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From: sharon@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Sharon Hopkins)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.214633.7537@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: 12 Jun 91 21:46:33 GMT
References: <1991Jun11.115245.26336@mp.cs.niu.edu> <89HF414w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Reply-To: sharon@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Sharon Hopkins)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 103

In article <89HF414w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) writes:
>
>If the conditions of using Usenet really are that you have to accept 0%
>confidence in its reliability, then I think that ought to be spelled out.

Spelled out where?  Why?  Usenet doesn't exactly have a Corporate Charter,
and I don't see any warranty card enclosed in the Periodic Postings.  Who
should be spelling this out?  Gene Spafford?  He seems to be pretty busy
doing his regular job these days.  Henry Spencer?  He sounds pretty busy, too.
Chip Salzenberg?  He tried to give his opinion of what Usenet does and does
not offer, but his statement is currently attracting considerable discussion
and disagreement, even if mostly from one person.  :-)

Hmm.  I think I will dissent from the view that Usenet is an organization
of news administrators, and present instead the Sharon Hopkins slightly
slanted view of the Usenet Warranty, or lack thereof.  This being Usenet,
I think I shall start with an analogy (preferably a poor one :-) :

When I wander into town and tack notices up on the local signboard, I don't
assume that the existence of the signboard is any guarantee that I'll get a
response, or even that anyone else will see what I've posted there.  Maybe
someone will tear my notice down, or cover it up.  That isn't *nice*, but
that's how things are with notice-boards.  Given where I live, it's quite
possible someone will grafitti over it, or alter it's appearance (somewhat
in the manner of a garbled header).  If my notice is defaced in some fashion,
it might well get taken down by some civic-minded person with orderly habits
and an eye towards public decency.

My only means of checking the status of my notice is by getting a response
(say, a bottle through my window, or an offer to take the cute puppy or
kitten off my hands -- it sort of depends on the notice, doesn't it?),
or (in the event I get *no* response) by going back to the sign-board and
looking.

Suppose, when I go to look at my notice, I discover that it is missing. 
Would it be reasonable for me to yell at the owner of the wall, who mounted
a nice piece of cork-board for the purpose, for the fact that my notice
disappeared?  I would tend not to think so, though I'm certain at least a
few people would disagree.

If we want to draw the analogy even closer, then we have to also take into
consideration the fact that we rarely put up the notices ourselves:  some
of us pay someone else to put it up for us; others of us rely on somebody's
good will.  Can you yell at your notice-carrier if no one responds?  Or if
they put it up and someone else takes it down when they aren't looking?  Or
if they hand it off to a third party who drops it in a garbage bin?  Maybe,
if they were for some reason bound to keep track of your notice for you.  If
they had only sort of implied that your notice would be posted, and that
other people would be able to look at it, I would say you have no real right
to complain if things don't go as you would have liked.

To me, this scenario is not unlike posting an article on (by? in?) Usenet;
I figure there's a reason why this business of setting "articles" loose all
across the net is called "posting" and not "publishing".  

In my particular case, I hand my notices (articles) off to somebody else
headed in the right general direction, who passes them along to someone else,
who may or may not put them where I want.  (The fact that a random bunch of
people and organizations with computers are engaged in a cooperative effort
to provide rapid (and often cheap) communication, does not imply to me that
they will necessarily succeed (or even want to succeed) in transmitting *my*
communication.)  In other words, I use rn, on a system running C-News, which
is administered by a couple of guys in offices down the hall.  Our machine
sends articles and the like to a machine a few buildings over, which is in
charge of getting them off-site; once news leaves my screen, it's pretty
much out of my hands.

Do I get annoyed when articles I spent hours preparing never make it off
our local machine?  Sure I do.  I get a lot more annoyed when articles I
spent lots of time on get wiped out when the partition I'm in overflows and
vi can't write to disk, but that happens often enough that I've learned to
cope.  :-)  But when I go long enough without getting a reply to some article
I've posted, my first response is not generally to flood the net with post
after post (after post) complaining, demanding apologies, and the like; for
one thing, it seems like an insufficiently productive way to spend my time,
though that may just be because I'm too shy to yell long enough to get
anyone to do what I want (read up on the parable of the unjust judge :-).

Instead, I usually just wander into the SA's office and tell him my news
doesn't seem to be getting out.  Eventually someone usually figures out what
went wrong and sees about getting it fixed.  Sometimes they even thank me
for noticing a problem.  Sometimes, they say (more or less) "tough luck".
Meanwhile, I generally manage to survive.

You see, I don't think having an account on this particular machine gives me
some kind of inherent right to post articles:  if the SA (or management) pulls
the plug, that's it.  When the disk crashes, or the next machine in line stops
working, some articles get lost.  Oh well.  If my articles get disappeared
somewhere down the line, seems to me that's more or less in the same category
with things like disk crashes:  I can't fix it, and somebody else may or may
not fix it for me.  If I get really desperate to express myself, I can always
write a letter to the editor, or call someone who cares, or wander into town
to tack up a sign.  Usenet is mostly just a funner, faster way to carry on a
conversation; as with other forms of conversation, there are no guarantees
that anyone else will be able to hear (or understand) you.  There's even less
guarantee anyone will listen.

Usenet Product Label:  "This service carries no warranties, express or implied:
			try not to take it too personally."


Sharon Hopkins
sharon@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov