[20821] in Athena Bugs
Re: clearcerts vs. clear-netscape-password, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Thu Sep 26 16:57:04 2002
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:55:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
cc: <bug-infoagents@MIT.EDU>, <web-agents@MIT.EDU>, <netscape-release@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <20020926194920.GR1586@multics.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.33L.0209261623330.23121-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, John Hawkinson wrote:
> Well, the scope certainly has increased. Is that really necessary,
> particulary to include netscape-release on issues specific to
> Athena?
I added those lists because I wanted people to see my explanation of what
the scripts do - just as I am keeping them now because I want them to see
this rant. I have noticed in the last few days that my information on
Mozilla issues is not trickling down properly to the people who actually
provide help to users.
I don't generally want to send to a lot of lists because I don't want to
be spamming right and left with browser information. What I would LIKE is
to be able to tell one person that represents each group with a need to
know, and have that person tell the group. But this has not worked. Today
I got a request from someone on OLC which said, "Hey, this document about
certificates you wrote is useful - can we use some of it to make stock
answers?" And I was polite because it was clear I had not told the right
people, but basically my answer was, "Who did you think I had written that
page for, if not OLC?"
I have talked about some of these issues many times in many places. As it
stands, some of the people I need to reach are on web-agents and nowhere
else convenient; some of them are on the increasingly misnamed
netscape-release; some of them are on f_ls; some on cfyi, apparently (a
list I seldom use because I've never been clear on its exact function and
who it's supposed to reach); some are on the Business Liaison Team - and
so on and so on ....
I think, therefore, it is the wrong idea to expect me to be able to
broadcast Mozilla information to everyone on all those lists who need it,
especially since at any given time I have a fairly fuzzy idea of who needs
it and who doesn't. We have tried in the past to make better-targeted
lists for just the people who have a need and interest to know. They have
always mutated into something they weren't supposed to be. I tried making
a Mozilla web page as a useful drop point for information - not enough
people went to it or knew where it was, apparently, despite my sending
the URL hither and yon.
A couple of people have gone above and beyond the call of duty in getting
information to people who need it, Camilla among them (thank you Camilla),
but that's not really an answer. We need a better system to get the word
out. Or, if there is a magic bullet I'm missing, I need to know about it.
In the case of 'clear-netscape-password,' if you're right, jhawk, then OLC
is propagating incorrect and outdated information. The script hasn't been
named that for - I don't know, considerably more than a year - and it is
not something I would just tell people to run casually in any event.
This renaming discussion did not take place in a vacuum! It was not my
unilateral decision; in fact, it wasn't even my idea. Various people
participated, among them people whom I expected to update docs and pass
the word along. Remember, I don't maintain any OLC docs and I can't change
them directly. In fact, if I recall correctly, you were an onlooker and
may even have been an instigator in the decision to rename it to
'zap-certificates' so that its destructive behavior would be more clear.
Where did this information get lost? We DID a name transition. We DID an
announcement. Or at least I thought we did at the time. This should be old
news!
> While that's perhaps true in the outside world, it's untrue
> in the MIT environment where certificates are disposable. So we
> should re-evaluate any decisions based on the premise of high
> > destructability.
Certificates are disposable, but if a user doesn't realize they'll have to
get more after using this script, that's a problem, because then they'll
be annoyed. And other data - notably mail - can be encrypted with the
cert password such that if the cert is lost, all that mail is lost too.
That IS destructive. At the very least a live human should be warning
users what to expect before they run it.
> Ah. This new purpose was not clear to me. Where's it documented?
> Perhaps we should fix the bug in Mozilla that makes it necessary? ;-)
Dive into the Mozilla source code at your leisure, but I am saving that as
an absolute last resort - it's a mess :) But I do plan to report it, just
as I am compiling all my Mozilla experiences for that reason.
> Well, you need to figure out how you're going to teach, and you need
> to document a lot better than infoagents ever has. I think this is
> fundamentally intractable, and you'll need to resign yourself to people
> expecting things to keep working as they have.
I agree that infoagents has lacked good docs forever and ever. But what
frustrates me is that with Mozilla I am making an attempt to start over
with a clean slate, documenting from the beginning. What inducement do I
have to make more docs when I'm not clear that the right people are seeing
the ones I've already made?
In short: Help me figure out how to get this information to the places
where it's needed, and I'll provide the information. I know where almost
all the dirt is on infoagents and Mozilla. I know why the smart decisions
were made as well as the dumb ones. I have a lot of things which it might
be good for other people to know about. The problem is, no one ever asks,
and I'm not sure who to just tell.
- Todd
