[351] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: NOT JUST COWS - Summary of personal messages to Bill Drew
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (MAYEJOH@karl.iit.edu)
Wed May 27 17:40:13 1992
Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 16:24:58 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
From: MAYEJOH@karl.iit.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In response to Peter Graham's response to the messages Mr. Drew received:
First, I agree whole heartedly that "nettiquette" demands responsibility
on individual users to target their postings and generally keep network
traffic relevant and not frivolous. I think, however, that we are
seriously fooling ourselves if we think that individual user responsibility
will do anything to stem the tide of explosive disk space demand and
network bandwidth. In fact, I would argue that we do not want to do
very much to stem that tide! How do we reconcile, on the one hand, our
evangelism for getting EVERYONE onto the Internet and then tell them
to limit their use! One solution is to extend the idea of personal
responsibility by providing tools and techniques that are more automatic
and easier to use, etc. This strikes right at the heart of the Computer
Centers AND Library collaboration issue. In general terms, librarians have
unique expertise and deep experience with putting information where it can
be found again. Computer Centers (at the most basic level) have to provide
the disk space and network bandwidth, etc and so have a lot to contribute
in terms of what tools work and how available they are to users.
It isn't free, but hard disk space is pretty darn cheap. The problem we
have encountered is that users usually get buried by their old messages
before we run out of disk space. They don't know what's in their mailbox,
they can't find it without a tedious sequential search, so they hang on
to it. The only alternative is to print it all out and file it (goodbye
trees). One user on our local system has every message she has ever sent
or received since we brought the system up (over 3000). She complains
that the system is slow and I have to explain that it wasn't designed
to be a file retrieval system for over 6 megabytes of email.
We are working on a "How to deal with your Deluge" document that we hope
will educate some of our users into better mail management and we are
looking at archiving tools (Folio Mailbag, PKZIP, etc) that will allow
users to compress and keep old mail.
John Mayer
Director of Computing Services
Chicago-Kent College of Law
