szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/10/90)
How can news be used in a large workgroup? In what situations is it preferable to e-mail? Here are some ideas for things that might be good to communicate through news: * "perishable databases": -- bug reports & statistics -- schedules -- status reports * newsletters * announcements from HQ * cafeteria menu for the day. :-) What else could be added to this list? How is news being used in corporate and university organizations today? What is its future potential? -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "For historical reasons, this feature is unintelligible" The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with.
kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann) (12/12/90)
Well, messages that are going to be read by a large number of people are good candidates for being put into a news.group instead of mail. Saves disk space computing resources, etc... Basically you would set up a number of local groups that would pertain to specific areas of interest for your corporate members. Apple extensivily uses internal/local groups to pass information around to members of specific divisions or even small work groups. There are a number of news readers available for your workstations and PC's that will allow your users access to news. -- Kurt Baumann InterCon Systems Corporation 703.709.9890 Creators of fine TCP/IP products 703.709.9896 FAX for the Macintosh.
db@helium.East.Sun.COM (David Brownell) (12/12/90)
Comparing spreading information via mailing lists and via local news groups, a few issues come to mind: - You can't "make" people read news in the same way you can do with mail ... too much fluff in most newsgroups, vs. most organizations using mail having reduced fluff of necessity. (Maybe the adaption could work either way, though; I've worked mostly in email-intensive places.) - Being a broadcast medium, news is to some degree less secure. Information that would comfortably go to one or more workgroups by email would seem more prone to going astray over news ... e.g. orgchrarts to head hunters, plans of one group to another (yeech, politics!), and a variety of suchlike restricted data. - Again related to being broadcast, there are some parts of the work life that people feel uncomfortable broadcasting. People feel very different about admitting ignorance (e.g. by asking a question) to various groups. Some people feel uncomfortable asking questions of anonymous strangers, some people feel uncomfortable asking them from people they know! (E.g. I know folk who just can't post to USENET.) So, how to use news within an organization? Let me ask two related questions: What varieties of social arrangements is netnews best suited for? Where do those arrangements show up in a particular workplace contemplating using news internally? - Dave One of the Million monkeys ... see, here's my keyboard!
bernie@DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) (12/12/90)
In <20665@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >How can news be used in a large workgroup? In what situations is >it preferable to e-mail? Here are some ideas for things that might >be good to communicate through news: Well, I'm working on it! The main dis-incentive is the lack of control of readership (locally) for the newsgroups. Anybody can read news once it's on the system. This could compromise the security of proprietry information. I recently posted an article in news.software.nn, about security enhancements, especially access control lists. (ACLs) This could restrict readership of newsgroups effectively, while not making everybody's mailboxes explode. I envisage that the news articles, would only be accessible by the "news" user, and that the newsreader would run set-group-id to news, so that it could read the articles, if it decides that the reader is in the ACL for the requested newsgroup. The schema of names needs to have knowledge of network addresses, so that the news system can pass news from one site to another, and consistently preserve user names. At present, the only obstacle is management of the ACLs (and the set-group-id traps). Who administers the ACLs is the most important factor, and the means for distributing the ACLs to relevant sites is also of considerable importance. The exact architecture is still to be decided upon, though a special control message seems the most consistent with current net usage. Any ideas and/or contributions will be greatfully accepted. -- ________Bernd_Felsche__________bernie@DIALix.oz.au_____________ [ Phone: +61 9 419 2297 19 Coleman Road ] [ TZ: UTC-8 Calista, Western Australia 6167 ]
goutal@intrbas.uucp (Kenn Goutal) (12/19/90)
You make some interesting points, and I concur with some of them. However, there are some points that seem over-generalized. >- You can't "make" people read news in the same way you > can do with mail ... too much fluff in most newsgroups, > vs. most organizations using mail having reduced fluff > of necessity. I think nearly everyone would agree that there's too much fluff in the public newsgroups, but I don't see any reason why that would necessarily be true in newsgroups instituted within a particular organization. Various mechanisms could be brought to bear in a closed environment that cannot be used on the public nets: - make all newsgroups be moderated - install filters everywhere that limit who can post - install kill files everywhere that limit what can be posted - organizational pressure can be brought to bear on those who post too much fluff I mean, most of us would consider these pretty draconian, but then, most corporations are pretty draconian almost by definition. >- Being a broadcast medium, news is to some degree less > secure. Information that would comfortably go to one or > more workgroups by email would seem more prone to going > astray over news ... e.g. orgchrarts to head hunters, > plans of one group to another (yeech, politics!), and > a variety of suchlike restricted data. I don't know as it's the mere fact of being a broadcast medium as the implementation of that broadcast medium. Why is mail more secure? Again, measures can be taken: e.g. cut off the corporate net from Worldnet. Unless the corporate net is isolated, it's certainly possible that an employee will forward not only mail but news articles -- via mail. It's easy enough to ensure that in-house news doesn't escape to the outside world -- just manage the gateway node(s) -- control over transmission resides with the transmitting node. It's not too hard to imagine that some bozo might post an in-house org chart (say) to (say) comp.sources.x, but that can happen whether or not 'news' is used for internal communications or not. On the other hand, it's not too hard to imagine some sort of front-end software that implements the corporate work environment and just uses 'news' as a distribution medium. As such, it wouldn't be too hard to build into that software the controls that would make it impossible to post work-related information to the outside world. >- Again related to being broadcast, there are some parts of > the work life that people feel uncomfortable broadcasting. > People feel very different about admitting ignorance (e.g. > by asking a question) to various groups. Some people feel > uncomfortable asking questions of anonymous strangers, some > people feel uncomfortable asking them from people they know! > (E.g. I know folk who just can't post to USENET.) I think this is a *terrific* point! Using 'news' as an integral part of the workplace and workday will work only to the extent that it reflects what that organization and its members are already willing to do. If people are already expected to admit ignorance, and solicit knowledge from co-workers, then that expectation can be mapped onto a news-based workplace. Of course, if the expectation is already unrealistic, it won't work any better (or worse) once this mapping has been done. Some careful planning of newsgroups and distribution regions should be done. It almost certainly will not work to make all in-house newsgroups have a distribution of 'company-wide'. I confess I haven't a clue how the news software implements the concept of 'distribution', but apparently it's possible for each machine to consider itself as part of one or more regions, or not. E.g. there is 'worldwide', 'usa', and 'ne' (for New England). Presumably the same mechanism could be used to limit distribution of various newsgroups to just those machines that belong to the affected groups. Returning to your point about comfort levels with various sorts and scopes of communication, there is a software product whose whole underlying philosophy is that the software must reflect these needs in both the groups and in the individuals. That is, the communication channels implemented in software must reflect the communication channels that people already use, and the communication paths that go along with various organizational structures. So, some channels should be one-to-one, some one-to-many, some many-to-many; in a different dimension, some should be open to all, some should be by invitation only; provision for anonymity should exist. This product is called "Participate", and I heartily recommend it. The main drawback to it at the present time is that it is not 'distributed' -- the message base and the user interface must all reside on a single machine. That restriction aside, it's quite possible to use Participate to reflect all manner of traditional and nontraditional organizations and their communication paths -- interoffice mail, restricted distribution lists, democracies, newsgroups, newsletters, hierarchies, suggestion boxes. Communication can be completely freewheeling or rigidly controlled, or anything in between. N.B. Neither I nor my employer am a representative of this product, nor have any stake in it. I just happen to know a good deal about it and like it. -- Kenn Goutal Technical Support Interbase Software Corporation 209 Burlington Road Bedford MA 01730 617.275.3222 ...!uunet!intrbas!kenn
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/19/90)
Real technical discussions again instead of net political BS; will wonders never cease! In response to the comment about folks being unwilling to expose ignorance to the world by posting; sure. But consider as a model to solve that problem the "USENet Oracle"; it's a mailing list (I think!) but could just as easily be a newsgroup. It has these characteristics: 1) All questions are anonymous. 2) All responses can be anonymous. Add to that moderation to keep both queries and replies on track, and you have solved one more difficulty with news as a corporate communications medium, and quite possibly additionally gotten the answers to folks who didn't even know how to phrase the question, and gotten prompt feedback to correct, enhance, extend, or align to policy the answers seen. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
kevinc@cs.athabascau.ca (Kevin Crocker) (12/20/90)
I am ashamed to say that I haven't been following the thread of using
"news" for internal communications but I do have some interesting
points that may help.
We do use news for internal communications of all sorts. For example,
we have a student grade tracking system (in-house development). Since
we are a distance education institution with no on-campus students, all
of our "teaching" is done via a pre-designed course package and
"on-line" telephone/computer/etc tutorial support. We have set up an
internal newsgroup called "au" with sub headings for a variety of
things including this student tracking system. Most, if not all, of
our tutors are connected to this system as well as have access to our
full news feed.
We use the newsgroup "au.trix" for communications between the
development team, the tutors, the acadmeics, and the support staff
(secretaries et al). It seems to be working very well as it is a very
quick and clean environment to ensure that all tutors are advised of
information about the TRIX system as well as providing for quick
turnaround time for the development staff to on-line users.
We also use a variety of other newsgroups for training purposes. I.e.,
we just installed Word PErfect as the word processor of choice on all
our machines (can you say officially supported software) and we use a
newsgroup to do training, another to do trouble shooting, etc.
I find that it is a really good way to communicate -- but then I've
been using news for 5 years or so.
I'd like to hear more about this. It's a very interesting application
of groupware.
Kevin
--
Kevin "auric" Crocker Athabasca University
UUCP: ...!{alberta,ncc}!atha!kevinc
Inet: kevinc@cs.AthabascaU.CAkenn@intrbas.uucp (Kenneth G. Goutal) (12/21/90)
Don't be *too* ashamed ... this thread only started a couple days ago, and there have been only about a half-dozen msgs so far. Thanks for jumping in with your contribution about your experiences. All you 'lurkers' out there, be encouraged to join in likewise.
ajones@ajones.austin.ibm.com (12/21/90)
Can you give a little more info about Participate?
Who?
What?
Where?
How much?
...
---------------------------------------------
| ALL ABOVE IS MY OWN OPINION AND NOT IBM'S |
---------------------------------------------
Andrew Jones AWD Development Environment Tools
vnet: ajones@austin Token: ajones@ajones.aus.ibm.com
UUCP: cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!ajones.austin.ibm.com!ajoneskenn@intrbas.uucp (Kenneth G. Goutal) (12/22/90)
I don't have all the info I want right at hand. I'll have to wait till I'm home over the holidays to post details. Briefly, Participate is a conferencing/mail/etc package originally developed in the late 1970's. To my knowledge, it runs on PR1ME, IBM, VAX/VMS, and, most recently, Unix. Several of the public-access systems offer it. Each user has a fairly complex profile of what they may or may not do. In a wide-open system, any user may start a new conference, contribute to any conference, vote in any conference (there's an explicit support for polls/surveys/ballots), and so forth. The creator of a conference is the initial moderator. The moderator gets to specify who may do what in their own conference. So, someone in Personnel might create a conference to which anyone coould contribute, but anonymously, and which only the moderator could read. Huh? Why? It would be called "suggestion box", of course! Engineering might create one called "dumb questions to which anyone could contribute, and anyone could read, but all entries would be anonymous. Someone in Personnel (again) might create one to which only they could contribute, but which anyone could read, called "newsletter", but they might branch subconferences from it called "classified ads" and "letters to the editor" that would be limited in the size of articles. The president might create one that was open only to the VP's, from which they could not unsubscribe, called "daily memo". The VP's, on the other hand, might create their own called "we'll get him" to which any VP could contribute and any VP could read, but the president could not. (Just joking...) Anyway, it's enormously flexible, and can therefore model existing or proposed organizational structures and traditional channels of communication. I'll try to get you an address/phone# to which to address inquiries. I don't have any price info. Again, I do not represent Participate, its creators, maintainers, or vendors, nor does my employer. -- Kenn Goutal ...!linus!intrbas!kenn ...!uunet!intrbas!kenn
szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/27/90)
In article <113@intrbas.UUCP> goutal@intrbas.uucp (Kenn Goutal) writes: >Various mechanisms could be brought to bear in a closed environment >that cannot be used on the public nets: > - make all newsgroups be moderated > - install filters everywhere that limit who can post > - install kill files everywhere that limit what can be posted > - organizational pressure can be brought to bear on those who > post too much fluff >I mean, most of us would consider these pretty draconian, but then, >most corporations are pretty draconian almost by definition. Good point. The last mechanism (peer pressure) is probably the best and can work well in an environment where many of the people know each other. One's reputation in one's company is more immediately important than one's reputation on the net. >>- Again related to being broadcast, there are some parts of >> the work life that people feel uncomfortable broadcasting. >> People feel very different about admitting ignorance (e.g. >> by asking a question) to various groups. Some people feel >> uncomfortable asking questions of anonymous strangers, some >> people feel uncomfortable asking them from people they know! >> (E.g. I know folk who just can't post to USENET.) > >I think this is a *terrific* point! Agreed. A large % feel uncomfortable asking questions in public (which is why I've always thought this is a poor use of news, especially for in-house). On the other hand, people can gain reputation by posting good info, and (if the use of news is widespread and expected) lose reputation by witholding information. Unfortunately, netters bring the "flaming" tradition from world news to in-house news, pounding on even minor mistakes of first-time posters in public. This is bound to discourage posting by a large number of employees. >Some careful planning of newsgroups and distribution regions >should be done. It almost certainly will not work to make all >in-house newsgroups have a distribution of 'company-wide'. I disagree. If we start distributing certain newsgroups just to certain people, we might as well (except for the minor issue of resource usage) go back to using e-mail aliases. A big advantage of newsgroups, IMHO, is that the *reader* has the choice of what to read, and the writer doesn't need to know who explicitly the audience is, just what the subject category(s) are. This is especially important in a broadcast medium where the labor cost of reading is greater than the cost of writing (small-alias e-mail is the reverse). >Returning to your point about comfort levels with various sorts >and scopes of communication, there is a software product whose whole >underlying philosophy is that the software must reflect these needs >in both the groups and in the individuals. That is, the communication >channels implemented in software must reflect the communication channels >that people already use, and the communication paths that go along >with various organizational structures. Communications paths go along organizational structures only as historical artifact. In most companies, and nearly all the successful ones, the communications structure is "matrix": you talk to whoever you need to get the job done, without asking permission of or going through your boss or other authority. Since news is organized by subject, it encourages this ad-hoc style of communications, based on the need of the moment rather than fossilized tradition. News will not be popular with those who maintain their jobs by hoarding information, passing it only to those who do them favors. This old style of "distribution lists" and locked doors just gets blown away by a good electronic communications system. Electronic communication goes so fast and costs so little, that the speed of communications in an organization has become primarily a (inverse) function of that organization's information barriers. Mimicking the paper trail and all its politics with electrons is a dreadfully inefficient way to go. In the same way that printing changed post-Renassaince Europe radically away from Middle Ages assumptions of life, electronic communications will change organizations, and those organizations that adapt the quickest will be the winners. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter...
kgg@zinn.MV.COM (Kenn Goutal) (12/29/90)
[Poof! I'm over here! I'm goutal@intrbas, on vacation...] In article <20813@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >Good point. The last mechanism (peer pressure) is probably the best >and can work well in an environment where many of the people know each >other. One's reputation in one's company is more immediately important >than one's reputation on the net. Actually, I was speaking of *organizational* pressure, not peer pressure; e.g. "keep that up and we'll pull your net privs". Like I said, draconian. I would *like* to think that peer pressure would work well, but in my experience peer pressure only works the other way -- pressuring them into behaving in ways they consider degrading in the interests of survival. Either way, you're right (imho) that peer pressure would be more likely to work in organizations where everybody knows everybody. However, is something like 'news' more necessary precisely in those organizations that are too big for this too be true? That is, a company small enough that everyone knows everyone -- say, 20 -- can get by fine on scribbled notes on corkboards and maybe email, but a company of 20,000 cannot. I mean, obviously, many such companies get by all right, but would stand the most to gain by having e-news. But then there's no peer pressure. >Unfortunately, netters bring the "flaming" tradition from world news >to in-house news, pounding on even minor mistakes of first-time posters >in public. This is bound to discourage posting by a large number of >employees. Agreed. However, this particular vector is not the only one for this disease. Pounding on the minor mistakes of those foolish enough to admit their ignorance and ask for information is endemic, with or without the vehicle of e-news. Most organizations I've ever known don't use e-news for internal communication, and in nearly all of them it's commonplace to find individuals who, for one reason or another, routinely dismantle other people for minor breaches of knowledge. I had previously written: >>Some careful planning of newsgroups and distribution regions >>should be done. It almost certainly will not work to make all >>in-house newsgroups have a distribution of 'company-wide'. And Nick replied: >I disagree. If we start distributing certain newsgroups just to >certain people, we might as well (except for the minor issue of >resource usage) go back to using e-mail aliases. A big advantage >of newsgroups, IMHO, is that the *reader* has the choice of what >to read, and the writer doesn't need to know who explicitly the >audience is, just what the subject category(s) are. This is >especially important in a broadcast medium where the labor cost >of reading is greater than the cost of writing (small-alias e-mail >is the reverse). Ah. Well. Hm-hm. Ho-ho. I agree and disagree simultaneously. First, I minor quibble: I don't believe that resource usage is a minor issue for many, if not most, organizations. If it were, we'd all have disks on our workstations, maybe even big ones, and point- to-point connections with all other nodes. We don't because resources are expensive. I have always thought of 'news' as having *two* equally important benefits: efficient distribution of msgs, and flexibility of subscription. But you're right, of course, that it is important that the writer need not keep track of the readership, especially if all readers may also be writers. However, I don't see that it logically follows that all newsgroups must be distributed to all machines in the organization, or be allowed to be ready by all individuals in the organization. But here I am beforked... I'll explain in a moment (he said mysteriously)... >Communications paths go along organizational structures only as >historical artifact. Uh, well, yes and no. True in organizations where communication is constrained by fiat to follow well-defined organization paths. False in the sense that communication paths *are* organizational structures. In an org where everyone talks to everyone, there *is* no structure, or if there is, it is only a facade to placate some external org. Sorta comes to the same thing, eventually, but from a different perspective. >In most companies, and nearly all the successful >ones, the communications structure is "matrix": you talk to whoever >you need to get the job done, without asking permission of or going >through your boss or other authority. Careful, now... I expect that you, as I, and perhaps others of us here, *want* to belive that your stats are true, but I've seen nothing to confirm this. Also, I think (not sure) that you're ignoring the fact that while in many companies you *can* *talk* to whomever you want in order to get your job done, that doesn't mean that they are talking to you -- there is a lot of intra-departmental, inter-departmental, and a-departmental communication going on that you and I never see, precisely because the authors thereof don't *want* us to see it. Again, more in a moment... So, I think that for e-news to be an effective tool, there must be some newsgroups whose distribution is org-wide (e.g. org.comp.languages, org.rec.aardvarks) and there must also be some newsgroups whose distro is limited to those machines where it is appropriate (org.BF1.hvac to discuss the air-conditioning problem at the Bedford plant), and there must be some whose distro is somehow limited to those *individuals* for whom it is appropriate (e.g. org.vp.strategy, org.grunts.strike). The implementations of 'news' with which I'm familiar have no concept of limiting distribution to individuals, but I include it for purposes of discourse. I see this as distinct from a mailing list, where either one member has to be the 'moderator' who takes in messages and forwards them according to a privately-maintained list, or somehow that mailing list has to be forwarded to all members of itself, and users must in any case remember to use e-mail rather than e-news, which is awkward as well as, depending on the number of members, inefficient. I feel that e-news should have such a notion as a distribution list. This list of members would be maintained by, probably, the Personnel department. Horrible thought, but some entity like that is the one that keeps track of the place of each individual in the organization. In some large companies, they don't find out until last, but they are in any case the final authority re who has been promoted, transferred, fired, demoted, what-have-you. So they, perhaps via a Systems Manglement entity, would tell the news software who was in a particular newsgroup and who was not. But the transmission mechanism, and the style of posting, and the freedom from the knowledge of who the recipients are, would be the same as for newsgroup distribution based on machine. >News will not be popular with those who maintain their jobs by hoarding >information, passing it only to those who do them favors. This old >style of "distribution lists" and locked doors just gets blown away >by a good electronic communications system. Electronic communication >goes so fast and costs so little, that the speed of communications in >an organization has become primarily a (inverse) function of that >organization's information barriers. ABSOLUTELY !!!!!!!! I think that it logically follows that many people will needlessly suffer from the lack of many of the benefits of e-news just because there are some people in power in certain orgs who cannot afford to allow a black-market infonomy that bypasses all their controls. On the other hand, if e-news could be made non-threatening, by (a) speeding up the existing communication channels a zillionfold, (b) allowing denser networks of ad-hoc communications where they are already allowed, and (c) still providing controls on information where that is currently desired -- then e-news stands a better chance of being allowed in the door, and many people in the org will benefit. >Mimicking the paper trail and all >its politics with electrons is a dreadfully inefficient way to go. I don't see how this is necessarily true. I see that it is true if the existing paper trail and its politics are inefficient (aside from the mechanics of paper). I see no evidence that all 'structured' organizations are inherently inefficient. Bypassing the structure is more efficient than working through it only when the structure is inefficient. Well, when all is said and done, here is the dilemma I face: One the one hand I place high value on free exchange of information, and in breaking down barriers and controls on information. I'm not sure I wholeheartedly embrace the policy espoused (and implemented) by The Shockwave Rider, of unlocking giving *all* files world-read privilege ... but close. Certainly I've never understood why information that belongs to a company should somehow belong to only part of that company. If I work for a company X, and there are plans to introduce a product Y sometime in the next three quarters, I can see no valid reason why I should not be allowed to know this fact. Of course, I might abuse this right, and pass the information along to a customer, or a competitor, but that's a *separate issue*. At the same time, I hate like the dickens the idea that the workers in an organization would be deprived of many benefits of e-news just because it would violate the communication paths imposed by (or which impose) the organization's structure. >Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com >Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter... -- Kenn Goutal UUCP: kenn@rr.MV.COM (...decvax!zinn!rr!kenn) or: kenn@zinn.MV.COM (...decvax!zinn!kenn) (aka kenn@intrbas & goutal@intrbas) BIX: kenn PO!NT: kenn CompuServe: 71117.2572 (PARTI handle == kenn) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Ship and Travel Intermodally -- Commute Electronically! | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
wombat@key.COM (Joan Eslinger) (12/29/90)
I used to work in a place that used news (actually notes) for internal communication, and it worked quite well within our site, less well between our site and a few others. I think this is because a notesfile-using culture developed while the company was still very small, and it was possible to indoctrinate each new employee as they came in (some of whom had already seen/used notes before, this being in Champaign-Urbana, IL). You tell the new person that all announcements are made via notes and not via mail, or when they ask how to do X say "look in the notesfile," and they learn to read notes right quick. Once the place was acquired, we had to start communicating with people established in Florida, and doing so via notes didn't catch on - they already had their communication paths set, there was a lot of distrust on both sides, not everyone there had terminals on their desks, it was a long time before our computers talked to one another reliably, etc. Then a new site sprung up in California, populated with a lot of people straight out of school as well as experienced people, and they used notes fairly successfully within their site; but there still wasn't much cross-comm (we were software, they were hardware, and most people on both sides didn't need to know much about the other side). When I moved up here to Key, it had a start-up flavor and people were communicating, but they had all gotten into the habit of using e-mail, broadcast to all the engineers (and there's an awful lot of hardware- and machine-tech-related mail that we software types aren't terribly interested in). On several different occasions I and others have tried to convert the engineers to notesfiles with no luck; there was no management support and we were too small a group to work as a critical mass. I think if management had supported it, or e-mail had ceased to work, we could have pulled it off but as it is people don't have enough incentive to change. Now we are working with a large group of software people within Amdahl, trying to use news for some discussion, but it's gone in fits and starts, bumping into some political problems along the way, and never really being successful (except for some automated-posting groups, which are essentially logfiles). It's too soon to call this one a failure - it could very well work out if a couple problems got resolved. Raw news doesn't present the best interface for some of what you want to use e-news for. Because each article is a separate file disk space/inode pressures cause folks to expire everything, but once you have such a system in place with people contributing useful information you'd really like to keep some of it around for the life of a project/till next quarterly update/whatever. It's really a shame that except for a few pockets like H-P notesfile development ended - from the start it supported anonymous notes, very flexible access lists (you could specify read and/or write and/or modify and/or director privs on per-user, per-group (as in /etc/group), per-system, per-notesfile bases), grouped all responses together with the original note and made it really easy to see the original note & older responses, and used Unix disk space and inodes more efficiently than news so you weren't tempted to expire all the good info. But there is nothing that "forces" people to subscribe, so you must still rely on other means to bootstrap your e-news. What's the point here? I guess, that in a workplace that has integrated "e-news" into its way of doing business, it's wonderful. Wombat wombat@key.amdahl.com
szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (01/02/91)
In article <1080@zinn.MV.COM> kgg@zinn.MV.COM (Kenn Goutal) writes: [An excellent article on news & information flow in an organization] >.... >I had previously written: >>>Some careful planning of newsgroups and distribution regions >>>should be done. It almost certainly will not work to make all >>>in-house newsgroups have a distribution of 'company-wide'. > >And Nick replied: >>I disagree. If we start distributing certain newsgroups just to >>certain people, we might as well (except for the minor issue of >>resource usage) go back to using e-mail aliases. > >First, I minor quibble: I don't believe that resource usage is a >minor issue for many, if not most, organizations. Clarification: for written electronic communications (not necessarily graphics, sound, video, or source code), resource usage is an insignificant fraction of labor costs. For example, a 1 KB e-mail message to 1,000 people takes up at most $5 of disk space if everybody saves it in their folder, while taking 1,000/60 * $30 = $500 of labor if everybody takes 1 minute to read it. The savings by going to news for some communications is due to the user interface news provides for filtering information, and the easier access to more information from getting rid of distribution lists. The resource savings is small compared to the labor savings. >If it were, we'd >all have disks on our workstations, maybe even big ones, and point- >to-point connections with all other nodes. We don't because resources >are expensive. "All other nodes" (even more than a few hundred), without a good filtering user interface, would quickly overwhelm the user. Labor costs, the ability of people to communication with and via the computer, are a limiting factor. There are organizations that have no need for terminals on every desk other than electronic communications; for these groups the issue is not news vs. mail; it is electronic vs. paper. >So, I think that for e-news to be an effective tool, there must be >some newsgroups whose distribution is org-wide (e.g. org.comp.languages, >org.rec.aardvarks) and there must also be some newsgroups whose distro >is limited to those machines where it is appropriate (org.BF1.hvac to >discuss the air-conditioning problem at the Bedford plant), and there >must be some whose distro is somehow limited to those *individuals* >for whom it is appropriate (e.g. org.vp.strategy, org.grunts.strike). org.vp.strategy and our.official.secret.club I can believe, but it would take an awful lot of union influence in Sysadmin to pull off org.grunts.strike. :-) What machines are appropriate for org.BF1.hvac and who decides? Can a grunt working in a sweaty Bedford lab post the temperature? If I have health problems with certain chemicals and am traveling there from another site, can I post a question about air quality? Can a maintenence man at the Hartford plant who finds a similar problem read the Bedford discussion to see if there was a solution? I don't see how we can say in advance who needs and doesn't need to read a newsgroup. Another example might be an "org.travel" newsgroup with good fares, hotel rates, etc. between company sites around the globe. Some people need to read this often, some hardly at all. The usual pattern will be "read it if you are about to travel." This doesn't fit the concept of a distribution list, but some might be happy to shoehorn it into one. "Execs and salesman who travel alot" would leave many part-time travelers out in the cold. Just to pick another random example, information on competitor's benchmarks. Which people or departments in the company need this information? How can a list be devised that won't leave some people in the dark who need this information to do their job (better)? Why even go to the trouble of making up such a list? IMHO, distribution lists are a historical artifact from the era of paper communications, when they were necessary for routing. The productivity improvements from removing this barrier could be vast. Of course, since distribution lists are also used for political purposes, getting rid of them won't always be easy. But the organization that does so will be able to communicate better, be more cohesive as a team, and will end up winning. Just the opening up of communications between marketing, sales, and engineering could have a major impact. Since news currently does not have distribution lists, it is a good vehicle for introducing this change into an organization. >I think that it logically follows that many people will needlessly >suffer from the lack of many of the benefits of e-news just because >there are some people in power in certain orgs who cannot afford to >allow a black-market infonomy that bypasses all their controls. > >On the other hand, if e-news could be made non-threatening, >by (a) speeding up the existing communication channels a zillionfold, >(b) allowing denser networks of ad-hoc communications where they are >already allowed, and (c) still providing controls on information where >that is currently desired -- then e-news stands a better chance of >being allowed in the door, and many people in the org will benefit. In the long run, because organizations are competitive, the communications channels will have to change to derive the full benefits of e-mail and e-news. Company-wide e-mail has already opened up many new channels that were previously impractical. My interest lies in changing both software *and* organizations to find a new optimum, not just changing the software to fit current organizations. >>Mimicking the paper trail and all >>its politics with electrons is a dreadfully inefficient way to go. > >I don't see how this is necessarily true. >I see that it is true if the existing paper trail and its politics >are inefficient (aside from the mechanics of paper). >.... >I see no evidence that all 'structured' organizations are inherently >inefficient. Bypassing the structure is more efficient than working >through it only when the structure is inefficient. It is not structure that is inefficient, it is how the structure is implemented. A paper trail/signature structure is (relatively) very slow; an electronic distribtuion-list fast, a reader-choice structure faster *and* more flexible. The difference is how long the information remains queued up (usually a function of how many queues require human intervention), and whether that information gets to those whose productivity it improves. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with.
kenn@intrbas.uucp (Kenneth G. Goutal) (01/03/91)
Great anecdotes! Great observations! Keep 'em coming!
Anybody else with similarly useful information, be bold!
Since joining this newgroup, I have observed at least the following
issues in making news (or something like it) work as a means of
intra-organizataion communication:
- personal comfort with the electronic text
- personal comfort with the particular facility (news, notes, mail)
- management acceptance of the idea
- management support for the idea
- technical appropriateness of the facility w/r/t resources
(available i-nodes, connectivity, etc)
Note that some are predicates for others.
I'm sure I've missed some.
Note that the "personal comfort" must be pretty much universal within
the org. It can take as little as one person who isn't comfortable
with some aspect of the thing for the whole thing to fall apart --
if that person is crucial.
-- Kenn Goutal
...!linus!intrbas!kenn
...!uunet!intrbas!kennkenn@intrbas.uucp (Kenneth G. Goutal) (01/03/91)
When I was at DEC, we had things called 'notesfiles', similar I guess
to the ones to which you refer, but a different hunk of code, what
eventually became VAX NOTES. Some notesfiles were on PDP-11's, but
most were on VAXen. Anyway, each notesfile was a single file.
Inodes were certainly not an issue. Some notesfiles eventually got
big enough that they had to be periodically archived, but that was
typically once per quarter or once per year.
I thought of one that I missed:
- personal comfort with the user interface.
Dragging out a favorite soapbox, I would like to point out that the
perfect interface for one user is not the perfect -- or even an acceptable
-- interface for another. Groupware designers must take this into account
as much as any other designers of software must.
A related item is that while it's probably good if all functions used
by a user share a similarity in their interface, it's probably *not*
good to make one interface literally be the end-all-be-all for all
functions. Both are important.
-- Kenn Goutal
...!linus!intrbas!kenn
...!uunet!intrbas!kennselmer@hpcuhc.cup.hp.com (Steve Elmer) (01/11/91)
PHEW! Just finished reading these postings and want to add my two bits.
We recently had "news" added to the login sequence for our workstations.
Every time one logs on, an ever-growing list of news items scrolls across
the screen until finally one reads them. This is something of an annoyance
since most articles were not of direct relevence. The unfortunate part is
that upon trying to read them (and thus get rid of them), the "news" facility
simply core dumped all of the articles onto the display without page breaks.
I don't want to be forced to read all of that trivia every day!
I hope that the e-news utilities mentioned in this string are much more
sophisticated than the one foisted on me. I prefer notes, but it seems that
it could be better. There are zillions of notes groups available to me,
but it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Also, it would
help if there were ways to get a higher level view of the data content.
Maybe something like hyper-text...
Within my project, we have recently begun using notes to discuss technical
issues. The up side is that I can now contribute to more discussions without
having to attend never-ending meetings. The down side is that the discussions
tend to get convoluted as people take things out of context or zoom in on the
trivialities while ignoring the heart of the matter. I think this problem
could be mitigated with some sort of moderator.
Overall, my experience with using notes for technical discussions is that it
is almost as good as (sometimes better than) talking face to face. The medium
allows complex issues to be discussed in detail without loss of information
since each participant must be able to write down their thoughts. It also
serves as an "electronic trail" which enables one to decipher the reasoning
behind the conclusions.
One last thing, earlier notes in this string mentioned that the askers and
answerers of dumb questions should both be anonymous. I believe that only
the asker should be anonymous, and then only if they explicitly want to.
The answerer should not be anonymous for several reasons:
1 Not all sources of knowledge are created equal
2 Anonymous answers prevent one from learning which sources are better
3 The answerer should get the credit they deserve for the answer given
(either good or bad)
4 The asker may wish to continue the discussion in private
Steve Elmerittai@shemesh.GBA.NYU.EDU (Ittai Hershman) (01/13/91)
The down side is that the discussions tend to get convoluted as people
take things out of context or zoom in on the trivialities while
ignoring the heart of the matter. I think this problem could be
mitigated with some sort of moderator.
The same thing can occur in traditional meetings. It is usually kept
in check by either a manager or an unofficial leader without resorting
to heavy-handed techniques such as "moderation". One of the problems
with the e-mail/news medium is that this function must be more
explicit than in traditional meetings where there are many
out-of-bandwidth cues from leaders. This is covered in some of the
published CSCW literature.
Overall, my experience with using notes for technical discussions is
that it is almost as good as (sometimes better than) talking face to
face. The medium allows complex issues to be discussed in detail
without loss of information since each participant must be able to
write down their thoughts. It also serves as an "electronic trail"
which enables one to decipher the reasoning behind the conclusions.
I would add that (IMO) the biggest advantage of using e-mail/news is
its asynchronous nature. While all the colab type CSCW tools which
augment synchronous meetings are all very interesting, I think they
miss out on the greatest by-products of information technology: the
ability to have relatively rich asynchronous communications while not
losing time sensitivity.
-Ittai