Mentor/User Responsibility : Was > Re: OT: reply to posts with "no mail" option set

[Edward Croft]

On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 17:40, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> At 11:09 11/17/2003, you wrote:

>          2. In a technically-minded community such as this, it is the 
> user's (read: the poster's) responsibility to honor his/her moral code, 
> prevailing social mores, company policy, national constitution, and 
> Planetary Federation Starship regulations if and how he/she damned well 
> sees fit. If my suggestion appealed to the OP, it was his (her?) 
> responsibility to go check whether that was permitted/recommended/whatever. 
> If the OP then chooses to blow up the office out of frustration with the 
> company's Notes server, that is also his/her own damned problem.

Sorry, I just have to respond to this separately. I am of the opinion
that those who serve as mentor's to others, also have the responsibility
to point out the caveats to the ones they are answering questions for.
As I stated in my prior message, I have experienced what happens when a
young hotshot who thinks they are wise to the ways of the world goes off
half-cocked. In that case, it caused a whole section of the customers
network to go down for almost a day. The customer was pissed! So while I
may agree that it is the OP responsibility to ensure that he has the
permission to go forward, I also stand by my comments that as mentor's
we need to offer the caveats. Especially in these days of heightened
security. Indeed, some companies may overreact, we almost had that
happen here when a young worker attempted to install new software on a
production machine and the install script was buggy. Fortunately, I was
able to fix the issue before anyone got in the next morning. Had the
customer noticed, he would have been gone. Period. No questions asked. I
don't know what environment you work in, but I have worked in most.
Including being locked in a safe to program for the Navy. 
I am not trying to put you down or attack you and I hope you don't take
this as such. It is meant only to bring another perspective to the
table. If my developers want another box, they ask me, I give them an
address and a section of the network to play on. But I am aware of that
box. I know it exists. I protect the rest of the network from it. That
is my job. Let me give one more example. We had one of the founders,
needless to say he wouldn't be let go, put in a private webserver on our
network. I had complaints of a slow network and had to try to find out
what was clobbering our net. I went through all of our systems and found
nothing, but there was one address that was registering high traffic and
it turned out to be that box. He hadn't had the proper patches and
updates and the box got compromised. It almost took down my network. So,
yes, I feel as a system administrator that is imperative that I know of
every machine on my net. It isn't the KGB or Gestapo, it is CYA
(Covering Your A..) That is the only point I am trying to make.