Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!peritek!dig From: dig@peritek.UUCP (Dave Gotwisner) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Cabal Summary: site admins don't pay the bills Keywords: newgroup, vote, control Message-ID: <605@peritek.UUCP> Date: 6 Apr 89 02:38:02 GMT References: <290@ubbs-nh.MV.COM> <291@ubbs-nh.MV.COM> <4873@xyzzy.UUCP> <28368@apple.Apple.COM> Organization: Peritek Corp., Oakland, CA Lines: 69 In article <28368@apple.Apple.COM>, chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > >Considering that some site administrators represent thousands, some represent > >hundreds, some represent tens, and some represent a site of one user, How > >do you come up with the conclusion that limiting USENET proceedings to > >site administrators is "in principle sound and fair to all"? > > They (1) maintain the news system, and more importantly (2) pay the bills. > The folks with the checkbooks are the people who should have the final say. True, site admins maintain the news system on their machines, but in most cases, they probably do not pay the bills (do you pay the bills at Apple? or does somebody in some other department?). This is not a flame. I am just using you as an example, cause your company is fairly well known. If Apple is a publicly held company (I am not sure), it has share holders who aren't even employees, who have a say in how the money should get spent. It definately has a board of directors which has a say. If it is like most large corporations, it has a president, chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and/or treasurer. They all have some say as to how the money is spent. As a sys admin, you may get to fill out a requisition form, and request that an item gets purchased. In no way is this paying the bills. Chances are, the officers I mentioned probably do not even know that Apple is on USENET! (although, I am willing to admit that I may be wrong on this matter, not being an Apple employee). Also, Apple is large enough where they probably have an Accounting Department, or maybe even an Account's Payable Department (which actually pays the bills). Do you cut the check to the phone company or do they? Do they have access to USENET? Do they even know what USENET is? Just to make sure this doesn't come across as a flame about Chuq, I will also use the company I work for as an example. We have around a dozen employees in two offices (one in NY and one in CA). Engineering consists of about 1/4 the company, manufacturing about 1/4, and sales/marketing/finance/misc. about 1/2. Most of the people know about USENET. Only about 1/3 has ever logged in and read any news. I am the only regular news reader here. I also administer 4-5 other machines which we have in house, am one of three people who requisitions hardware, and am one of two who requisitions software (this is as a system's administrator, not as a news administrator -- different hats). As a news administrator, the only thing that I ever requested was a TB+ modem to replace our 1200 baud Hayes. About 1/2 of all hardware I request (mostly as system's administrator) is declined (by the person who signs the checks), the other half is accepted. In no way will I say that I pay the bills here. I doubt that the person who writes our checks will care one way or another which news groups are on the machine (she never logs in, doesn't even have an account). I doubt that my boss (who is also the company president) would have any say, unless it were a group that directly affected him (such as creation of a group discussing graphics hardware or a group discussing the N10 -- he's a hardware type, and does read news occasionally). Although as a news site, we eat up the same capacity as Apple does (forgetting the other net related things that Apple does like feeding other sites, but both of us have full feeds) (disk requirements to support news are probably about the same, obviously our phone bill will be less, and we probably have fewer modems on the system), and the administration of the news software is about the same (although taking care of the users is a lot less :-)), I don't feel our site should have as much say in newsgroup creation/removal as Apple does. For reference, at my last job, I was systems admin for 2 systems with about 30-35 users each and supported the admin of another site with about 50 (I think) users. I was also the news administrator there for about two months (on two of the machines for one month, all three machines for the second month), so I have some idea of middle sized system admining. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dave Gotwisner UUCP: ...!unisoft!peritek!dig Peritek Corporation ...!vsi1!peritek!dig 5550 Redwood Road Oakland, CA 94619 Phone: 1-415-531-6500