[H-GEN] Membership form

Raymond Smith raymond at humbug.org.au
Thu Aug 13 00:48:55 EDT 2009


Russell:

2009/8/13 Russell Stuart <russell-humbug at stuart.id.au>:
> On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 13:31 +1000, Raymond Smith wrote:
>> Also of interest: this page has the sysadmin@ alias listed. So much
>> for the uber-secret cabal list. Given away on the club homepage no less!
>
> It appears it was added by Matt (our librarian) on 2009-06-03.  Maybe
> that was a portent of what the librarian role would morph into.  I hope
> so.  He did it after a kerfuffle created by me here about private lists
> - a gesture which I appreciate.

I searched through web.archive.org and it would appear that this was indeed
the first time that sysadmin@ appeared on a HUMBUG web page. I therefore
withdraw my cheap shot. I do remember emailing the sysadmin@ list very
early on in my  membership to get some changes made to a DNS entry. I
guess someone must have told me about its existence. It has never been a
"secret".

In any event: the list whether well known or not has not been the venue of
cabalistic plotting and planning. It has been a place where people ask about
backups, keep track of what needs to be done, and receive requests to get
things done.

> It was also given away at the talk I did recently at Humbug, which was
> later put up for public download.  I described how the Humbug servers
> were originally owned by private individuals (your name was mentioned!),
> and how managing them the way they are (hidden private lists and so on)
> was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the circumstances.  Probably
> how I would have done it, in fact, if I owned the machines.

It is a side point but: HUMBUG has never made use of any machine owned
by me. You may be thinking of the machine which Miju Systems provided
and which was hosted in rackspace managed by Mark, Bruce, and myself.
That machine was always completely at the service of HUMBUG, indeed
Miju had no access to the box (beyond Mark's access).

> But things have moved on, the way do we things has changed.  So it is
> now reasonable to put the sysadmin alias on the front page.  To the
> current Exec's credit, this is exactly what the current they did when it
> was pointed out.  Obviously I want to take it further by making a clean
> break with the past arrangement.  I think changing the way the lists
> work, and formalising the SysAdmin role are good symbolic ways of making
> this break clear.

I do not see how moving to a virtual machine which was, when I last checked,
being paid for by Robert Brockway is much of a change in the status quo
which was using a physical machine paid for by Miju Systems.

That being said: I have no problem making the traffic on exec@ and sysadmin@
public. I am still unconvinced about opening membership of the lists to all and
sundry -- first because I loose the ability to "address" all the exec or all the
sysadmins, second because I do not see it improving the responsiveness of
these groups (although making mail public will), and in fact it could
make things
worse (by introducing "too many cooks"). That being said -- it should be easy
for anyone who is interested and capable to become an "assistant" sysadmin.

Cheers,

Raymond

2009/8/13 Russell Stuart <russell-humbug at stuart.id.au>:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>
> On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 13:31 +1000, Raymond Smith wrote:
>> Also of interest: this page has the sysadmin@ alias listed. So much
>> for the uber-secret cabal list. Given away on the club homepage no less!
>
> It appears it was added by Matt (our librarian) on 2009-06-03.  Maybe
> that was a portent of what the librarian role would morph into.  I hope
> so.  He did it after a kerfuffle created by me here about private lists
> - a gesture which I appreciate.
>
> It was also given away at the talk I did recently at Humbug, which was
> later put up for public download.  I described how the Humbug servers
> were originally owned by private individuals (your name was mentioned!),
> and how managing them the way they are (hidden private lists and so on)
> was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the circumstances.  Probably
> how I would have done it, in fact, if I owned the machines.
>
> But things have moved on, the way do we things has changed.  So it is
> now reasonable to put the sysadmin alias on the front page.  To the
> current Exec's credit, this is exactly what the current they did when it
> was pointed out.  Obviously I want to take it further by making a clean
> break with the past arrangement.  I think changing the way the lists
> work, and formalising the SysAdmin role are good symbolic ways of making
> this break clear.
>
> _______________________________________________
> General mailing list
> General at lists.humbug.org.au
> http://lists.humbug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/general
>



More information about the General mailing list