david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) (11/27/87)
There's been something bubbling around in my head for the last couple
of weeks. That is, what we (we being the people who make up this
entity known as Usenet) do for the valued members of the community.
I'm a member of three other largely volunteer-run organizations. These
are Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), Assoc for Computing
Machinery (ACM), and DEC Users Society (DECUS). I haven't paid any
attention to DECUS for a few years, so I don't know if it's true for
them, but both SCA and ACM have various ways of giving honor and
recognition to their members who have gone above and beyond the call of
duty to support the organization. In SCA, there is a whole slew of
awards, starting with the Award of Arms. In the ACM there is also a
large number of awards, starting with the Certificate of Recognition.
What got me thinking was a couple of weeks ago at the East-Central
Regional Programming Contest (BTW, our teams came in 4th and 5th!), and
the awards banquet afterwards. Amongst my irritation that this years
awards banquet did not include the "booby prizes" I'd come to expect at
Programming Contest ceremonies, I noticed a very strong similarity
between this awards banquet and the "Court"'s which are held at SCA
events. Especially when it came time to give the Certificate of
Appreciation to the professor who had run the show.
So much for laying the ground for what I want to say.
Something which has been happening for as long as I've been a member
of this community (around 3 years now) is that there have been people
who were active participants, did valuable organizational work, made
various tough decisions, organized versions of the software and made
bugfixes, and so forth and so on. One thing which has happened fairly
often is that these people tend to get burned out, they do all this work
and don't get appreciated. Sometimes they even get nothing but abuse
and grief because of the work they do for the community. And yet,
often it is this very work which has keep the community functioning!
What sort of chaos would we have now if Spaf weren't keeping a more-or-less
official list of newsgroups, and posting the shell script which helps
make sure that people are more-or-less in line with everyone else??
What sort of chaos would there be if the Usenet Project weren't running?
And there's others which I'm too tired to think of at the moment.
To cite a recent example, where has Dave Taylor gone? And Brian Reid
has also gotten sort-of pissed at the net -- tho I suppose that has
cooled somewhat. Going farther back, there are other people whose
names are just dim memories.
I would like to propose that the Usenet community somehow award these
people regularly, in some way. But I have no idea what to do. But not
only that, there is no official superstructure within the community to
do the work of finding people to reward and actually do the rewarding.
Usenix is the closest thing to official superstructure, sort of, but
not only do they not want to claim Usenet, but I doubt if most members
of the community even know of Usenix's existance.
Come to think of it, this network is growing beyond the confines of
necessarily being Unix based with UUCP as it's primary transport
mechanism. (If this site is anywhere near average that is ... we have
3 full newsfeeds using NNTP over the Internet, give out 2 full feeds
over BITNET to an IBM mainframe and a Vax/VMS VaxCluster, plus one full
and 2 or 3 partial feeds over UUCP). Any solution would have to recognize
the influence of the non Unix world on our community.
What are we to do? One thing that's bothering me is something which is
repeated a number of times in the _Knowne_World_Handbook_ (a
publication of the SCA aimed at giving a broad overview of what SCA is
and how it functions and how to start yourself in SCA). That is, one
of the absolutes that SCA sees is, since it's run by volunteers, that
the people who do extra amounts of work be rewarded ... so that those
people who do the extra work feel good for having done it, but also so
that people coming in will see something to gain for putting in extra
work to keep things going. That is, more than the "altruistic" rewards
of seeing something which you've helped build to prosper.
We can probably continue to muddle along as we have been doing for
a lot longer than I've been on the net. On the other hand we tend
to lose our best people over time. This is something that we, as
a community, probably can't afford to continue doing for very long.
On the other hand I have no suggestions which I can make.
--
<---- David Herron -- Resident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- "The market doesn't drop hundreds of points on a normal day..." --
<---- Fidelity Investments Corporationeric@snark.UUCP (11/28/87)
In article <7782@g.ms.uky.edu> David Herron writes: > There's been something bubbling around in my head for the last couple > of weeks. That is, what we (we being the people who make up this > entity known as Usenet) do for the valued members of the community. I agree with all the points you made. I was in the SCA myself years ago; their awards system is a valuable enabler. I think you can start one rolling very easily, and here's how. 1. Announce to the world that you are collecting data on stellar net.benefactors, and solicit nominations by email for an awards list. 2. When you have enough info, author a posting that lists the names and accomplishments of each benefactor, and attach an appropriately sonorous and silly title to each (Spaf, for example, has to be something like "Grand Herald of Lists"). 3. Sign yourself "USENET King of Arms" and re-post it, with appropriate changes and additions, to news.lists every month. People will laugh, but they'll get the point. If you want to get really amusing you can try cooking up canting arms for everybody. I know enough technical heraldry to help you get the constraints right if you like -- just call me Eric Pursuivant-of-Arms :-). If we ever develop a more formal structure (I can imagine all kinds of silly roast-the-USENET-celeb events at USENIXes) this will make a good springboard. -- Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
cl@dlhpedg.co.uk (Charles Lambert) (12/01/87)
I applaud the suggestion that the people who glue this immense system together should be celebrated. Apart from giving them a well-earned pat on the back, ignorant users like me might learn how it's all kept together. At the moment, all I understand is that there's a big grey cloud out there, with things called ARPAnet and "mailing lists" and such, and that a few grey- beards with well-known names do "something" to coordinate it. If we were better aware of the workings we might all be more responsible contributors. How about "Man/woman of the Year" elections for various categories of service; e.g. moderating, software maintenance, coordination, site management. The winners names would be published on the net along with a short profile of how their jobs fit into the system and how they have distiguished themselves. It would probably be wisest if most of these elections were carried out amongst their peers, to avoid the landslide of trivia, irony and bitching that would result from open elections. [BTW: whatever happened to Chuq Rosberg?] ----------------------------- Charles Lambert; ukc!datlog!dlhpedg!cl
ege@cblpf.ATT.COM (Ernie Englehart) (12/15/87)
In article <320@dlhpedg.co.uk> cl@.co.uk (Charles Lambert) writes: >I applaud the suggestion that the people who glue this immense system together >should be celebrated. Apart from giving them a well-earned pat on the back, >ignorant users like me might learn how it's all kept together. > >How about "Man/woman of the Year" elections for various categories of service; >e.g. moderating, software maintenance, coordination, site management. The >winners names would be published on the net along with a short profile of >how their jobs fit into the system and how they have distiguished themselves. What would they win? You need prizes!!! -- **************************************************************************************************************************************************************** ** Ernie Englehart (ihnp4,cbosgd)!cblpf!ege ** "Good things come ** ** AT&T Network Systems, Columbus Ohio ** in small packages" ** ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************
webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) (12/17/87)
In article <943@cblpf.ATT.COM>, ege@cblpf.ATT.COM (Ernie Englehart) writes: < In article <320@dlhpedg.co.uk> cl@.co.uk (Charles Lambert) writes: < <I applaud the suggestion that the people who glue this immense system together < <should be celebrated. Apart from giving them a well-earned pat on the back, < <ignorant users like me might learn how it's all kept together. < < < <How about "Man/woman of the Year" elections for various categories of service; < <e.g. moderating, software maintenance, coordination, site management. The < <winners names would be published on the net along with a short profile of < <how their jobs fit into the system and how they have distiguished themselves. < < What would they win? You need prizes!!! Well, after much discussion, it has been decided to give them ihnp4. Unfortunately since there is only one ihnp4, they would have to give it back at the end of their year. --------- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)
kraut@ut-emx.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) (12/17/87)
In article <943@cblpf.ATT.COM>, ege@cblpf.ATT.COM (Ernie Englehart) writes: > In article <320@dlhpedg.co.uk> cl@.co.uk (Charles Lambert) writes: > >I applaud ... that the people who glue this immense system together > >should be celebrated. Apart from giving them a well-earned pat on the back, > >ignorant users like me might learn how it's all kept together. > > > >How about "Man/woman of the Year" elections for various categories ?? > > What would they win? You need prizes!!! SOME YEARS AGO I MADE THE SAME SUGGESTION (without any reaction from the net *AT ALL* - maybe it feel straight into the big-bucket? or got censored by my systems administrator, who hates networks?? :-) ...anyway, what was I about to say... oh, yes, prices ... well, when you all decide to elect me in the "least-useful" category, I'd be happy if you all would send me a postcard each, that would be a nice office decoration, everyone saying "THANKS FOR SHUTTING UP" ... anyway, I think that would be a nice personal way of honoring people like Gene Spafford, Mark Horton, Chuq, whats-his-name at seismo (-: .....etc... how about Xmas-cards, or birthday cards, or .... the hole net could send HAPPY BIRTHDAY Email to Rick (that's his name) and bring his computer crashing down ... ((-:... yes, I'm having fun with the concept ... Cheers, ---Werner "and thank-you all and everyone" -- werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (prefered address) kraut@emx.cc.utexas.edu kraut@ut-emx.UUCP (or ...!ut-sally!ut-emx!kraut)
barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G Barnett) (12/21/87)
|What would they win? You need prizes!!!
How about a lifetime subscription to alt.flame :-)fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (12/22/87)
In the referenced article, cl@.co.uk (Charles Lambert) writes:
At the moment, all I understand is that there's a big grey
cloud out there, with things called ARPAnet and "mailing
lists" and such, and that a few grey-beards with well-known
names do "something" to coordinate it.
That's funny, I've never worn a beard, and I don't think that Ron
Natalie ever has either...
[BTW: whatever happened to Chuq Rosberg?]
I think you mean Chuq Von Rospach. He can be reached at
sun!chuq or chuq@sun.com
He's been at Sun Microsystems for a year or two; prior to that he
worked for National Semiconductor.
NNTP service with a :-)
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.educhuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/23/87)
> [BTW: whatever happened to Chuq Rosberg?]
He was here just a minute ago. I'll go see if I can find him.
(It's Von Rospach, by the way. German, not Jewish....)
chuq'les
---
Chuq "Fixed in 4.0" Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ