RFC545 - Of what quality be the UCSB resources evaluators?

Network Working Group J. Pickens

Request for Comments: 545 UCSB Computer Systems Laboratory

NIC: 17791 23 July 1973

References: RFC531,369. 519

OF WHAT QUALITY BE THE UCSB RESOURCE EVALUATORS?

A Response to "Feast of Famine"

In RFC531, M.A. Padlipsky complains that the UCSB resource

evaluators were derelict in not consulting the Resource Notebook for

available documentation. In addition, Padlipsky equates the goals of

the resource evaluators to the goals of the software repository

advocaters. A misunderstanding exists and perhaps, with this note,

may be cleared.

To respond to Padlipsky's example of UCSB botching login attempts let

me make two comments. First, more people than the resource

evaluators were Accessing the ARPANET. The group of evaluators, at

least, knew the login procedure from the Resource Notebook. (By the

way, we do have a Multics Programmers Manual.) Second, the OLS TELNET

echoes no lower case, which can generate confusion. Even UCSB's

technical liaison, after consulting the Resource Notebook, managed to

botch his login.

The first law of resource evaluation, at least for UCSB evaluators,

is "read the Resource Notebook!" (RFC369, incidentally, was based on

a Resource Notebook that was barren compared to the notebook of

today.) Questions left unanswered by the Notebook are resolved by

accessing online documentation first at the NIC and second at the

site being evaluated. If, after all this effort, questions still

exist, then a consultant is contacted. Consultation may be either

online or by telephone and may entail purchasing appropriate user

manuals (for some of the resources we evaluated, no manuals existed).

Our approach has been to consult the most publicly available

documentation first. Only if the advertised paths fail do we resort

to personal contact with a (busy) technical liaison. If technical

liaisons wish to be consultants for uninitiated users and feel that

this is their role we will gladly modify our behavior.

There certainly is a meal, to use Padlipsky's analogy, of

documentation already available on the Network. However, a meal is

no good without silverware. Site specific and function specific

MINIMANS (see RFC369 and RFC519) are attempts to provide this

tableware. Our first-pass MINIMANS are available on request for

those who would like to see what we are trying to do.

Resource evaluators are concerned with much more than documentation.

A closer reading of prior RFC's would have shown that we investigate

dynamic phenomenon such as help facilities, online consultation,

response time, reliability, and human engineering. We make

suggestions for improvement. Indeed we see ourselves, at least for

UCSB users, in the role of plain clothes inspector. We don't claim

absolute efficiency but we do claim good intent and good results. We

have spurred improvements at local as well as foreign network sites.

We apologize to any we may have offended in the past with poor

reviews. We are learning, continually, how best to say things in a

constructive rather than destructive way.

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