[789] in IS Home Pages
MacTCP web pages labeled obsolete
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ginny Williams)
Tue Oct 5 10:30:29 1999
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Message-Id: <v04020a02b41fb76539a5@[18.152.0.191]>
In-Reply-To: <v03020906b40ead052862@[18.152.1.56]>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:23:04 -0400
To: Robyn Fizz <fizz@mit.edu>, Chris Griffith <cggriffi@mit.edu>
From: Ginny Williams <ginnyw@MIT.EDU>
Cc: is-home@mit.edu
Hi.
This e-mail exchange took place in the end of September while I was on
vacation so I'm just getting to it now. There seem to be two issues: where
to store the document and whether or not it's technically accurate.
Regarding location, I would suggest that we make an exception with MacTCP
and older connectivity documents for a few reasons. The first and
strongest argument is that in many cases departments are handing down older
machines for people to use as secondary e-mail machines. Although our
installed base of desktop machines is largely current, we're seeing a
number of older machines coming into walkins and housecalls that are
hand-me-downs that have been identified for use as someones' secondary
machine. We need to be able to quickly identify and review help files when
we're working with a client.
Second, the user base of these class of machines tends not to be the most
technologically savy. The machines are often hand-me-downs (as I've said)
to people who would not normally purchase a machine for themselves
(especially in the case of laptops). They need the documentation more than
most since they're not expert users and often don't have experience with
the basic concepts.
Finally, since the technology is out of date, everyone (users and help
staff alike) are less likely to remember the correct way something is to be
set up, and so are more prone to errors.
Regarding technical accuracy, perhaps Chris can send specific comments to
someone in pubs to get the document updated? This should be done no matter
where the file ends up.
Please let me know what you think.
ginny
>Hi Chris,
>
>We discussed the issue of "obsolete" documents in a Pubs group meeting and
>reached this approach by consensus. Note that we say "This document is
>obsolete because the product or service is no longer supported by IS, or
>the information is otherwise out of date and will not be revised."
>
>We believe that very few clients will be looking for this information, and
>that keeping old documents in the Pubs list clutters it and may confuse
>clients using recommended products.
>
>Robyn
>
>
>
>>** What were you looking for?
>>MacTCP setup instructions for connecting an older Mac to MITnet
>>
>>** Where did you expect to find it?
>>Off the pubs page:
>>http://web.mit.edu/is/pubs/
>>
>>** Comments:
>>I found it with UltraSeek:
>>http://web.mit.edu/is/pubs/ns-40/
>>
>>It's misleadingly labelled as 'obsolete'. Sure, it runs on Macs that are
>>considered obsolete. But the info itself is correct. Btw, I went looking
>>for it because a Help Desk client couldn't find it. So it should probably
>>be made available again, but with an appropriate disclaimer (e.g. "These
>>instructions are not suitable for most recent Macintosh computers, which
>>use Open Transport instead. See this URL:....")
>>
>
>
>Robyn Fizz
>News Coordinator
>MIT Information Systems
>N42-290B
>Phone: (617) 253-0540
>Fax: (617) 258-6875
>
>For up-to-date computing news, see
>http://web.mit.edu/is/newslink/
