Meeting notes, 2/11

From: Tom Holub (tom@LS.Berkeley.EDU)
Date: Wed Feb 13 2002 - 17:56:44 PST

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    [Note: I have now made all the changes we discussed on Monday, though
    they're still referred to in the future tense in this document]

    "It depends on what the definition of 'most' is".

    We began with a discussion of "many" vs. "most"; Lucia concurred with
    JC's and Jerry's e-mail comments that it should be "many" universities
    provide this service, rather than "most." I countered that 80% sounds
    a lot like "most" to me. Lucia said "most" sounds too much like it's
    a mandate. I countered that that is exactly the point--that we are behind
    other universities. Including Stanford! And we should fix it. The
    audience for this report is, first, the ITAC, which will likely approve
    whatever we put in front of it, and, second and more importantly, Jack
    McCredie and Jim Hiatt, the guys who have to decide to fund and staff
    it. Being behind Stanford is a strong motivator to Jim (Ilona's comment,
    I think...I don't have the owner written down).

    More generally, several people including Lucia, Jerry and JC felt the
    introduction was too negative and opinionated. (What else would you expect
    from me? Maybe I should have had Sinatra write it instead. Actually,
    never mind.) I am going to re-work the intro to be more positive. But
    80% is still "most."

    "We recommend and request"--people felt we can't "request." I wanted
    something stronger than "recommend". I'll try "strongly recommend" or
    "urge" (Jerry).

    "philosophically" only has two i's. Actually there are a few spelling
    errors in the report; I will run it through ispell.

    At some point we need to decide who is a signatory and who is a contributor,
    or whether we list everyone as contributors, or what. Right now only
    the members of the committee, minus Pei Chen, are listed on the "About" page.

    (Jerry) The survey should be an appendix if there's a printed report. (OK.)
    (JC) We should remove negative comments, like "Ugh" next to Alaska-Anchorage's
    "fxbfk" e-mail addresses. Reluctantly, I will. And pointing out that
    Louisiana-Lafayette's web page is the worst in the nation would be a
    public service!

    Namespace: Zane asked some of his faculty about it, and they were
    outraged that they didn't have priority over students, especially if
    student addresses hang around a long time after the student leaves.
    (Tom) Do they want john@berkeley.edu, or john.doe@berkeley.edu? There
    won't be a whole lot of conflicts if they're not using high-demand
    addresses.

    Jerry doesn't like "SUC" as an acronym. I'd already discarded
    "USC" and "CUS". It's cumbersome to put "socrates/uclink/calnet" in the
    report every time we want to refer to the namespace. It was suggested
    that we just use "(herinafter 'Namespace')" at the first reference, and use
    Namespace to refer to it later, which I will do. (Though it
    looks odd.)

    (Jerry) Length of names should be "the maximum allowed by the namespace".
    We're not sure what that is; Jerry says 30 or 40, Lucia thinks 255. JC
    notes that for Active Directory use, they're recommending 20 characters.
    (Tom) That's not enough, see. I know a guy with a 17-character last name.
    I will change the wording to indicate that we the maximum allowed by
    the namespace, and that 20 isn't enough.

    Regarding the Online Alumni Community: Jerry wanted to know what we're
    recommending. The OAC will also have a mail forwarding service, and
    they might want to take our names and put an identifier (graduation
    year?) after them. I'll specifically note that they can't just use
    them directly, because we recycle them.

    Several people thought we shouldn't use Helen Lee as an example of an Asian
    name conflict, since we know one Helen Lee. JC suggested John Doe. That
    wouldn't get the point across, which is that the name conflicts in a
    real-name scheme are disproportionately Asian (Tom). (Lucia) How about
    Bruce Lee? I will look into Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and other Asian but
    less-individual names.

    Process: Jerry wants to know why more than one field is needed in LDAP.
    (Tom) We need one which holds the Berkeley.EDU name, and a toggle field
    which selects the published address (whether it's the B.E name or the
    user's maildrop address). I will change the wording to make it clear
    that we're talking about a toggle field.

    (Jerry) Separate bullet points for "data should be stored in LDAP", and
    "the CalNet Directory Update page should be the primary interface." (OK.)

    Technical: Should we link to Paul Vixie's spam pages by way of description?
    I am not a huge Vixie fan but I think we need an informational link--is
    there another one out there? We decided to leave it.

    We will change the wording on the "Spam" entry to "examine strategies for"
    instead of "provide resources to users".

    Expenses: We should remove the specific hour and dollar estimates. (Tom) I
    thought I was asked to put them in, but OK, they were just guesses anyway.

    (Jerry) System management should be split into software/hardware maintenance,
    and postmaster. (OK.)

    Finito!

    -- 
    Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
    College of Letters & Science
    249 Campbell Hall
    



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