[HCoop-Discuss] HCoop and Ping! Magazine Article

[Aaron Hsu]

On Feb 24, 2007, at 11:10 AM, Adam Chlipala wrote:

> 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."

You might just add a little part or addition somewhere stating that,  
for the cost, you provide unmatched flexibility in configuration and  
functionality.

>> 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.

I would say that sliding scale could also mean that users are charged  
on a scale based on usage amounts, almost like grading on a curve.  
So, I think it would be better to use something like, "a voluntary  
sliding scale."

>> 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.

This is true, but I don't remember seeing much in your answers that  
clearly gave this information. When I signed up, the key selling  
point for me was the flexibility of the service, and I don't think  
you really inform the reader about this feature very clearly.

>> 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.

I was confused about this wording as well. From what I read it seemed  
that you were saying that the average disk-usage of all members will  
be checked against each member's disk usage, and if an user's disk  
usage is found to exceed this average, that member will be charged  
for the above average disk usage based on some "market rate."

To me it was not clear what this means.

-- 
Aaron Hsu
misc at sacrificumdeo.net


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.hcoop.net/pipermail/hcoop-discuss/attachments/20070224/a471d819/attachment.htm