|
|
| Author |
Message |
cyklone
|
|
Paging Staff
| 
Jul 11 21:47 UTC 2007 |
Ummm, grex is regularly being attacked by a vandal and the best Grex can
do is "well, staff doesn't check in regularly"? Didn't we just have a long
debate about training new staff, or is that still in a consensus building
committee meeting? Stopping vandals, at least in this case, doesn't
involve any policy issues that I'm aware of. I do realize that this may
need more than a simple IP block for reasons someone mentioned in agora.
Still, is anyone on this yet? If not, why not?
Anyone? Bueller?
|
| 63 responses total. |
mcnally
|
|
response 1 of 63:
|
Jul 11 22:46 UTC 2007 |
Have you tried mailing the staff mailing list (staff@cyberspace.org)?
If the problem is that they're not reading conferences, posting in
yet another conference is probably not going to do the trick.
But yes, staff attention is scarce these days.
|
cyklone
|
|
response 2 of 63:
|
Jul 11 23:07 UTC 2007 |
Actually, I hadn't emailed staff. I was under the impression that someone who
actually was in communication with someone on staff knew of the problem
and conveyed it to that staffperson. But this is just an assumption, so
your point is noted.
|
slynne
|
|
response 3 of 63:
|
Jul 12 00:32 UTC 2007 |
I have emailed staff
|
remmers
|
|
response 4 of 63:
|
Jul 12 20:39 UTC 2007 |
Me too. (and board as well)
|
cmcgee
|
|
response 5 of 63:
|
Jul 12 21:47 UTC 2007 |
Would someone post simple directions for filtering a user? I used Backtalk
to ignore spin, but when I use Picospan, his responses show up.
None of the utility menus seem to have incorporated this little program.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 6 of 63:
|
Jul 12 22:43 UTC 2007 |
Type "twit spin" at the Ok: prompt to filter out response from user spin.
Note that although you will no longer see his responses you will still see
each item that they have responded to as a "new" item, which means you'll
still have to go through them all, which means there's virtually no benefit
to twit-filtering him.
|
cmcgee
|
|
response 7 of 63:
|
Jul 12 23:07 UTC 2007 |
My coping mechanism has been to use Backtalk to see a list of items with
new responses; click on the ones with more than one, and then use
picospan to fixseen the conference as soon as I've finished.
Thanks.
|
slynne
|
|
response 8 of 63:
|
Jul 13 01:30 UTC 2007 |
I seem to have misplaced my cell phone which has gelinas's phone number
in it. I found cross's phone number and managed to reach him.
Unfortunately, he is in a situation where he is unable to log into grex.
It is probably too late to call Jan tonight. I dont have STeve's or
glenda's number.
Ugh.
|
keesan
|
|
response 9 of 63:
|
Jul 13 12:39 UTC 2007 |
Don't these people read email?
Or have each other's phone numbers?
|
slynne
|
|
response 10 of 63:
|
Jul 13 14:15 UTC 2007 |
I cant speak for them. I imagine, given the season, that it is highly
likely that they are busy with things that might take them away from
their computers.
It is becoming clear to me that we really need staff who are more
active participants in bbs. I dont know exactly how to go about
recruiting them but it certainly is something we should think about. I
mean usually, we have cross around very regularly but he is busy right
at this moment. It isnt fair to put everything on his shoulders
anyways.
|
jep
|
|
response 11 of 63:
|
Jul 13 16:17 UTC 2007 |
The staff needs to accept some new people who are skilled enough to help
out in some way, and with no obvious ethical flaws, even if they aren't
long time buddies of all of the current staff members. The staff has
traditionally been extremely paranoid about accepting new staff members,
on the grounds they might not be trustworthy.
They are overdoing it by a lot and doing harm in the process. Grex is
not a critical application for anyone. Even organizations which have
really critical operations (such as the CIA, banks, pharmaceutical
companies, etc.) have to bring in new people sometimes. Letting the
work be undone because you're too paranoid to bring in new people to do
it is not *more* secure. It is a certain way for your organization to
crumble.
Grex is being ground to a halt right now, Agora is for all purposes dead
in the water for the last couple of days, because there's no one active
and trusted enough to replace the password field for the user's line in
/etc/passwd with an "x". That's insane.
|
remmers
|
|
response 12 of 63:
|
Jul 13 17:47 UTC 2007 |
If you look at the history, being "long time buddies of all the current
staff members" has never been a criterion for staff appointment here.
The problem is finding qualified volunteers. Occasionally there have
been calls for such, with little success. If you have some names to
suggest, I'm sure the board and staff will be all ears.
(And of course, a volunteer would have to be taught that the way to
disable an account is *not* to put an "x" in the password field. The
actual process is just about as simple, though...)
|
mcnally
|
|
response 13 of 63:
|
Jul 13 22:12 UTC 2007 |
"Long time buddies" isn't the right way to phrase it, but John is
right -- our staffing issues are seriously complicated by control
issues some of the senior staff have. When they had time in their
lives to respond quickly to whatever problems arose it didn't matter
whether they were willing to delegate authority or not. But now
they've moved on, but haven't let go, and it's causing problems for
the system.
I think the best thing that Grex could do about staff would be to
thank Steve and Marcus, warmly and sincerely, for years' worth of
unpaid work that they have selflessly contributed to the system,
and then to ask them to retire to advisory-only positions, making
room for a new generation.
One HUGE impediment to this is that hardware unreliability problems
have frequently necessitated intervention from staff who are physically
local to Ann Arbor. We need to change that somehow, either by arranging
a system which allows remote console access or through some other
mechanism (such as perhaps virtualizing Grex and giving admins the
ability to relaunch the whole system from a login on the host machine.)
|
