From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: User services 
    <BETSYS.92Jul29173318@ra.cs.umb.edu> <1992Jul30.022822.5866@eff.org>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 13:47:21 GMT
Organization: The Puzzle Palace, UKentucky

kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz) writes:
>
>[...]
>>Funny you should mention that. We just drafted a rough policy file,
>>adn one thing we put in is that providing public services is the
>>responsibility of the administrators and must be approved by us.
>[...]
>
>What criteria will you use? You will likely be pressured to use your
>new authority to censor your users.

I'm adding a similar paragraph to our policy (which, by the way, is
*still* generating email comments; thanks, folks!).  My paragraph
will apply to admins and users alike, with wording like this:

     Publicly accessible network resources will be installed
     ONLY by ECC staff.  Such resources must be directly re-
     lated to the ECC mission, engineering education.
     
   * The installation of recreational network resources, such as 
   * MUD, Netrek, or IRC clients/servers, are explicitly prohibited
   * UNLESS these programs include use restrictions based on time of
   * day and number of users.  The installation of these resources
   * may only be performed by ECC staff; however, users are welcome
   * to submit programs for inclusion in this category.  

24-hour access will only be given to those network resources which
directly relate to our mission.  Anonymous FTP would be an example
of such a service; we don't have anything in our FTP archive that
isn't related to the work of the College.

The paragraph marked with "*" has been proposed as a compromise.  If
it's 11:30 pm and there are only 5 people logged in, I don't think I'll
have a problem with MUD/IRC/whatever usage.  During working hours, which
I'll probably set as 0800-2200, I have to preserve the system for the
(rather heavy) academic users.

I'm writing the code to implement these restrictions; the algorithm looks
something like this:

	if(time > 2200 and time < 0700)  /* limit subject to tuning */
		AND if(users logged in < 30)  /* subject to tuning */
			AND if(recreational users < 15) /* subject to tuning */
				allow access to game/MUD/IRC/whatever

I would place all recreational resources under the umbrella of a "play"
command; users might give the command "play irc" or "play nethack".  This
scheme allows me to easily extract recreational users from the system 
process lists.

If the system turns out to be over- or under-utilized, I'll modify the
"30 users" and "15 recreational users" limits accordingly.  These limits
will probably "float" with the academic year; as finals week approaches,
the academic use goes through the roof (all-nighters for final projects,
et cetera).

I believe that this approach will give us the best of both worlds; the
recreational users can still have fun, but they cannot do so at the ex-
pense of the academic users (unless the academic users come in at 2 am).

I'm just happy that I finally have a system that can bear the recreational
AND academic users; it's a luxury I have not enjoyed in the past.

Comments?


-- 
MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
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