RFC 545

OF WHAT QUALITY BE THE UCSB RESOURCE EVALUATORS? ✨

A Response to "Feast of Famine" 🎀

Title block, bestie 📋

• RFC: 545 💖
• Author: J. Pickens, UCSB Computer Systems Laboratory 🧚
• NIC: 17791
• Date: 23 July 1973 🌸
• References: RFC 531,369. 519
• The original doesn't list a category or status, and it doesn't say what it obsoletes or updates. 🙈

Okay so in RFC 531, M.A. Padlipsky is calling out the UCSB resource evaluators for not checking the Resource Notebook for documentation. 😭 He also basically treats the evaluators' goals as the same as the software repository advocates' goals. 💀 There's a misunderstanding here, and hopefully this note clears it up. 🫶

Let's talk about his example of UCSB botching login attempts. ✨ Two things. First, more people than the resource evaluators were accessing the ARPANET. 🌈 The evaluators, at least, knew the login procedure from the Resource Notebook. (Also, we do have a Multics Programmers Manual, periodt. 💅) Second, the OLS TELNET echoes no lower case, which can cause confusion. 🙈 Even UCSB's technical liaison managed to botch his login, and he had literally just consulted the Resource Notebook. 💀

The first law of resource evaluation, at least for UCSB evaluators, is "read the Resource Notebook!" 📖 (RFC 369, fun fact, was based on a Resource Notebook that was barren compared to today's notebook. 🦋) Questions the Notebook doesn't answer get checked in online documentation first at the NIC, and second at the site being evaluated. ✨ If there are still questions after all that, we contact a consultant. 🎀 That can be online or by phone, and it might mean buying the right user manuals. (Some of the resources we evaluated had no manuals at all. 😭) Our approach is to check the most publicly available documentation first. 🌸 Only when the advertised paths fail do we go to personal contact with a (busy) technical liaison. 🫠 If technical liaisons want to be consultants for newbies and think that's their job, we'll happily change how we do things. 🤝

Padlipsky's analogy works here: there's definitely a meal of documentation already available on the Network. 🍓 But a meal is no good without silverware. 🍴 That's what the site specific and function specific MINIMANS are for (see RFC 369 and RFC 519). ✨ Our first-pass MINIMANS are available on request for anyone curious about what we're trying to do. 💜

RFC 545 OF WHAT QUALITY BE THE UCSB 23 July 1973

Resource evaluators care about way more than documentation, bestie. 👑 If you'd read prior RFCs more closely, you'd see that we investigate dynamic phenomena like help facilities, online consultation, response time, reliability, and human engineering. 🔥 We make suggestions for improvement. 💅 Honestly, for UCSB users we see ourselves as plain clothes inspectors. 🕵️‍♀️ We don't claim absolute efficiency, but we do claim good intent and good results. 🌟 We've spurred improvements at local sites as well as foreign network sites. 🌍 We apologize to anyone we may have offended in the past with poor reviews. 🥺 We're still learning how to say things in a constructive rather than destructive way. 🫶💖

[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
[ into the online RFC archives by Javier Echeverria 2/98 ]