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Subject:Re: HELP!! Business case From:Mary Moore <mmoore -at- BANYAN -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 5 Oct 1994 18:09:30 GMT
I am *not* a UNIX guru, nor do I have any Internet administration
experience, but a reliable source told me that there are ways to block
entire hierarchies of newsgroups. For example, you can block any
newsgroup that starts with alt or with alt.sex (or rec. anything).
Perhaps you could suggest that instead of taking *all* access away that
they restrict access to a smaller set of topics? It's true that this
will not reduce the cost of the connection, but it might reduce reading
non-work newsgroups on company time. Or at least it could reduce the
*perception* that people are reading non-work newsgroups on company
time...
Regarding anecdotes of how it can help business-wide, do you use a
particular desktop publishing package? (FrameMaker or Word, for
example) Were there any occasions where you got helpful hints from a
newsgroup? Or, by reading postings regarding a particular package,
were you able to tell in advance that it wouldn't fit your department's
needs? Or, did it give you knowledge of a new field that you can't
find in textbooks yet? Or, if you regularly work on a wide variety of
projects (for example, modem documentation this week, OS/2 workstations
the next), switching newsgroups can be much cheaper and quicker than
switching magazine subscriptions. For example, I've been taking quick
looks at the comp.dcom.modems group to get familiar with terms,
problems, and so on for a book I'm working on now. It would have been
worthless to get a magazine subscription for just 6 months, even if I
knew off the top of my head which magazine dealt only with modems.
Hope some of this helps. I know it's not a set of hard facts, but it's
what I'd think of if I had to justify access to newsgroups.
====================================================================
Mary M. Moore
Sr. Technical Writer
All opinions I express here are strictly my own and do not reflect
the opinions or policies of my employer.
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