mark@promark.UUCP (Mark J. DeFilippis) (02/21/90)
I want to qualify my previous posting in re: Adelphi University policy on allowing undergraduates to post to the net. I want to make the following points. 1. I make the policy in regards to USENET access. 2. There are too many students and we don't have time to police postings or have a desire to do so. 3. There is the cost factor. If this university generates 50 postings a day from undergrads at about 100K, it's passed on others dime. I guess Penn States neighbors don't mind footing the bill. 4. When we do get rec, and talk, etc, they will be able to post to them. 4. If the person is knowledgable he can always reply via e-mail if the situation is that someone has requested help, which is the case often in several of the groups. 6. If he needs help with a Unix related problem or theory problem there are computer center people to answer his questions as well as masters and Phd level Mathematics/Computer Science people here to answer it. 7. I don't want anyone to interpret my statements as being anti-undergrad. They are merely statements of the facts here. I pose: Is a first, second, year undergrad student who has taken some required liberal arts classes with a few math and intro computer science classes able to make a positive contribution to a discussion in many of the comp groups? I am aware the exceptions exist, but I am not speaking of the exceptions. -- Mark J. DeFilippis SA @ Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530 (516) 663-1170 UUCP: philabs!sbcs!bnlux0!adelphi!markd
news@oresoft.uu.net (Daniel "Paperboy" Elbaum) (02/23/90)
In article <2284@promark.UUCP> mark@promark.UUCP (Mark J. DeFilippis) writes:
[about his reasons for disallowing net access for undergraduates]
:2. There are too many students and we don't have time to police postings
: or have a desire to do so.
:3. There is the cost factor...
...
:4. When we do get rec, and talk, etc, they will be able to post to them.
:6. If he needs help with a Unix related problem or theory problem there
: are computer center people to answer his questions as well as masters
: and Phd level Mathematics/Computer Science people here to answer it.
:7. I don't want anyone to interpret my statements as being anti-undergrad.
: They are merely statements of the facts here. I pose: Is a first, second,
: year undergrad student who has taken some required liberal arts classes
: with a few math and intro computer science classes able to make a
: positive contribution to a discussion in many of the comp groups?
: I am aware the exceptions exist, but I am not speaking of the exceptions.
There's a lot wrong here. One part of this argument appears to be that
undergrads should not be allowed to post to technical groups because they
aren't technically competent and so have little to offer. But the thousands
of undergrads who do have access aren't necessarily more competent, and they
don't seem to me to be a source of noise disproportionate to their numbers.
The fact that they're in college means that they're interested in learning.
If you want to find a source of noise, look to the public-access sites--yet
they, too, have every right to post, and sometimes make valuable contributions
when they do.
Another part of the argument is that postings are expensive. But the rec and
talk groups have a much smaller signal-to-noise ratio than the tech groups.
The point that users who need help should seek locally first is as applicable
to professionals as it is for undergrads. In fact, a user who is not yet
comfortable with the local system is more likely to ask the person at the
next terminal or to send e-mail to the site administrator. A lot of
net.garbage comes from people who use the net as a substitute for spoken
communication.
Finally, this argument makes too little of the talent of the undergrad and
too much of the quality of information on the net. Okay, so somebody who's
just taken a semester of introductory computer science isn't going to have
much to say to comp.protocols.iso.x400. But lots of useful postings from
undergrads turn up daily in the comp.sys.<personal computer> groups, for
example.
When I was an undergraduate, I learned a lot from other undergraduates. But
leaving the undergraduate world did not instantly qualify me as an expert in
all the technical newsgroups. I could post, with confidence, simple-minded
and wrong information to literally dozens of newsgroups even though I don't
pay thousands of dollars a year to be browbeaten by bureaucrats (now I get
that service for free :-)).
Some of the most interesting discussions I've seen in tech groups began with
questions from undergrads. Don't exclude them capriciously.
--
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