SCN: logo ideas

[patrick fisher]

Rod,

Thank you for the information. We have four 4 web editors and we are doing what we
can with the time that we have. If you would like to pitch in, or find more
volunteers to recruit, please be my guest.

Operations is getting things together. It takes time. And hopefully, we can take
advantage of the current recession and unemployed who have time on their hands to
help out.

I don't see things as having not improved. Things are as they have been,
operations-wise. JJ is doing what he can to get things fixed and hopefully, we can
get others to pitch in and help out on his end of things.

There are many irons in the fire right now. Services will be added for all to use,
like stock CGIs.

What are the service reductions?

Lament as you will, but please give some specific examples of things that have
happened to drive hosting away, what the problems are, and what can be done to
improve it. Then I will pass that information along.

Please, if you haven't done so already, take a look at my webmaster's notes, which
you can reach via the home page. Just don't use Navigator 4 as it is buggy enough to
not render my notes. That will be fixed this weekend, though.

Patrick





--- Rod Clark <bb615 at scn.org> wrote:
> > > - we have not become expert at deploying volunteers to maximum advantage.
> > 
> > I disagree here, from my vantage point. We've brought on some very capable topic
> > editors and they are all gung-ho for SCN. They do a remarkable job.
> 
> Patrick, 
> 
>    The content of the 3,000 or more items in the Community menus
> is about six months out of date in general. It's been that long
> since any serious, comprehensive editorial research has been
> done to dig out what is going on on the Web in the city and in
> western Washington. You and your people have basically dabbled
> at a few items per week, it seems to me. Each editor should be
> researching dozens of likely items a day, to keep the SCN
> directory from becoming less and less relevant to what is
> happening this year in the region. (This doesn't mean that most
> of the sites researched should be added to the directory.)
> 
>    Another six months of the current level of editorial neglect
> will probably make the site out-of-date enough that people will
> start not to view it as a good current directory.
> 
> 
> > > - we do not, in my opinion, constitute one of the easiest ways to get local,
> > > public-minded content onto the Web.
> > 
> > I don't believe it is any harder than any other site. It's not too bad.
> > [...]
> 
>    Nonprofits have been voting with their feet on this. SCN has
> been losing hosted nonprofits at a high rate this year. The
> board's goal for 2001 was an increase of 75 hosted sites.
> Instead we have had a net loss of about 50. That's a difference,
> between expectations and reality, of about 125 nonprofit orgs.
> SCN has lowered its service levels repeatedly this year, and has
> done almost nothing really significant to stay current in Web
> hosting.
> 
>    Adding 75 nonprofit sites looked entirely reasonable and
> practical at the beginning of 2001, based on results from 2000.
> But instead, Information Provider coordination was discontinued,
> we have had generally hostile and bad user service, and have
> suffered many service cuts with no prior notice given to the
> IPs.
> 
>    All or almost all of the service reductions have been chalked
> up to security. You know, it's really easy to become more secure
> by cutting services. Any wingnut with a Unix manual can do that.
> What's necessary for SCN, or any ISP, to do is to maintain that
> same level of security while offering the many and varied good
> and useful new and old services that people want and need. Every
> successful ISP has to do that well enough. Consistently taking
> the easy way out on this issue has led SCN down the primrose
> path.
> 
>    Web hosting was the only remaining service that was still on
> the upswing in 2000. Now, looking at the decline of this one
> last service that was doing pretty well until Operations took it
> over and shut out the non-technical people that had made it work
> in a reasonable way, I think SCN might have about another six
> months left under its current administration before some other
> organization in the Seattle area supplants it entirely for
> nonprofit Web hosting.
> 
> Rod Clark
> 
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http://www.scn.org
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