[HCoop-Discuss] HCoop and Ping! Magazine Article

[Adam Chlipala]

I'm going to respond to individual suggestions, noting which I plan to 
incorporate in the next revision and explaining my reasons for those 
that I don't plan to follow.  Later today, I'll send a revised version 
of the interview in its entirety.

Nathan Kennedy wrote:
> You might also want to mention something about the size
> of our cooperative (what is it, 111 members now), to give some
> perspective.
>   

OK, that's easy and worthwhile to do.

> Also rather than just say you've never used a mainstream provider (which I
> guess is true for you), it would be worth pointing out that "mainstream
> hosting provider" is a rather amorphous term, as there is enormous
> variability in the nature and quality of commercial hosting services out
> there.  Some have huge customer bases and some are one-man fly-by-nights,
> and from my support experience I know that within both categories there
> are plenty of lousy, slow, unreliable hosts.
>   

I'll try to incorporate something along these lines.

John Hallgren wrote:
> Coming from the "square peg in a round hole" guy, I didn't see any 
> reference to how you may in future handle more people like me...you 
> know, the Windows user who knows just a teeeny bit of Unix...but yet 
> is really quite satisfied with the service and support that I've 
> received from Hcoop!  

You're right; I didn't include any mention of that subject.  It doesn't 
seem to fit any of the explicit questions.  However, I'll include a 
blurb on the subject of expected member knowledge in the miscellaneous 
section.

Michael Olson wrote:
> One minor nitpick: let's call it "Debian GNU/Linux" instead of "Debian
> Linux", because that's the full name of the OS, as can be seen on the
> front page of Debian's website.

Regardless of what the "correct" answer is, I know that anyone using the 
phrase "GNU/Linux" is tagged as a loonie by a significant fraction of 
our prospective member base.  Of course, anyone using "Linux" alone is 
tagged as a jerk by another significant fraction.  Thus, I now plan just 
to call it "Debian" to avoid taking sides.

Aaron Hsu wrote:
> I think another point that should be added regarding Quality of 
> Service is the actual service provided. HCoop hosting gives any given 
> member a degree of flexibility with their service that is (from what I 
> can tell) completely unmatched for the price. Basically, as a member I 
> am receiving support and development efforts from various 
> contributers, which means that I am not left maintaining my own server 
> and Operating System. The only other service I find that comes close 
> to this VPS hosting. However, with the more affordable VPS's, I have 
> to do a large part of the maintenance on my own, and there is very 
> little help from anyone else. With this coop we are able to help each 
> other with services and solutions to problems; these are often 
> problems that would be either expensive or impossible to solve given a 
> more traditional hosting company.

I'm not sure exactly how to change what I wrote, but I agree that it 
would be useful to make it clear that "quality of service" should be 
considered in light of the different services we provide compared to 
"the competition."

Davor Ocelic wrote:
> How about just saying "We are open to members that are corporations
> rather than individuals" ? And then continue with "Also, we have a few 
> members supporting ...".

I'm sold on the first suggestion of dropping superfluous wording.  As 
for the second, you seem to be suggesting dropping wording that 
indicates our lack of experience on this subject and the accompanying 
uncertainty about how it could work out.  I like to err in favor of 
telling whatever part of the truth I see as relevant, and you seem to be 
suggesting more of a standard advertising model.  I'd hate to have a run 
on HCoop membership by a string of businesses after the article is 
published, only to find that technical or social reasons prevent us from 
accommodating their needs well.  That's why I like to err on the side of 
caution in my answer.

> I think we should focus more on the functionality here than on the means of 
> accessing it (mailing lists). In other words, trim the mailing list talk a bit,
> and maybe add something along the lines of "we're a group of members
> who 'know' each other".

Well, the reporter is free to pick and choose what to use in the 
article.  I think the somewhat-detailed discussion of mailing lists is 
fun and shows a bit of our unique co-op spirit.  What do other folks 
think about this?

> Maybe also mention that this list of questions was also put up for 
> discussion before you sent it back  ;) 

That's a good idea.  I'll figure out where to fit it in.

> Depending on the magazine's target audience, maybe emphasize
> the Unix component a bit. Or actually, just the technical component, no
> need to trigger defense mechanisms in folks who don't like unix  ;) 

Well, as this is describing our wiki, it really is true that you won't 
find generally-useful information there on running Internet services on 
non-UNIX platforms.  However, who knows what the future will bring, and 
so I'll follow your advice and just remove the word "UNIX."

> I think we should not go into the specifics of our package with the provider,
> but just keep this other part where you give numbers on typical resource
> usage per member.

Do you think including that actually makes us look bad?  Keep in mind 
that these interviews will be used in bits and pieces to construct an 
article about many different providers.  From that perspective, it seems 
that including extra information can't hurt.

> 1) Emphasize that the >1 pledges are voluntary?

My understanding of American English is such that "sliding scale" 
implies "voluntary," but others should correct me if they don't see it 
that way.

> 2) Emphasize more here that, basically, you can get anything you want for
>     the price. We should come up with a short and precise way to describe
>     this type of service because the need to describe it straight-to-the-point
>     has come up a number of times by now.

I think it's fine to describe it in terms that aren't especially 
compact, since the article author will be taking pains to avoid 
repetition in his compilation process, anyway, and will handle 
paraphrasing for us.

> Are you saying here that I could arrange with HCoop to buy a disk
> for me, which I would pay off, but it would be my disk, for my own use?
> If yes, this isn't clear.
>   

No, the idea is that disk space usage will be billed based on market 
rates, not that disk usage must meet the usual increments you'd 
encounter buying your own separate disks.  I'm not convinced that my 
sentence doesn't make this as clear as necessary, so I will only change 
it if someone else seconds your opinion.

> Also, the beginning of the paragraph is very confusing. The sentence
>
> 	"In this new set-up, we expect to charge market rates for
> 	above-average disk and bandwidth usage."
>
> could not possibly send the right message in this context. The first
> two things that came to my mind were:
>
> 1) Ah ok, so they're bigger now, and they'll start making money
> 2) They'll charge me extra on basis of arbitrary chosen limit for
>     'average disk and bandwidth usage'

My impression is that this is an English language understanding issue.  
The meanings of the pieces of the sentence you quote have no connections 
to making profits.  I agree that "above-average" is a murky concept, and 
so I should probably just strike that word from the sentence and leave 
the rest as it is.

Justin Leitgeb suggests this text:
> Absolutely.  As a co-operative, "community" has always been a central 
> concern for us.  We use a variety of technical means, including 
> listserves and wikis, to help members to communicate.  We frequently see 
> members helping each other in response to a technical issue that one 
> member is facing through our collaborative support forum.  Additionally, 
> many members of HCoop are interested in issues that concern those in a 
> broader community that extends past our immediate user base.  This has 
> led HCoop users to discuss possible ways to minimize the environmental 
> impacts of our hosting operation.

First, the term "listserv" is trademarked and refers to a particular 
company's product, and I'm not sure if "listserve" has any precedent as 
a correct spelling of something.  It's also true that (as far as I can 
see) "mailing list" is the primary term in use for this service today.  
However, this is largely off-topic if we agree on my response below:

I'll add a mention of environmental concern to the existing paragraph.  
I prefer my text to yours for expressing the rest of the message, but 
I'm open to change if someone else seconds your opinion that your 
version is more desirable.