Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!vsi1!octopus!avsd!childers
From: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: administration fascism
Message-ID: <463@avsd.UUCP>
Date: 7 Feb 89 03:22:43 GMT
References: <412@execu.UUCP> <7094@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <412@avsd.UUCP> <1715@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <445@avsd.UUCP> <2253@unmvax.unm.edu> <608@uva.UUCP>
Reply-To: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Organization: die Edelstahlratte
Lines: 44

dik@uva.UUCP (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:

>mike@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell) writes:

>>In short, it may be quite rational to protect users from eachother (by
>>protecting /usr/lib/aliases), but it IS facism to "protect" people from
>>themselves.

>Agreed

I beg to disagree, gentlebeings. I am not intent on 'protecting users from
each other' when I forbid ~{user}/.forward files ... I am protecting myself.

It's not a matter of facism. It's a matter of functionality. I have a mandate,
as it were, to maintain the mail subsystem. I also have an unofficial mandate
to order my tasks in such a way as to avoid wasting my time. Reading mail to
'root' from 'MAILER-DAEMON', time after time, is a waste of my time. I know
what the problem is, I know there is no way I'll ever be able to educate the
entire user community, there's always someone browsing the manual - and that,
in itself, is a blessing of sorts, since they aren't asking me - so I created
a solution, the simplest, cheapest solution I could think of. It works.

The meter for determining if the mailer subsystem works, is whether you get
any mail from users or MAILER-DAEMON complaining. That's the only meter that
really counts. I'm not interfering in anyone's productivity, I'm keeping them
from impinging on mine.

You may call it administrative fascism ... but I think of it as facilitating
things, overall ... maintaining functionality, at the cost of an occasional
damaged ego, perhaps, but maintaining functionality. One person objects, but
they are inevitably a minority. Is this fascism ?

>>  Michael I. Bushnell       \     This above all; to thine own self be true
>>         GIG!                \    And it must follow, as the night the day,
>>mike@turing.cs..unm.edu      /\   Thou canst not be false to any man.
>>  Hmmmm..............       /  \  Farewell:  my blessing season this in thee!

-- richard

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