Date: Mon, 27 Mar 89 17:35:43 EST
Message-Id: <8903272235.AA09824@OLIVER.MIT.EDU>
From: "Robert S. French" <rfrench@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Sender: rfrench@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
To: murman@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: rfrench@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Accounts mess


Earl,

   I'm sure you know that the current handling of account add/change
requests at Athena is in a pretty sad shape.  I have a fairly
widespread exposure to Athena users both in personal and SIPB
contexts.  A number of times over the past week it has been brought to
my attention that a person or group has been sending mail to
"accounts" asking for either a quota increase or a new filesystem for
weeks (sometimes 4 or more letters), and in most cases haven't even
received a response yet.  Examples of requests include:

* A student who needs to finish his thesis in the next two months but
can't get over 600K.  Wanted: another 600K for 2 months.

* 6.035 and 6.170 students who are being given the option of doing
their coursework entirely on Athena, but do not have enough disk space
to store their projects.

I do not want to accuse any particular person of being the cause of
these problems; rather, I feel it is the current organization of the
accounts administration process.  My complaint is at two levels:

1) I don't feel it is good PR to not even respond to many accounts
requests until weeks after they have been submitted, whether or not
they are going to be accepted.  People should have immediate feedback.

2) With the fairly large amount of disk space that is now available
(such as on RYLOS), it would be possible to humor those people who
only need additional space for a short amount of time (for example,
until the end of the term).  For these people, the long wait for quota
increases is academically damaging.

		Thanks for your attention,

			Rob