X-NEWS: hylka bionet.general: 221 Relay-Version: VMS News - V5.9C 19/12/89 VAX/VMS V5.2; site cc.helsinki.fi Path: hylka!hydra!tut!sunic!mcsun!uunet!bionet!finfun.bitnet!HARPER Newsgroups: bionet.general Subject: BioBit No 13... er No 12a (THE BIG PICTURE) Message-ID: <9002021750.AA02275@net.bio.net> From: HARPER@finfun.bitnet ("Robert Harper ", Finland) Date: 2 Feb 90 11:06:00 GMT Sender: daemon@genbank.BIO.NET Lines: 299 1313131313 1313131313 1313131313 1313131313 1313 1313 1313 1313131313 1313 1313 1313 131313131313 13131313 1313131313 13131313 131313131313 13131313 1313 1313 1313 13131313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313 1313131313 1313 1313131313 1313131313 1313 1313 1313131313 1313 1313131313 1313131313 1313 1313 No 13 ***************************************************** Government health warning DO NOT TAKE THE CONTENTS OF THIS ARTICLE SERIOUSLY ***************************************************** -*- 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. *************************** 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. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% -=ROB=- %% Robert Harper %% HARPER@FINFUN %% HARPER@CC.HELSINKI.FI %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Rob "there is no gravity... the earth sucks" Harper