HARPER@finfun.bitnet ("Robert Harper ", Finland) (02/02/90)
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No 13
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Government health warning
DO NOT TAKE THE CONTENTS OF THIS ARTICLE SERIOUSLY
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-*-
The reason I wrote this "funny" BioBit was to outline some of
the problems that exist in managing a world wide network for
life scientists. In the next two issues of BioBit I intend to do
do reviews on PORTACOM and ANU NEWS to perhaps point the way
to the future.
This edition of BioBit is a satire... and it makes heavy use
of irony... so please read it that way. The main purpose of a
satire is to point out things that are wrong by making them to
appear foolish. Read on at your own risk.
-*-
So the time has now come to write BioBit No 13. The number 13
has never been very popular, right from the times of Jesus and
the apostles. So what would be the proper thing to do when the
number 13 is involved... write a BioBit No 12a?
No!!! I have decide to do the BIG PICTURE on the BIOSCI
network from a very personal point of view. This will be as
near the National Enquirer and the News of the World that
BioBit will ever get... that is unless we ever reach No 666,
which will be the "BioBit at the End of the Universe" edition.
Basically I will tell about all the things that you can do to
make the BIOSCI network as boring and dull as possible, give
you insights into how you can make things difficult for the
managers of the BIOSCI nodes, cause inconvenience to other
users, and generally make a fool of yourself on the network
with little or no effort.
Some people are born with a natural aptitude for screwing
things up. Do not dismay if you do not happen to have this
gift. For computer networks are no respecters of persons and
even if you have the best intentions in the world... are
intimately acquaint with the Crosswell mailer and have more
than a passing friendship with VAX Gmail system, you will find
that regardless of your expertise you are sure to get it wrong
sometime.
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1) What is the BIOSCI network?
***************************
The BIOSCI network is a E-mail network which allows scientists
working in the life sciences to communicate with each other
electronically. I once took part in a working group that
discussed why some newsgroups are very successful, while
others just limp along and never get off the ground. The
distilled wisdom of those sessions said that for a Newsgroup to
function properly it must have three components.
CONTENT:
Make sure your messages have content. "Hi Mike!" and similar
one liners are so informative.
ACTIVITY:
Always reply to "Hi Mike!" messages, for remember with many
newsgroups it is often the question of "out of sight/out of
mind".
INTERACTIVITY:
If you are the "Mike" of the "Hi Mike!" message it is always
good to make a reply... a reply something like "Hi Ron!"
should stimulate further intellectual debate. Use personal
names since this confers an atmosphere of comradeship in text
that though interesting scientifically, might be stylistically
sterile. (... nice use of alliteration there... ED)
*******************************************
2) To Post or not to post that is the question
*******************************************
When posting to the BIOSCI newsgroups always cross-post to all
of them. Mike might miss your "Hi Mike!" message if you only
post to EMBL-DATABASE so why not make sure and post it to BIO-
CONVERSION as well.
It is a pure fallacy that you should keep discussions strictly
within specific newsgroups. A molecular biologist never knows
when he might need to construct a composting toilet, so you
can regard the odd cross posting between BIO-CONV and MOL-EVOL
as an uplifting cultural exchange.
Everyone really knows that the most worth while part of
anybodies message is the end signature, cos it usually
contains some neat little saying. A good rule of thumb is that
if your message has one line of text in it your signature
should have at least 24 to make up a full screenful. Develop a
personalized signature that will get you recognized on the
net.
If you are irritated by what someone says on the BIOSCI
network then FLAME them in public. Everyone enjoys a good
haggling match... and it usually works wonders for newsgroups
that you thought were dead and gone.
If people begin to ask you awkward questions that you can not
answer then it is best to refer them to someone else who is
totally incompetent to answer their question... the resulting
confusion is very stimulating for newsgroup activity.
If you moderate a newsgroup never make any contributions to
it. Putting in interesting information into a newsgroup is the
responsibility of the members. A moderator should not need to
dirty his hands or do any work to maintain activity in his
newsgroup.
Long silences with no messages is often the best way to arouse
group members from their slumbers. Usually after a period of
silence they will begin to make contributions like "Hey is
this newsgroup dead?", and the newsgroup will miraculously
spring into life again with replies like "Yeah I haven't had a
message in 5 months!!!" The Orwellian motto of every moderator
should be "The root of all activity is inactivity."
*********************
2) Mistakes you can make
**********************
One of the BIOSCI nodes is situated on a LISTSERV, and is an
ideal place to start if you want to confuse people. You might
consider the following ploys.
THE WALL STREET SYNDROME:
Remember the Wall street crash? It all started with a run on
the banks to get your money out while there is still some
left. When somebody takes their money out of the bank then
everybody has to do the same. This is also known as the
"Lemming syndrome".
When a new Newsgroup has been established just send the word
SUBSCRIBE to the newsgroup address. This will not achieve any
purpose what so ever. Your message will be sent to hundreds of
people around the world and they will all think that this is
the correct way to do things, and they will then send
SUBSCRIBE messages to the same newsgroup and soon you will get
a fine avalanche of SUBSCRIBE messages irritating everyone on
the network.
If you want to work some variations on this theme then other
useful words that trigger the "wall street syndrome" are HELP
and UNSUBSCRIBE and the judicious use of SIGNOFF can also
initiate a cascade effect.
It is a closely guarded secret that those types of commands
should only be sent to the address LISTSERV@IRLEARN. So what
ever you do make sure that you never send a SUBSCRIBE message
to that address... you might find yourself becoming a member
of a newsgroup, and that would inconvenience nobody but
yourself.
One of the best ways to cause a mail loop is to wait until it
is near the holiday season. At this time the networks are
understaffed, computers get shut down for routine maintenance
and if things go wrong then there is never anybody about who
can do anything to stop mailing loops.
If your text happens to be about 500 lines long then by the
time the holidays are over you should have substantially eaten
into the disk quota of everyone's mailbox.
********************
3) Group subscriptions
********************
Now there are some Clever Dicks (CD's) on the network who use
Newsreaders like NETNEWS or ANU NEWS or conferencing systems
like PORTACOM to read the BIOSCI newsgroups. Your computer
center will never progress if you have these type of systems,
and here is the reason why.
If there are ten people at you center who wants to read
BIONEWS then every individual should subscribe to the BIONEWS
newsgroup. Why receive only one message into a newsreader when
you can receive ten into individual mail boxes. Your computer
center will be impressed by the amount of network traffic in
the Biosciences and the users will get plenty of practice in
deleting lots of SUBSCRIBE messages from their mailboxes.
Most computer managers are impressed by volume so if you want
to rack up some statistics to convince the people at your
computer center that the Biosciences are alive on the network
then this is one way to proceed. Remember the old adage "Never
mind the quality feel the width!!!"
******************
4) Mailbox problems
******************
One of the easiest ways to generate confusion is not to look
after your mailbox. Just let the messages pile up, and never
delete any of them. Soon you will get to the situation where
your system will not receive any more messages because of
problems like DISK QUOTA FULL.
This will usually generate a mail loop, and the BIOSCI
managers will have a great time tracking down the offending
mailbox and deleting it from their distribution lists.
Alternatively when you leave your university or institution
neglect to tell anybody that you are leaving... then when they
scrap your account those silly BIOSCI mailers will keep on
sending mail to an address that does not exist. This is real
fun since you are not even around to observe all the havoc
that is being created.
But if you want to be really sophisticated then get yourself
fixed up with an address with a % hack in it... something of
the type USER%NODEaaa@NODEbbb. Mailers usually send to NODEbbb
first of all, and if it makes it to there it then changes the
first % sign to a @ and routes the mail on to USER@NODEaaa.
If the gateways are not working properly you can generate 40
rejection notices in a 24 hour period. This is a rather
conservative estimate of course.
***********************
5) Geographical location
***********************
Now if you are from the University of Hawaii it does not make
much sense to subscribe to your nearest BIOSCI node which is
at Genbank. Why not subscribe to the BIOSCI node in Sweden at
BMC... it is such an exotic experience to receive mail from
Sweden rather than plain old USA.
Similarly people in the UK should avoid subscribing to their
node at Daresbury. You see when everybody sticks to their own
particular geographical region then it is so much easier for
the BIOSCI managers to track down problem ID@NODES.
If you stick to a BIOSCI node geographically near you then you
will spoil all the fun and the detective work that goes on to
detect rogue mailboxes (c) (Rogue mailboxes... I like that...
put a copyright on it... ED)
*******************
6) User friendliness
*******************
The chair of the paranormal at Edinburgh University is to
occupy itself with why some machines are user-friendly while
others refuse to function for certain people. (You know the
type of thing... the Heraus centrifuge that refuses to open
its lid and give you back your eppindorf tubes, but will
gladly do that very thing for the cleaning lady when she lends
you a hand). If computer networks do not work for you, then
you may be in the grip of some inanimate objection. I am sure
Edinburgh would be most interested in your experiances.
As you will have guessed I am one of those lucky fellows who
just happens to manage the BIOSCI lists at IRLEARN. So I
happen to know about some of the wacky things that go on.
So to end on a more serious note I would like to ask for some
feedback on how you find the BIOSCI network... or if you
cannot find it at all?
1) How many newsgroups do you subscribe to?
2) How do you read them (mailbox or communal newsreader)?
3) Do you know the difference between a SERVER and a MAILING
LIST (NETSERV, LISTSERV etc..)?
4) Do you have difficulties knowing where to post messages
or reply to them?
5) Are you a LURKER (read mesages... rarely post messages)?
6) Do you have any suggestions as to how the BIOSCI network
could be made better?
You can send answers to these questions or any fan mail to
HARPER@FINFUN and you can be assured that I will bring them to
the attention of the other BIOSCI managers. We need feedback
from the user community in order to make things easier for
both users and managers.
All that remains now is to append the nifty signature and the
terse imaginative thought provoking scientific quote.
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-=ROB=- %% Robert Harper %% HARPER@FINFUN %% HARPER@CC.HELSINKI.FI %%
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Rob "there is no gravity... the earth sucks" Harperkristoff@PRESTO.IG.COM (Dave Kristofferson) (02/03/90)
Hi Mike, er Rob, and the rest of you out there! For those who desire to send in comments and are not on BITNET, be sure to add a ".bitnet" to the HARPER@FINFUN address, i.e., HARPER@FINFUN.BITNET. We are always interested in getting feedback from BIOSCI users. There are several ways that we can improve BIOSCI as Rob hints at in his article, but we are currently operating within the confines of bridging a variety of computer systems and networks. This requires us to take a "lowest common denominator" approach. However, as Rob will explain in upcoming issues of BIOBIT, there are better ways of doing things and the software to implement an improved system is already available in the public domain for both VAX/VMS and UNIX systems. The issue of improving BIOSCI is not a technical one, but instead a matter of politics, e.g, between readers and their computer systems managers. Dave Kristofferson GenBank On-line Service Manager