🚀 go-pugleaf

Vartan thank you for your posting.

Even though I had stopped following the hellas list, and because I had
found many articles as distateful, I always thought that the list serves
a very important role: to bring bright new people (eventhough quarrelsome)
into multiply useful interactions.

The job which the administrator in Greece had was certainly very demanding:
having to deal with a load of spoilt little smart brats. Still, this was
his job and had to find his way to do his #1 goal, which is: to thrive to
serve his clients.

It is quite possible that nobody taught this fellow any modern technics
on how to deal with many people like you; he is got to know though that
the management art has certainly evolved tremendously since the time which
everything was resolved by Sultan's firmans.

Everything can be fixed; and the list to continue its vital role, and the
young guy to keep the important for him job, and by being more trained into
the modern management (adapted to the modern greek case) to avoid problems
in the future and actually to offer more services.


Gregory Dandulakis

vsn@ic.ac.uk (Vartan Narinian) writes:

[deleted]

>On May 22, 1993 I posted a reply to Georgiou's ridiculous message
>saying that it was unacceptable.  I also made a few more points, asking
>what was happening to the money we were paying as subscribers and so on.

Excuse me but why did you find his response ridiculous?

>Next morning, I found that Georgiou had deleted all postings relating
>to the discussion and had posted one that said that the forum was
>henceforth being moderated by himself. In effect, he forcefully stopped
>the discussion.

Isn't it his right?

>I wrote to Georgiou asking him to put the articles back but he ignored
>me.  I wrote to him twice more and waited for a reply till June 16,
>1993.  I received none.

>Then, on June 16, I brought the discussion to the Hellas list.

Your right.

>This started a heated discussion among the members of the list. Some
>more people who happened to be subscribers to the dialup service
>complained, saying that the responses from Georgiou ranged from no
>response at all to plain unsatisfactory to threats that he will remove
>people's accounts.  A few suggested that we write a letter Georgiou's
>boss, Dr. A. Arvillias.

>Suddenly, on the 21st of June, with no warning at all, Georgiou
>disabled the accounts of every single person who had an account on
>leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr and had complained publicly on the Hellas list,
>possibly hoping that the discussion would stop. My account was one of
>the first to go.

>Not only did the discussion not stop, but it became more heated as the
>people whose accounts were disabled started shouting that this person
>is acting like a dictator.

So? Unless there is an internal policy in Democritos that specifies
that dictatorhip is not the right way to system administration, it
looks just fine.

>Georgiou saw that the discussion was not stopping (it was his stupid
>action of disabling the accounts that heated up the discussion further)
>so the next day, June 22, he got his boss to write a letter to my
>postmaster demanding that they find me and "remove" my account, with
>the excuse that I was using obscene language in a public discussion
>list.  (I later found out that I was not the only one whose postmasters
>had been mailed). The postmaster did not terminate my account but
>brought the matter to the attention of my supervisor. In the meantime I
>didn't know anything and continued posting.

Stupid but again his right.

>On July 6, seeing that the discussion was still going on, that my
>account had not been removed and that people were considering writing
>not only to Georgiou's boss but also to the General Secretariat of
>Research and Technology to complain about his actions, Georgiou, trying
>to silence the complaints, wrote a message to the postmasters
>of the American University, the University of Georgia and Brown
>University (the universities hosting the Hellas list), threatening them
>with lawsuits and asking them to close down the list immediately.

>The postmasters responded by saying that while they didn't think that
>Georgiou had any grounds on which to win a lawsuit, they had had
>problems with the list before and closed down the list for a week while
>the matter was being investigated.

>The verdict is that we're now required to either find other sites to
>host the list or get someone from Brown to become a listowner so that
>he/she can give quick answers to the postmasters should there arise a
>problem.  The postmasters said they'd do whatever is required to ensure
>a smooth transition if we finally have to move, something which we
>appreciate.

>However it's sad and frightening how one person from one country can
>close down a public discussion list serving more than 300 people (plus
>an estimated 3500 reading via bit.listserv.hellas - this figure is from
>the Usenet readership reports published monthly in news.lists) from
>many countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Greece, France and so on)
>just because he doesn't like what's being said on the list. To close
>the list is in fact accepting that Georgiou is right and the members of
>the list are wrong.

I think you are making an issue out of nothing. BTW, the bit hierarchy 
is not that well propagated.

>Georgiou has openly shown us that he is trying to shut us up. First he
>removed the articles from the discussion on leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr.
>Then he disabled our accounts in Greece, then he wrote to postmasters
>at our Universities and now he is trying to close down our list. And
>close to succeeding it too.

>Georgiou is close to succeeding to close the Hellas list
>because it's a mailing list. However, he wouldn't be able to do
>anything if we'd been using a newsgroup. Why then should a list be
>treated differently just because it's a mailing list?

Why not? Why don't you create the list in your machine? I really 
cannot see a way to close down (forever) a list.

>Even if he has the right to do whatever he wants on the machine he
>administers, this does not give him the right to close down a list,
>simply because we have been publicly discussing his dictatorial
>behaviour.  If he had nothing to fear, he would subscribe to the list
>and answer the complaints in public. But no, this person didn't even
>answer complaints by private mail, I wouldn't expect him to answer in
>public. Instead, he chose the devious way.

Not the right but he can very well try. If the people that carry the 
list agree(coerced?) with him, what's the problem? Set up your own list.

>The matter as concerns my supervisor and postmaster is closed as after
>translating my articles to English they didn't find anything on the
>basis of which to close my account. I will continue posting in Hellas,
>much to Georgiou's dismay. So much for his credibility. What will finally
>happen with Hellas I don't know, but time will tell.

I am not sure what's the procedure for establishing a bit.listserv 
newgroups but if anyone can create one as long as there is a bitnet
list, it's fairly simple to setup a mail to news gateway to forward
everything from the mailing list to a newsgroup. If you can't use
the bit.listserv.hellas newsgroup simply create an alt newsgroup
(please, don't use scg).

						 Bye,
						Yannis.