From: eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas)
Subject: Re: Moderated List????
Reply-To: ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE
Organization: SUNET, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 02:49:37 GMT

Hey guys I gotta serious problem, hope you can help!!!! My car don't work no
more. What should I do??? Yeah, I know, I know, call a repairman, but with the
recession we ain't go no money for that. I tried asking my neighbor but he
doesn't understand nuthin' about cars. So please help!!!!!

PS: The car is a Volvo if that makes any difference. I thought they were
    good...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've always been amused at the social aspects of computers. People (by that I
mean people at large - not people paid to understand computers) don't react to
computer problems the way they would react to a normal everyday-life problem.
If someone were to post the above message on rec.cars (or whatever it's called)
and got flamed for not telling people WHAT it is that's wrong with his car and
HOW the car broke, everyone would think "Gee, that guy deserved it, what did he
expect really???" and it wouldn't occur to anyone to flame the flamer, unless
he had been extremely abusive. But as soon as the problem is related to
computers, the user is automatically considered innocent: it's not his fault,
he's not a computer expert. So Joe (a nice guy, one of US) sends a message of
the type:

"Hi, I printed a file 30 minutes ago and the listing is not ready, why?"

and wastes 15 minutes of the time of a user support person (a bad guy, one of
THEM bastard computer people), at what point it turns out Joe had typed just

$ PRINT

at the prompt, and then happily switched off his terminal and gone to watch the
listing come out, but it dared not to come out! Joe cannot be blamed one second
for not having realized that the computer cannot guess which of his 50 files he
wanted to print. I mean, with all these articles in the press about artifical
intelligence, he was entitled to expect the computer to know. If on the other
hand Joe had picked up the phone and waited for his correspondent to answer,
without dialing, everyone would have laughed.

Similarly, I often get requests for help from users at other sites where (for
instance) the mail system is screwed up. When I tell them I cannot do anything
about it and the problem is that their mail system is screwed up, and this
should be reported to their local computer people, they say they can't do that
because the local computer people are not nice, or don't seem to know what they
are doing, or both. But they want to talk to Prof.Mueller in Switzerland (which
as everyone know is another name for Sweden) very badly, so I have to give them
instructions that work. If needed I must write a program to convert the broken
mail generated by their machine into something that works, and if that is not
possible they would like an account on my machine. And, of course, should I
dare to answer that I'm not paid to solve their problems, I get the "You
computer people wouldn't have a job without us users" litany (as if I was too
stupid to get a job in another field if computers suddenly ceased to exist).
Now, how often do you see these sorts of situations in real life? If the
corporate loans offered by your employer aren't good enough, do you make a fool
of yourself trying to convince IBM that they should let you take a corporate
loan with them in spite of the fact that you're not one of them employees,
because your own company provides shitty loans and you badly need the money?

Well I could go on giving examples forever. I just note with amusement that, so
far, the people who are against the concept of having a moderated mailing list
(as opposed to those worried about technicalities or extra cost) are those who
flame Carl and Ehud for not being nice. It looks like "moderated list" is
somehow equated with "Carl's gang was right and the users are guilty", which of
course is stupid. There is no point asking a question like the one on top of
this message, and *that* is the point of having a mailing list. Having a
mailing list would of course not mean the newsgroup would disappear: everyone
would be free to decide which medium is a better investment of their time. With
a bit of luck, all these unnice people might leave the newsgroups and the blind
would happily lead the blind in a perfect, nice world without a single flame
:-)

  Eric