits.  

We recently had "news" added to the login sequence for our workstations.
Every time one logs on, an ever-growing list of news items scrolls across
the screen until finally one reads them.  This is something of an annoyance
since most articles were not of direct relevence.  The unfortunate part is
that upon trying to read them (and thus get rid of them), the "news" facility
simply core dumped all of the articles onto the display without page breaks.
I don't want to be forced to read all of that trivia every day!

I hope that the e-news utilities mentioned in this string are much more 
sophisticated than the one foisted on me.  I prefer notes, but it seems that
it could be better.  There are zillions of notes groups available to me,
but it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Also, it would
help if there were ways to get a higher level view of the data content.  
Maybe something like hyper-text...

Within my project, we have recently begun using notes to discuss technical
issues.  The up side is that I can now contribute to more discussions without
having to attend never-ending meetings.  The down side is that the discussions
tend to get convoluted as people take things out of context or zoom in on the
trivialities while ignoring the heart of the matter.  I think this problem
could be mitigated with some sort of moderator.  

Overall, my experience with using notes for technical discussions is that it
is almost as good as (sometimes better than) talking face to face.  The medium
allows complex issues to be discussed in detail without loss of information
since each participant must be able to write down their thoughts.  It also 
serves as an "electronic trail" which enables one to decipher the reasoning
behind the conclusions.

One last thing, earlier notes in this string mentioned that the askers and
answerers of dumb questions should both be anonymous.  I believe that only
the asker should be anonymous, and then only if they explicitly want to.
The answerer should not be anonymous for several reasons:
   1  Not all sources of knowledge are created equal
   2  Anonymous answers prevent one from learning which sources are better
   3  The answerer should get the credit they deserve for the answer given
      (either good or bad)
   4  The asker may wish to continue the discussion in private

Steve Elmer