Conference 7.286::digital

    Re .0
    	What time do you consider company time?  I can't tell who is
    working what shift at any particular time.  I'm also not famaliar with
    all the nodes in different countries.  Are you sure that there are a
    lot of people noting durring company time?  It may be true, but do you
    have proof?

    Jim Morton

    Complaining, complaining,always complaining. And me too. In fact, (no
    flame intended),given the state of things company-wide,it's a wonder 
    more of us 'survivors'....aren't doing it. Complaining, that is.
    
    FWIW,you'll recall that we don't all work the same days or hours,right?
    And it's certainly 'possible' that Monday or Tuesday might be
    somebody's weekend;i.e., Saturday or Sunday.
    Also,those who have systems or PC's at home may be noting from home,
    right? There are coffee breaks,cigarette breaks,lunch breaks and
    others. What I want you to do is consider that we all don't work the
    same hours,days or weeks. We ve in many different time zones and
    probably don't feel the way you do about a whole host of things.
    
    As to Pear::Soapbox,you're perfectly right to be bothered,uncomfortable
    even offended by some of the crap going on there. I think I understand.
    But isn't this why we have Moderators? Or have they goTSFO?
    My freedom of expression ends.....when I offend. The
    guidelines,perhaps,ought to be reiterated at some point so we know
    when we've 'crossed the line'. We sometimes need to be reminded.
    
                                                          Peace,
                                                          -RAM-
                                                       

    	Re .0
    
    	So your point is ... what?
    
    	That soapbox offends you?  Simple solution for you is:
    
    		Notes> DELETE ENTRY SOAPBOX
    
    	Or that people waste time in soapbox?  Perhaps.  But should
    	we close down that conference for all employees because a few
    	may be abusing it?  Then what conference is next?  DIGITAL?
    	MASSACHUSETTS?  JOBS?  <YOUR_FAVORITE_CONFERENCE>?  Rather, I'd 
    	prefer to see people get addressed on an individual level if 
    	their performance suffers because of non-work-related activities.
    	Notes is not the only activity that takes time.  Smoking.  Chit
    	chat.  Taking a walk around the building to clear your head.
    
    	I like to consider my participation in notesfiles as the equivalent
    	of proverbial water cooler chit chat, only with an electronic 
    	interface.
    
    	Did you ever try eliminating mice from an apartment?  You may
    	chase them from you apartment, but they show up somewhere else,
    	like next door.  Same thing would result with closing down employee
    	interest conferences.  People still need to blow off steam.  They
    	need to change their minds' focus from time to time.  They still
    	need to relieve tension.  Eliminate the arena in which certain
    	people choose to do these things, and they'll just do it somewhere
    	else.  Maybe they'll shift to EMAIL discussions.  Maybe they'll
    	use the PHONE utility.  Maybe they'll get up from their seats and
    	bug the person in the next cube.  Maybe they'll hang around the
    	water cooler.
    
    	Complaints like .0 arise from time to time, and the suggestion
    	has been made in DELTA to close down employee-interest noting.
    	Maybe management sees more value in employee-interest notesfiles
    	than we give them credit for, and they have chosen to let it
    	thrive for the very reasons I gave here.  It's a "free" employee
    	benefit, abuse of which should be handled on an individual basis.

    How about putting an end to non-work-related notes conferences until
    Digital gets back into the black again?  How many tens of thousands
    of hours are wasted on these things every year? month?
    
    Brad.

    Re .-1
    
    Mr Smith,
    
    My opinion is that you're missing the point. The reason 10s of
    thousands of hour may be being wasted in Digital has very little to do
    with employee interest noting. It has much more to do with the fact
    that the morale of a lot of people is very low. This may encourage
    people to spend their time in notesfiles, or at the water cooler or off
    "sick" etc. But the presence of the notesfiles or the watercooler or
    the lure of the beach is not the reason for people wasting time. The
    reason for the low morale are things like:
    
    	1, When Bob Palmer took over this company he made a big deal about
    	   CBUs and how they were meant to change the face of the company.
    	   If that is indeed the case then someone should communicate their
    	   plans to the whole company. There is a lot of laughing at the
    	   old "one company, one stragegy, one message" vision of the early
    	   80s (ie VAX). But at the time people could use that to rally
    	   behind and know how their little piece fit into the whole
    	   picture. Today nobody knows.
    
    	2, It is very dispiriting to not be able to get essential pieces
    	   of equipment/software needed to do your job without VP's
           signatures. BUT one CONTINUES to see waste going on around them.
    
    	3, I know it is impossible for the company of this size to have
    	   one mission statement or vision beyond "Be profitable". But
    	   it would be very easy for each CBU to put together a document no
    	   longer than a couple of pages with sections such as:
    
    		VISION
    		STRATEGY
    		EXECUTION PLAN
    		NEEDS FROM THE REST OF THE COMPANY
    
    	   With that the rest of us could work out how to help P line of
    	   the P&L these CBUs are responsible for.
    
    4, We CONTINUE to see the good ole Maynard ole boy network wasting
       loads of money. Pray tell me:
    
    	- Why does Win Hindle's office need $12M per year to operate?
    	- Why does the law department operate on a budget of $58M per year?
    	- Why does personnel need $181M per year?
    
      How many employee interest notesfiles could we sponsor if we ditched
      one high level personnel person? My suggestion would be the one that
      that cancelled the DELTA program, no doubt because it was bringing
      to light too many things that were meant to be under the rug.
    
    5, The management chain continues to be way too long in MOST areas of
       the company. Witness the 500+ line memo on senior management names
       that floated round the net recently.
    
    6, If the CBUs are meant to own everything how come functions are
       springing up all over the place? Who is accountable?
    
    7, All most employees see for the past mismanagement is the people on
       the front line being TFSOed. I wish a few people in high management
       that had screwed up had been fired instead without the huge golden
       parachutes they seem to get for having done a piss poor job.
    
    8, Anybody that can read a balance sheet can see that SG&A has been WAY
       out of control for years. But NOTHING (or at least very little) has
       been done about it. Jack Smith thought the way to control SG&A was
       to ban the purchase of postits!
    
    So Mr Smith employee interest noting is not the problem it is a symptom
    on low morale which is a symptom of continued cporporate mismanagement
    and lack of direction.
    
    Dave

    re .0
    
    As far as I'm aware, the abuse that goes on in Soapbox
    is between consenting adults.   Aren't there more important
    things to worry about?
    

    I believe that many notes files are abusive and violate corporate
    P&P's.  There are too many "professional" noters that spend far too
    much time (business time when they should be working) reading and
    replying to many notes files.  Those of you that go on the defensive
    are more than likely the abusers.
    
    I'd like to see the notes files cleaned up a bit.  I'd like to see
    notes in all notes files over 12 months old deleted by the moderator. 
    It does take up company resourses; computers, disk space, etc.  All
    this costs money.
    
    Things have changed at Digital and they will continue to change. 
    Changes to the notes file would be beneficial to all of us.

    re: .7 and "change is good!!"
    
    This argument is certainly debatable. Change is not good. It is
    stressful, disruptive, and demoralizing. Change must be endured
    because it *sometimes* produces positive results. To glorify change
    for it's own sake is to advocate chaos.
    
>   P&P's.  There are too many "professional" noters that spend far too
    
    It would be interesting to see a study performed comparing the
    professional credentials and performance ratings of those people
    who write "offensive" things in notesfiles vs. those people who
    complain about things written in notesfiles. I suspect that such
    a study will never be performed, because the findings in the study
    might themselves be offensive to certain parties ...
    
>                              Those of you that go on the defensive
>   are more than likely the abusers.
    
    An argument McCarthy and his ilk used to suppress criticism of his
    tactics for many years. Interesting to see it revived here ...
    
>   I'd like to see the notes files cleaned up a bit. I'd like to see
>   notes in all notes files over 12 months old deleted by the moderator. 
    
    I confess that this statement has me very puzzled. I'd assume that
    you are least willing to exempt technical notes conferences from
    this cleansing, since it is well known that we deal with products
    and business issues that span not only months but years. And as far
    as "employee interest" notes are concerned, it seems that some of
    the conferences do indeed practice a yearly rebuilding, but more to
    accomodate the needs of the users than the constraints of the hardware.
    Isn't that what we tell our customers to do?
    
    Geoff

Re .7

>    I'd like to see the notes files cleaned up a bit.  I'd like to see
>    notes in all notes files over 12 months old deleted by the moderator. 
>    It does take up company resourses; computers, disk space, etc.  All
>    this costs money.

I am more of a passive reader of this conference, but I can't let this one go 
by.

I consider the technical notes files a wonderfull resource. They contain 
data that makes my job ENORMIOUSLY easier.
(And that includes stuff more that a year (or 2 years or 3 years) old.

Please nip this thought in the bud now - If this gets out, and people start
looking at it seriously it will be a major blow to the technical staff of this
company!

Stan.

    re: .0

    (1) First of all, the place to discuss SOAPBOX itself, is SOAPBOX.
    The topic where the policy of the conference is discussed is 6.0 there.

    (2) SOAPBOX is not a "non-work related conference", and frankly, I
    don't know of any, and I believe there are none.  There are conferences
    created under policy 6.54 to "communicate matters of opinion and common
    interests".  SOAPBOX is an example and, of course, DIGITAL is another.
    For years, these have been called "employee interest conferences".  

    (3) 10575::GREGORY_JE may not be away of the procedure for bringing to
    the attention of moderators of alleged "abusive language":  Send mail
    to the moderators.
    
    Authors are first responsible from the content of their notes, and
    secondarily the moderators of a conference have an obligation to see
    that conference content conforms to policy.

    (4) The company doesn't "sponsor" conferences.  It makes individual
    nodes through their assigned system managers available for the storage
    of the contents of a conference, the Notes server.  The company makes
    the bandwidth and connectivity available.  Users nodes provide the
    Notes client.  "Sponsor" is an ambiguous and misleading word. "Sponsor"
    always implies responsibility.

    Conference availability is provided by the company. Note content is
    responsibility of the author.  Do people consider paper manufacturers
    to be the sponsors of newspapers?  Digital's connection to the content
    of employee interest conferences is as remote.

    (5) "Offensive" notes are not prohibited in SOAPBOX.  The term is too
    broad in practice to permit the open exchange of opinion and matters of
    common interests.  The term "valuing differences" doesn't have an
    operational definition with respect to the moderation of conferences. 

    The moderators of SOAPBOX have described in concrete language in its
    policy note what content is in conflict for the "valuing differences"
    in the interpretation of the moderators.  The clarity with which the
    SOAPBOX moderators have described such content is a model that many
    other conferences have imitated.

    (6) The person who looks only briefly into SOAPBOX will see a clash of
    views in which some people appear to be offended, degraded, and
    insulted, but that is beside the point.

    The point is that each of these people is aware that if he or she
    personally feels that he or she is offended, degraded, or insulted,
    then they have recourse to the moderators to have the offensive,
    degrading, or insulting note deleted.

    (7) Only an employee's supervisor is a position to evaluate that a
    "tremendous amount of noting is being done on what may be construed as
    company time".  The only externally visible part of "Noting" is the
    writing.  How much time is spent reading the newspaper, general
    interest magazines, speaking on the telephone to friends, or to people
    in the office on matters not pertaining to work?

    The obsession to make sure that employees don't "loaf" by imposing some
    sort of surveillance of their labor is destructive to morale and this
    has been known since before John Maynard was making woolen uniforms.

    (8) Finally, the ability of Digital to communicate technical
    information as well as matters of opinion and common interests on a
    timely peer-to-peer basis was created YEARS before other products and
    other companies have claimed it as their discovery and claimed the
    market share of "groupware".

    If a fraction of the effort spent in the suppression of the Notes
    product, Notes usage, and Notes culture over the last decade was spent
    on its promotion and positioning to customers, Digital would be a
    recognized leader in groupware, rather than being out of the game.
    
    Pat Sweeney
    co-moderator of SOAPBOX
    formerly co-moderator of DIGITAL
                

    
    Excellent note Pat. Especially the last paragraph.
    
    Neil 
    

	re .7:

>    I'd like to see the notes files cleaned up a bit.  I'd like to see
>    notes in all notes files over 12 months old deleted by the moderator. 
>    It does take up company resourses; computers, disk space, etc.  All
>    this costs money.

	Good idea. None of that old stuff can tell us anything. If things
	were bad back then, that's nothing to do with us. That was a bunch
	of old bozos most of whom aren't around any more.

	Now that we're in charge, things will be different.

	/Tom

    RE: .0
    
    Get a life.
    
    I was recently extremely offended by something someone wrote in
    SOAPBOX. I complained to both the author and the moderators, to no
    discernable effect. I did the following:
    
    NOTES>delete entry soapbox.
    
    See? It's easy. There are better things to worry about.
    
    Laurie.

    I have to agree with the statement about the non-promotion of Notes. It
    is a marvellous tool that makes my job much, much easier.  Similar
    PC-based products are now beginning to appear. They will sell like hot
    cakes.  We missed a golden opportunity to make money out of Notes. The
    same can be said of Bookreader.
    
    As regards banning non-work related notesfiles, or monitoring Notes
    activity...  Forget it and go join the Thought Police.
    
    Salut,
    Edward

    >I'd like to see the notes files cleaned up a bit.  I'd like to see
    >notes in all notes files over 12 months old deleted by the moderator. 
    
    
    Don't agree with this statement at all for most Conferences. Historical
    data is knowledge retained for use by others who one day may need it
    and are researching a particular problem (car won't start, system
    crashes, looking for directions to a particular facility, etc). Of
    course, if one spends all their time in conferences such as this and
    Soapbox which are more related to "current events", I can understand
    why one may feel this way.

Please re-post this string of notes in SOAPBOX so readers can respond without
offending the spirit and purpose of the DIGITAL conference.

    RE: .7  by GRANPA::JNOSTIN 
    
    >Those of you that go on the defensive are more than likely the abusers.
    
    Are you now, or have you ever been, a notesfile sympathizer?
    

    
    	re: .0
    
    	Oh come on! We're all adults here aren't we? Furthermore
    	SOAP is very tame these days. Blatant obscenities and
    	character assasination are not permitted and the group
    	is moderated (see the note on deleted notes.).
    
    	Follow along with me here:  DELETE ENTRY SOAPBOX <cr>
    
    	/john

    Shutting down "employee interest" notesfiles would be to shut down some
    of the most productive business-related fora in this company.  I cannot
    remember a day of noting in which I did not see anything aimed at doing
    company business in one or more "employee interest" notesfiles."  Spend
    some time in ASKENET, for a starter.

    
    .10  well said Patrick!!
    
    I've clashed with others over differences in SOAPBOX and have
    personally grown from this experience as a digital employee.  
    
    Gary
    

    
    I find it rather amusing that the base noter felt he had to bring the
    discussion to a different notesfile.  Soapbox participants are a closer
    knit group than most people in the other files, and most people are a 
    welcomed addition.  The banter and reparte which goes on is part of the
    pleasure of noting in that conference.
    
    
    Mike  

    re                 <<< Note 2557.7 by GRANPA::JNOSTIN >>>
    
>    I'd like to see the notes files cleaned up a bit.  I'd like to see
>    notes in all notes files over 12 months old deleted by the moderator. 
>    It does take up company resourses; computers, disk space, etc.  All
>    this costs money.
    
    Yeah, right. The only real resource that historical notes files consume
    is disk space. I think the biggest Notes conference on the net, is
    probably in the order of 50-100 K blocks, Given the internal transfer
    price of our disks, I would guess, that the cost to the corporation for
    a large notes conference, is probably not even a 3 figure sum. So we
    wan't to spend the time of people who voluntarily administer these
    things, to "clean them up". Especially, when said people could be out
    making us revenue. Get real. Notesfiles are a corporate communication
    resource. Employee Activity related notesfiles while a perquisite have an
    associated benefit in terms of employee morale, at a far lower cost
    than many alternatives.
    
    What we need is a commitment from the corporate executive, and product
    management, to the fact that the grass roots in this organization has a
    far better understanding of the usefulness, both real and potential, of
    our products, than they do. 
    
    Listen to the masses, who say "Gee Notes are great, useful for
    everything from tracking down a good chili recipe, to writing a
    ethernet device driver", but what we would like to see as a one-plus
    is....
    
    Digital has a wonderful knack of developing well architected and
    competent base technologies, and then doing nothing with them, until
    the rest of the industry has taken our ideas, and turned them into
    money.
    
    We need to empower our innovators (before we lose them all...)
    
    q
    

re: .23  TROPPO::QUODLING

>    is disk space. I think the biggest Notes conference on the net, is
>    probably in the order of 50-100 K blocks, Given the internal transfer

I agree in part.  Notes files should be archived on a yearly basis
to keep them clean and compressed.
The largest file that I know about goes over 250K blocks, your mileage
may vary.  I still think that is a reasonable size based on the average 
size of digitals hard drives.  Heck, I can/do store a "large" conference
on my local "personal" machine (not in notes format).  

>   making us revenue. Get real. Notesfiles are a corporate communication
>    resource. Employee Activity related notesfiles while a perquisite have an
>    associated benefit in terms of employee morale, at a far lower cost
>    than many alternatives.

Corparate communication resourse?  I agree.  I'll bet only 30-40% of
Digital employees know how to utilize this resourse. "HI MY NAME IS
JACK.  I BEEN WITH DEC FOR 20 YEARS.  I JUST FOUND THIS CONFERENCE..."

Morale: Ya, I'll agree with you there too.  There is/should be a 
delicate balance between doing your job and playing "grab-<rearend>". 
   
> What we need is a commitment from the corporate executive, and product
> management, to the fact that the grass roots in this organization has a
> far better understanding of the usefulness, both real and potential, of
>  our products, than they do. 
    
This isn't a zing at "management per say", but I recently was in a 
meeting and THE MAJORITY of the people in it DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE as
to how to effectivly use "technology".  I (we) work for a computer
company.  And a good one at that.  I was appaled when I heard someone
complaining about needing 500 pounds of books (whats wrong with bookreader,
dialing in asynch, hooking up to an infoserver and reading?) or needing
a new FAX machine (why not mail your document to BOZO::FAXMACHINE^phone#).
 
>    Listen to the masses, who say "Gee Notes are great, useful for
>    everything from tracking down a good chili recipe, to writing a
>    ethernet device driver", but what we would like to see as a one-plus
>    is....
 
Digital is information bound.  If _everyone_ here knew how to use the
resourses available we'd be better for it.  Remember that the next 
time someone's  "been lookin' for the PC interoperability guide for 4 weeks"  
(VTX PCGUIDE (i think)      <---------  VTX?  What's that?) 

>    Digital has a wonderful knack of developing well architected and
>    competent base technologies, and then doing nothing with them, until
>    the rest of the industry has taken our ideas, and turned them into
>    money.

True:  In a prior life, my company wet their pants when Lotus Notes
came out.  As such, they dumped over 40 million in digital gear, and
me the system mangler as well, out the $@#%#$^$ door for "a better 
solution" (not just because of software (lotus notes) either).    

>    We need to empower our innovators (before we lose them all...)

True:  I hope/think we are.  At least I feel empowered (at the moment). 
   
Mike

PS. .0 it's 10:30pm.  I'm not noting from my bed either :').

    
    It's really a shame that Notes is not made better use of. I haven't
    seen anything near as good for general purpose storage of ideas. Either
    used stand alone for maintaining memos, or used for group project
    topics, or maintaining chapters in a book, or for any purpose
    associated with organizing ideas, the Notes format is hard to beat for
    flexibility.
    
    /jack

    I think we should not only ban employee interest notesfiles,
    we should only let people read work-related notesfiles if
    it's related to their own job.  So, no VMS programmers reading
    notesfiles about Windows NT for a start (we prolly wouldn't
    understand it anyway).
    
    Then, when we've got that all under control, we should start a
    system whereby you need permission from your boss to use
    a photocopier.  Who knows how much non-work stuff is being
    copied?  Probably on DEC's time, too.
    

    Actually, .26 doesn't go far enough.
    
    The problem is with both DECnet and TCP/IP.  Both allow individual
    users, with no more authority than NETMBX, to create connections of any
    kind to any node anywhere on the net, at any time for any purpose! 
    It's anarchy!  It's totally out of control!
    
    We need to move to a MANAGED network architecture.  One that has good,
    strong network management tools.  One that leaves making and breaking
    connections up to the network managers.  One that attaches a desktop
    device to a given application and leaves it there until the network
    manager decides to remove it.  One that only lets the user send as much
    over the network as they're polled for, not what they choose to send.
    
    Let's drop all this network horsepuckey and move to SNA!

    >a new FAX machine (why not mail your document to
    BOZO::FAXMACHINE^phone#)
    ***What's this? If it's a service available to the general employee
    population, I'd like more information on using it.

    Perhaps .0 only works 40 hour weeks. I would love to only
    work 40 hours a week. I work 7 days a week just to keep
    up with what is going on in my areas of expertise. If I want
    to spend 10 minutes writing a note in SOAPBOX that is my business.
    Sure people are tough in the box. In fact that is one of the reasons
    to post a note there. Not everyone will agree with you and they are
    NOT afraid to tell you. You may even LEARN something by getting
    to see a different opinion.

I've seen many suggestions in this topic for .0 to do Notes> DELETE ENTRY
SOAPBOX if offended by the material in SOAPBOX.  Yet, some time back, there 
was once a VAXnotes conference called SEXCETERA that was banned due to its
content.

While my position is similar to that of the previous suggestions (if you 
don't like it, don't read it), I do not like the idea that this is satisfactory
for only a select few conferences.

-Andy

    
    -Andy, please read .10
    
    
    

    Andy, what's the logic of .31?  Someone was offended by X and X was
    "banned" and someone was offended by Y therefore Y should be "banned".

    Let's be careful with words here. "Offended", "offense", etc. are not
    operational words with respect to moderating conferences, it's
    inevitable that people will be angered in reading the opinion of
    others.  If you want to make distinctions between "anger" and
    "offense", then go ahead and attempt to split hairs here.

    "Banned" is a meaningless word as far as the applicable Digital
    policies are concerned.

    But this gives me the opportunity to clarify somethings that's been
    fuzzy in the minds of many people:  The mere existence of a conference
    doesn't have anything to do with policy, its contents do.

    A conference that discusses human sexuality in a manner consistent with
    Digital policies and procedures would not be "banned".

    Problems with conferences that folklore describe as "banned" derived
    from the immaturity of people writing into the conference, that is to
    say, its content, and the inability of the moderators to take the steps
    required to make the content of the conference consistent with
    Digital's policies and procedures.  If you want to describe the
    consequence of participant immaturity and moderator exhaustion as
    "banned" then go ahead.
    
    Absolutists in this regard have turned to the USENET alt.newsgroups,
    Compuserve, etc. which are not under the control of Digital's policies
    and procedures.
                   

    I normally don't read this conference, but I feel the author of .0 said
    something that really needed saying.  
    
    For one thing, people do spend a lot of company time on general
    interest notes files.  Most of us work the day shift, so the "well, we
    don't work the same hours" excuse doesn't wash in my opinion.
    
    I also feel there is an excessive amount of offensive behavior in a
    number of general interest conferences.  There was one conference where
    I was called everything from freeloader to childish to ignorant only
    because I stated my opinion.  In addition, my parents and upbringing
    were also insulted.  Then when I rebutted, my note was set hidden.
    
    The fact is, people are more likely to get "heavy handed" on the
    keyboard and say things that they would normally never say on a person
    to person basis.  Comments like "get a life", might give the noter a 
    rush, but it taints the entire conference.  If we are all adults, then
    we should act as such.  Throwing around rude comments accomplishes 
    nothing; a little courtesy and diplomacy goes a long way.
    
    There are conferences that are too rough for my taste. So they are not
    in my notebook.  But that doesn't hide the fact that rude and offensive
    behavior are frequently occuring, and this is a problem which shouldn't 
    be happening. Looking the other way doesn't solve the problem, but it
    is out of my control to do anything about it.
    
    I browsed this conference only to see if there is any news on company
    restructuring and changes.  These days, I only read one general interest 
    notes file and many work related ones.  The work related conferences have 
    been a great help to my job.  I've found the general interest conferences 
    entertaining, and informative to non-work related subjects, but
    otherwise of little use to my productivity here at Digital.
    
    I wouldn't be surprised to see, and would probably agree, with the
    elimination of the general interest conferences.  It may effect morale
    somewhat, but the boost in productivity would more then make up for it.
    
    To those who's delicate person's I've offended, go ahead and flame
    away.  But I generally ignore "Keyboard Rambos"!
    
    Just my 2 cents.
    
    Regards,
    Denis 

    
    THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES!!!!!!

>   It may effect morale
>    somewhat, but the boost in productivity would more then make up for it.
 
	I hope you don't really think that reducing peoples morale would
	increase producivity.

	Heather

    The time is 11:27 Am, before lunch and not on a specific break period.
    I am in this notes conference where technical software engineering is
    not being discussed.
    
    There.  That's off my chest now 8-).  
    
    If someone appears to be all over every notes conference at all times
    of the day the must not be producing.  Good suposition?  If so, thier
    manager and/or supervisor will notice this lack of production and ask
    why?  With no valid explanation notes may just come up.
    
    I expect myself and others to be gauged by the work we produce, not the
    precise hours we appear in a employee interest file or not.  
    
    George
    

    Also, keep in mind the MANY different time zones our great company
    encompasses.... What is "normal work day" for some is personal time to
    others. Also, there are plenty of employees on "non-traditional" shifts
    such as 2nd, 3rd, 4x10, 3x12... etc..... So putting a "you can only use
    notes during these hours" timeframe in place would be impossible.
    
    "non-work-related" notes conferences are more helpful to the company
    then the company realizes... I do not want to get into that rat-hole
    again, but there are benefits to having them, as there are benefits to
    the work-related ones.
    
    Just my OPINION!
    
    Bob G.
    

I disagree that old notes should be removed. Why not just
just use the Usenet then? A big advantage I find with VAXnotes
is that it archives old discussions. Certain notesfiles, like
PWDOS4, should be renewed every so often (keeping the back issues
on-line), but others like PostScript, should stay in one place. 
After all, PostScript doesn't change that often, does it? So old 
discussions on many topics still have relevance.

	erik

Flame on:

	I expect to be rated/payed/employed for the work I do, how well I do
it and how fast I do it.  Not for what time of the day I do it; not for
whatever else I do while I'm getting work done; and not for whatever
else I do while I'm not at work.

	The network access provided by Digital is the one bennifit I have
left that Digital hasn't 'cheapened' or cancled in the last several years.

	Go ahead and cancel all 'private' use of the network.  Cancel
the internet access.  Forbid the use of email for personal use.  That
would definatly convince me that this was no longer an organization
that I was interested in working for.

Flame off:

	Computers are not what customers want to buy.  Customers want 
solutions to their problems.  But how does a computer company get ideas
about what problems to solve (i.e. what solutions will sell)?  By letting
a technical community use computers as part of the day to day activities;
and then letting that community improve the tools to make those activities
more productive. 

	By limiting what we let employees use computers for, we limit the
solutions employees might create and we fall farther and farther behind
the competition.

  Here's another thought. If employee interest notes files are a waste of time
and network resources, then how about the golf league and other DEC recreation
activities? Most of them use the network for organization and administration
and I've often heard of guys cutting out an hour early for a softball game. 

  While we are at it, how often have you seen the network used to announce the
time and place of going away lunches. Think about it, not only does that take
resources, it results in large numbers of people leaving work at once, and what
do you bet they don't get back within an hour? 

  Then there is non-electronic equipment. Do people really need desks as large
as the ones they've got? Plenty of people "waste" space with pictures of
family, friends, and pets. Why not cut that out and issue everyone a desk with
a foot less surface space. Heck, 85,000 employees, that's 85,000 square feet
of family pictures. How does that add to the bottom line?

  And do we really need all those choices in the cafeteria? Why not just hand
everyone a turkey club, a bag of chips, and a Coke and send them back to their
desks? And what's all this walking around outside in the middle of the day? 

  It's time we all get penny wise and pound foolish. Let's save all those lost
seconds and grind people down to a pulp. So what if our best performers get
burned out and moral goes to pot, it only takes a year or so to train another
top rate performer. And what's a couple years compared to a couple hours saved
by keeping people out of notes files?

  George

    The thrust of .43, if indeed it can be called a thrust, is that since
    there is all sorts of "non-business" use of the network, you cannot ban
    one "non-business" use without banning them all.  That, simply stated, 
    is a non-sequitur.

    You can describe the process used to make those value assessments in a
    single word: judgement.  Digital is not a government, nor is it bound
    by physical law (like gravity) to be rigidly consistent.  Digital may
    choose to tolerate any use of its network it wishes, and ban others,
    consistent with the law of the land and its interpretation of our 
    business management philosophy.  Digital management can and should use
    sound (or otherwise) judgement to decide how its resources are used.
    
    Although I'll state up front that my libertarian instincts favor a
    hands-off policy towards things like SOAPBOX, many of the replies that
    followed the base note are self-delusional in nature and border on
    rationalization.  Forgetting for the moment the sensitivity issues
    raised, a cursory examination of SOAPBOX reveals plenty of noting from US
    nodes during "normal business hours".  Does it all constitute
    abuse?  Probably not.  Are there abuses?  Of course, and the abusers (if
    SOAPBOX is anything like it was 5 years ago when last I ventured there)
    are easily discovered. It's plain foolish to deny they exist or to resort 
    to obfuscation.
    
    If anything ever happens to jeapordize employee interest noting, it will 
    happen as a result of some damn fool incident in a notes conference like 
    SOAPBOX.  Digital management will not likely care about the fine
    points, subtleties and nuance.  When the heat gets turned on, everyone
    forgets about results and starts micromanaging process.  Do you really 
    want the same people who brought the employee empowering ban on
    shrink-wrapped software purchases turning their attention to things
    like SOAPBOX?  They'll take an axe to policy 6.54 and we'll all be whining 
    about it till our next job.
    
    It's fine to respond in the negative to blanket allegations like those
    in the base note.  But just because no one likes the suggested cure doesn't 
    mean the allegations are entirely baseless.
    
    Al
    

    Re .45:
    
    There is a retrieval facility (VTX/TR) which is currently available
    for many of the Personal Computer notes conferences.  One can do a
    search for notes with "intel and microsoft in paragraph", for example,
    and (VERY!) quickly find (and read) the appropriate replies.
    
    Unfortunately, I lost the mail announcing this service.  Perhaps
    someone else can supply the particulars.

	Node VIA, object 143 I think..

	You need the latest version of VTX. Probably best to look in
	the VTX notesfile.

							mike

  Re .45 (Tom)

> ... to collect all the notes by someone like George Van Treeck,
> Ray Thackeray, David Carnell, Paul Kinzelman, ... DTL ...
> You will find some brilliant stuff, ...

  You should also reflect on one other important point from these notes :

  In addition to the fact that all the above are highly intelligent,
  informative & perceptive, there is another thing that said contributors
  have in common ...

  One blatantly obvious conclusion from this exercise would be that if you are
  a rational, hard-working & loyal employee who is not only capable of seeing
  stupidity & waste but resolving it to the benefit of the company, you will
  be appreciated by your fellow workers but hated by your "superiors".

  Frank

              <<< NOTEMN::USER1:[NOTES$LIBRARY]MSWINDOWS.NOTE;1 >>>
                             -< Microsoft Windows >-
================================================================================
Note 2682.0         Searching Notes conferences using VTX/TR           4 replies
CASEE::BALLADELLI "Micky Balladelli"                 77 lines   9-MAR-1993 08:04
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Have you ever wanted to search a Notes Conference or several of them
	a the same time? Maybe even using boolean or proximity terms to refine 
	your query.

	Only a Text Retrieval system makes it possible to search thousands of
	documents in just a few seconds.

	Today there are multiple conferences that may have the answer to
	your question related to the PC world. I can already count 7 conferences
	of interest, these are

		IBMPC-93
		IBMPC-92
		IBMPC

		MSWINDOWS
		WINDOWS_EXAMPLES

		WINDOWS-NT
		NT-DEVELOPERS

	there probably even more that I'm not aware of.

	The number of notes in all of these conferences combined 
	is greater than 100000 and this number is increasing every day.

	VTX has now integrated the CBR Services and provides new clients for
	the most commonly used platforms, Windows, DOS, Motif and CC.

	We have created a new VTX service that allows search in one or 
	several or all these conferences and will return results in a very 
	acceptable time frame.  For this we have grouped the conferences into 
	three CBR Indexes, PC, WINDOWS and NT. The indexes can be searched 
	in parallel for maximum performance.

	The new unseen entries of these conferences are incrementally indexed
	and made available in the VTX database once a day.

	In order to use this service you need VTX/TR clients, the classic 
	VTX clients will not work.

	Send me mail or check the conference CASEE::VTX_TECHNICAL on how to
	copy a kit.

	For those of you who already have VTX/TR clients, the server is VIA
	and the object number is 134.

	Some examples on how to connect:

		Using the MS-Windows client

			VTXWIN -s VIA -o 134
		Using DOS
			VTX -s VIA -o 134

		Using MOTIF on VMS
			VTX/INTER=DECW/SERVER=VIA/OBJ=134
		Using MOTIF on ULTRIX
			vtx_motif -s via -o 134

	Typical queries

		486 AND PERFORMANCE

		VISUAL C++ AND AVAILABILITY IN SENTENCE

		WINDOWS NT AND (JENSEN OR ALPHA) 

		WINDOWS AND TIGER IN TITLE
		
	In hope that you can retrieve the best out of your queries,

Micky Balladelli
VTX Engineering

Ps. If you need other conferences to be indexed, send me mail.

Work has started on providing VTX Text Retrieval service for this conference. 
If and when it's made available, it would provide an excellent way to search old
notes for subjects of interest.

Paul

Wait a minute - all the stupid things I've ever said in NOTES are
still spinning on disks somewhere!

Hmm..

I agree with the base noter.  Let's delete all the old stuff.

    
    	I have solved several departmental/plant problems
    	with creative uses of NOTES.  Most of my experience and
    	familiarity with NOTES came from accessing employee-interest
    	notesfiles.  Using notes in this way gave me the skills
    	to create solutions to some very real business needs.
    	/john

       On the topic of Notesfiles data and information retrieval:
       I have two RA92's dedicated to holding about 190 work related
       Notesfiles, updated daily. Between our development group, other
       groups and operations, there are about 75 people accessing this
       data via an application known as STARS (see Notesfile NOETIC::STARS 
       for information).

       Besides training people on the use of STARS - a joy of 30 to
       60 min - I also get to train folks, with no previous exposure,
       to Notesfiles. The best way I've found to get people to practice
       using notes is to introduce them to the Notesfiles dedicated to
       their particular interest. They get so amazed at the wealth of
       data, they are soon using the commands quite effectively.

       Moving them to using STARS with multiple, concurrent Notesfile 
       search's to locate information becomes a snap, once they understand 
       the organization and structure of notes.

       It's quite analogous to using games on a PC with a novice to break
       the ice with the computer interface. Taipei, Minesweeper, Nibbles, etc.
       are a great way to learn how to use a mouse, start and stop a windows
       app, mitigate the initial computer phobia, etc.

       Yes, some people exercise poor judgment and plateau at an 
       inappropriate point. They need to be encouraged to extend their 
       efforts. Misuse of a tool is best addressed by behavior modification
       of the misuser, not abolishment of the tool.

       Just my $ .02 -

       John B.

    re:.0
    
    Old lady calls the police.  "That man, across the alley, he walks
    around with nothing on!  ... go look for yourself!"  Policeman walks
    over to the window ... "Lady, he has no shirt on, but that's all I can
    see ..."  "Oh, well, here, stand up on the dresser and look again."
    
    Point is :
    If you look hard enough, you can find something that offends you.
    
    In fact, I found 4 or 5 things in .0 that could offend the heck out of
    me, should I be in the mood to be a professional victim.