Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: And the winner is... NOBODY!
Message-ID: <20851@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 23 Mar 88 15:44:23 GMT
References: <8803211452.AA00266@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 72
In-reply-to: SUTTON@BRANDEIS.BITNET's message of 16 Mar 88 15:26:00 GMT



Just to get back to reality a little...

No, it was not me who "started" this discussion.

A system administrator at a University (I have the original somewhere)
sent a note to unix-wizards telling of how their administration was
currently planning to make VMS the campus standard and he wanted to
know what arguments he could use to convince them to give Unix a fair
shake, so in fact the original issue was probably the exact opposite
of what many people have read into this discussion (it was a defense
of Unix against a plan to exclude it in favor of only VMS, not the
other way around.)

I think that alone should open some eyes on the tone of the messages.

Somewhere into the discussion someone forwarded one of my notes to
info-vax, so a lot of people here missed the original discussion I
guess (although the forwarded note did have an extensive quote from
that note which should have been sufficient.)

I would also like to preach a little bit about e-mail, not UNIX/VMS,
if you can suffer me another few lines...

People often read a lot more emotion into e-mail, when they sense a
disagreement going on, than really is there.

Some will then react to the perceived emotions accusing one side or
another of being rude or obnoxious etc, regardless of the issue at
hand. That's usually the point a discussion gets out of hand, not when
two people disagree on an issue in some perhaps lively manner, but
when a few others begin sending notes accusing one or both sides of
foaming at the mouth, and then this gets discussed and then, well, not
much else gets done.

The volume goes way up with little else being added except this one or
that one or both should just shut up, or should continue, or the
inevitable conciliatory attempts "gee, they're both right, but in
different ways", which is very nice but hardly helpful at a factual
level, just a way some people react to perceived emotionality (which,
as I said, is not usually there, stop handing out the valium!)

The term for this is generally "meta-discussion", discussing endlessly
whether or not we should discuss this or that. Often if you look back
over the ENTIRE discussion you'll find that it was only 8 or 10 notes
(out of perhaps 200 or more posted in the same time frame) discussing
the issue but an additional 50 or so meta-messages which is what
actually tried people's patience. The moral is, refrain from
meta-discussion, even trying to be conciliatory, these things go thru
a few rounds and then die of their own inertia.

Net veterans are usually not as sensitive to this "imagined
emotionality effect" and don't see it anymore as they're more
accustomed to reading opinions and disagreements on the net and
see it as just that, discussions, even if sometimes colorful.

Whether or not the original discussion was of value is of course for
you to decide. I think it drew out a lot of interesting points on all
sides even if some cannot be verified objectively. Remember, these are
often multi-million dollar decisions for people on these lists, they
really need to be armed with as much information as possible to sift
thru and try to make intelligent judgement on (as they say, in the
end, it's lonely at the top and you have to make up your own mind.)

With that I would hope that, if nothing else, people begin to gain
some insight into how disagreements tend to evolve on a computer
network group and can get something more out of it than high blood
pressure.

Now *that* was a meta-discussion!

	-Barry Shein, Boston University