steffen@hawk.bcm.tmc.edu (David Steffen) (08/04/90)
I am writing to continue the discussion on how one should respond to
questions on this newsgroup, "net-etiquette", UNIX, etc. I think there are
some very important points that warrant discussion. As I expected, my
inflammatory message elicited both public and private responses. Rather than
follow up to a specific message, I would like to present a review of some of
the points made in these responses, my responses to them, and some further
thoughts I have had.
First, mea culpa:
jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) said:
" Rn ... is not 'Unix software'. It was written (primarily) by Larry Wall
" at the JPL who, out of a spirit of community, developed it and gave it to
" your site for the asking. [...] If you had any idea of how complex a beast
" it is, and the work that went into it; or how much Baylor would have had to
" pay if AT&T had written it, I'm sure you wouldn't think so little of it.
" You must understand that a lot of the 'Unix software' owes a great
" deal to such unpaid efforts. There hasn't been enough of a market for
" [UNIX software for] any company to sink a great deal of money into [it].
You are right, Joe, and I was wrong. I shouldn't have picked on 'rn', or
'UNIX' or AT&T or anybody involved with them. I very much do appreciate
people who write good software and then give it away; I have written enough
software myself to appreciate how much work it is to produce. It is no
defense to say that my comments were in jest and just intended as filler to
allow me to post my response; humor at someone else's expense isn't nice.
With that in mind, I will do my best to keep my perverse sense of humor in
control, at least until the end of this message.
Joe Smith goes on to say:
" Most of these people have 'real' work to do (unlike us :-)) and the last
" thing on the list is to 'idiot-proof' it.
I see the smiley (:-), and I should be the last person to over-react to a
humorous comment. However, I think it is important to note that 'we' DO have
'real work' to do. Academic biomedical research is a highly competitive
profession. Salaries are perhaps adequate, but certainly not extravagant,
hours are typically long, and the stress levels high. The benefits of
biomedical research are many and large.
In order to be allowed to do research, one must compete vigorously for very
limited grant dollars. Given this competition, we all have to constantly ask
our selves; "is what I am doing now worth the effort it is costing me?"
Thus, when David Kristofferson complains about the lack of newsgroup activity
(as he did just today on the biomatrix newsgroup), what is he really saying?
He is saying that use of these newsgroups IS worth the time and effort and IF
the biomedical research community would just learn how to use these tools, it
would be time effective. [Sorry to put words in your mouth, David. Please
correct me if I have improperly read your mind.] I respond at such length to
Joe Smith's humorous comment because I think it is important to accurately
delineate the parameters of this discussion:
To what extent is use of the bionet bulletin boards an effective use of
investigator time, an effective use of internet/usenet resources, and what can
be done to improve the effectiveness of use of both of these?
Joe Smith objects to my comparison of what I expect from computer systems, and
what I expect from other scientific equipment by saying:
" Have you ever returned an instrument because *you* didn't know how to
" use it?
Strictly speaking, no. Two reasons:
<1> Beckman (or Packard or ...) would reasonably expect me to determine if a
piece of equipment was sufficiently convenient (=time effective) to use before
purchasing it.
<2> I have always done so.
HOWEVER, on many occasions, I have refused to buy a piece of equipment because
it was too time-consuming to use or too difficult to learn how to use. So
what do I do when faced with a piece of equipment that seems too difficult to
use? I ask the following questions:
<1> Is there an alternative? If so, buy it.
<2> If not, do I REALLY need the capabilities the instrument provides? If so,
then I have to bite the bullet and put up with it. If not, then I skip the
whole thing.
The bionet bulletin boards are not essential (at present). One can survive in
biomedical research without using them. Thus, if they are too difficult to
use, a responsible researcher will ignore them.
Someone [whose privacy I will respect] responded by email to the effect that I
should have further condensed the summary of the previous message so as to
avoid the problem; that the software which required my response to be longer
than the quote was basically right to do so.
Joe Smith concurs:
" I believe this is a (perhaps misbegotten) attempt to enforce a point
" of net-etiquette: namely, it is considered bad form to post a followup
" article which contains only the quoted article plus a few lines of
" added comments - which is exactly what you were about to do. If you
" think about it, this is a reasonable policy. [...] You need to ask
" yourself 'is my comment really worth posting to the world?'. If it
" is, then maybe you need to reduce the quoted part. [...]
I think we need to weigh the value of different resources here. What is the
problem with posting an article which is too long? I can think of two:
<1> It costs money.
--------------
Despite attempting to do so, I have not been able to find out how much money
one more message, or one more paragraph in an existing message costs. I have
discussed this with the computer support people here at Baylor and we came to
the following conclusions: It is extremely difficult to estimate how much one
more message costs. It probably costs very little. At Baylor, for example,
it is approximately nothing [that is, having decided to connect to internet at
all, we pay a flat fee which does not depend to amount of use]. Thus, in the
absence of information to the contrary, I think we should ignore the dollar
cost of verbosity.
With permission, I quote David Kristofferson on this issue:
" We also pay a fixed fee for access to the Internet. Other sites may
" pay to receive each message depending upon their network connection,
" but please don't forget that they make a voluntary decision to receive
" USENET postings. Any site can limit the newsgroups that they receive
" and also make the decision to shut it off completely, so I do not
" think that you need to worry about that.
<2> The "noise" makes it difficult to read the newsgroup.
----------------------------------------------------
A key issue, in my judgement! Back in the good ol' days of Bionet, this was
more of a problem. When one logged on to do a little sequence analysis, one
was confronted with all the newsgroups to which one subscribed, and it took some
sophistication to bypass them until one felt like reading them. With 'rn'
(which I actually like very much) or similar software which I assume most
people use to read the newsgroups at present, it is very easy to read the
newsgroups at one's convenience. That being the case, noise is less of a
problem. Under the current system, I find inactivity rather than overactivity
to be the problem at present. I would much rather wade through a few overly
verbose messages in return for more people contributing to these newsgroups.
Quoting Joe Smith:
" Remember, readers of your article can usually go back and retrieve the
" entire article.
[Someone else made the same point to me by email]
Quoting David Kristofferson:
" Your correspondent seemed to question the propriety of repeating the
" message to which you were responding. Since many of our readers
" aren't looking at these posting via news software, but use e-mail
" instead, I would not assume that they can easily pull up previous
" messages.
Speaking for Myself:
Although I can retrieve old messages, in the absence of a sufficiently long
quote for context, I might not even realize the importance of the message I am
reading and realize that I need to do so.
Actually, no one is suggesting NO quote, but rather suggesting a succinct
quote. Ideally, I agree. However, the bionet newsgroups are only appropriate
as a relatively casual form of communication, in my opinion (compared to
publications, grant applications, etc.) and as such, one has to weigh the
value of squeezing the quote down to the smallest possible size against the
time required to do so. In the specific case which initiated this discussion,
I actually spent a reasonable amount of time editing the quote.
Quoting Joe Smith:
" The intent is to *reduce* the amount of 'noise' on the newsgroups, not
" increase it! [...] Rn finally did post your message, after trying vainly
" to keep you from embarrassing yourself :-)
Given an trade off between the value of an edited quote and the time
required to produce it in the current bionet newsgroups with the current and
desired readership thereof, the effect on the responsible research will in
fact be opposite of the intent. To the extent I embarrassed myself, it was
not because my quote was too long, it was because in an attempt to get the
message out, I added some ill-considered filler.
Quoting a private email message:
" we (the bionet newsgroups) have to exist in the framework of
" the internet. Because of abuses in the past (not on the part of the bionet
" newsgroups), the internet has rules & regulations on posting messages.
" The rules, both enforced via the software and enforced by "netiquette"
" (e.g., people emailing you letters if you break the netiquette rules), may
" not be conducive to encouraging the use of bionet, but we should, as 'good
" net neighbors', obey them.
Interesting point! However, to what extent do we, the bionet newsgroups,
even interact with the traditional users of internet? Do they even read our
newsgroups? Because rec.arts.sf-lovers is overly active, should that prevent
us from trying to up the activity level on bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts? The
software, in my opinion, we should fix to suit ourselves. Email netiquette
enforcement can only come from readers of the bionet newsgroups. If we agree
that the netiquette rules need to be somewhat altered for these groups, who
suffers?
Questions for those interested in continuing this discussion:
------------------------------------------------------------
1) Do you think that there is too much noise on the bionet bulletin boards, or
too little content?
2) Do you consider this discussion of value? Why or why not?
3) Is this the appropriate newsgroup in which to hold this discussion? If
not, which of the bionet newsgroups would be more appropriate?
-David Steffen- (steffen@mbir.bcm.tmc.edu)jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) (08/05/90)
> 1) Do you think that there is too much noise on the bionet bulletin > boards, or too little content? At the risk of contradicting myself - no, I don't think noise, or the cost of a few extra lines in a message are really that important. I do think that careful quoting (as you did in your response!) is 1) polite: it saves the reader's time in (re-)reading some excess verbiage and instead gets right to the point; and 2) it forces the poster to consider carefully what the other person really said. [ I said readers could retrieve the quoted article and you quoted DK who said it might not be easy for those getting the groups by e-mail ] If some other reader really needs the whole article and can't retrieve it, s*he can always ask the group or the poster to send it. I really appreciate the considered, intelligent discussion that occurrs. I'm really annoyed when people fire off questions/ responses/flames that waste my time (and possibly hundreds... dozens... several - DK? - other's as well). I was real hesitant to post a followup because I've been guilty as well, but I want to see the *quality* of the bionet groups go up as well as the quantity. That seemed like a goal worth persuing in public. > 2) Do you consider this discussion of value? Why or why not? Probably not. I've said my piece (or maybe shot just my mouth off!). You hit the nail on the head: scientists will use the groups when they percieve a concrete benefit. I've asked for and recieved information and advice enough times to know that it's worth it as long as I don't spend too much time just BS'ing. The more we who like, as well as benefit from, the groups just USE them INTELLIGENTLY, the more useful and attractive they will be. <Joe -- Joe Smith University of Pennsylvania jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics (215) 898-8348 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6059
kristoff@genbank.BIO.NET (David Kristofferson) (08/05/90)
> Questions for those interested in continuing this discussion: > ------------------------------------------------------------ > 1) Do you think that there is too much noise on the bionet bulletin boards, or > too little content? Since I am obviously biased here I'll leave a response on this to others. > 2) Do you consider this discussion of value? Why or why not? If it helps clarify some issues on the use of the network, of course. I don't know the overall level of concern about this though. > 3) Is this the appropriate newsgroup in which to hold this discussion? If > not, which of the bionet newsgroups would be more appropriate? I can't think of a better one. -- Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank On-line Service Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net