Subject: Survey on impact of CCL

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 May 94 17:46:59 CST

PLEASE RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO
[email-masked], NOT TO THE LIST!!!

Survey on the impact of the Computational Chemistry List

The Computational Chemistry List (CCL) has been for many
a valuable resource and a venue for a diversity of discussions.
The list has grown steadily in subscriber and recipient numbers,
interesting and sometimes heated debates have taken place, and
consideration has been given recently to previously unexplored
issues like the perspectives for fully electronic publications and
similar ones.

It may be time to ask ourselves what actual impact the CCL has
had, is having, and can further have on our lives, our work, the
way we use bandwidth, and the like.

To that purpose I have proposed to undertake a survey of the
List users with the general goal of finding out facts and
opinions about electronic services and their impact on our work.
I have asked the List coordinator, Jan Labanowski, if this is a
valid use of CCL bandwidth and we have agreed to ask a few
more questions, relevant to the List's operation and its possible
improvement, in order not to bother you with TWO surveys. In
this respect, the added goals are to find if the List is useful as
is, what and for whom is most and least useful, what should be
scratched, and how some possible improvements might work
out.

My own interest in the results of this survey is more on the side
of understanding its workings and their meaning as
underpinning for the future of academic communication. The
results of the survey will be carefully analyzed, which may take
some time, and I intend to publish the results of the analysis
(foreseeably in an ACS monograph) as well as post them and
make them available for downloading.

Some aspects of the survey may be flawed from the beginning,
mainly as we will not (foreseeably) get response from people
who have not subscribed or have dropped out, for any of a
number of reasons. However, much can be learned from your
answers! It is important that everybody respond to make the
survey statistically sound and not biased by "aggressive minority
opinion". Please let us know better just how the CCL is
working, if and how much it has changed the way you work,
communicate, and teach, and understand what is to be done
next.

I beg you to answer the questions below as objectively as
possible. I will make my best efforts to keep the responses
confidential (I plan to share them with Jan WITHOUT
RESPONDENT NAMES AND ADDRESSES; if you wish
otherwise and say so in your answer message I will oblige). I
will understand that you speak for your persons and not for
your organizations unless the contrary is explicitly stated. All
answers are nonbinding. Now look: the list is international,
legal issues may get real tangled, so let us all assume that I will
keep faithfully to my best knowledge of ethical and legal
standards and we all try to get information that will benefit
everybody, OK?

If you are impeded to respond to any of the questions because
of considerations of liability etc. do tell me so!

Again, please address your answers/comments/questions to me
and not to the list - lest you really want everybody to hear you!

AT THIS POINT IN TIME, PLEASE READ THE SURVEY,
BUT DO NOT RESPOND TO IT! 
PLEASE ONLY TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK IS
MISSING, WRONGLY STATED, ETC., AND WHETHER
YOU WOULD ACTUALLY RESPOND TO THE SURVEY
ON RECEIVING IT.

Survey on the use of the Computational Chemistry List (CCL).

I. USER CHARACTERIZATION:

This part is intended to characterize the respondent. It is
important to know ourselves better as a group, and so we can
crossreference other responses against particular groups of
subscribers.

 I.1) How long have you been using CCL (few months, a year,
more than a year)?

 I.2) What is the character of your organization (e.g., for-
profit/commercial, academia, secondary shool, government,
military, other non-profit, self-employed consultant, etc.)?

 I.3) Country where you receive the CCL messages:

 I.4) Type of position (e.g, undergraduate student, graduate
student, postdoctoral associate, assistant professor, research
scientist, senior research scientist, management, sales associate,
etc.):

 I.5) Approximate number of employees in your entire
organization and its main line of activity (e.g. 2000/college,
1000/pharmaceutical,20000/petroleum, etc.):

 I.6) Your field(s) of activity (please be specific: e.g,
crystallographer, molecular biologist, quantum chemist,
medicinal chemist, etc.):

 I.7) Is your work mainly computational or experimental or
both? Do you develop software?

 I.8) What computational chemistry methods do you use
frequently (ab initio, molecular graphics, molecular mechanics,
kinetics simulation, etc.)? What other computational work do
you do frequently?:

 I.9) What computer(s) do you use to read the messages, and
how are you connected to the network (e.g. PC via 2400
modem, Mac via 9600 modem, RS/6000 on Ethernet, etc.).
What is the range of network access available to you (e.g., e-
mail only, ftp, remote logins, gopher, WWW, Usenet, etc.). 

 I.10) How did you learn about the list (e.g., from a friend, my
thesis advisor, from archie, by searching gopherspace, etc.)

I.11) Could you briefly describe your work (say 5-10 lines):

II. CCL IMPACT ON YOUR
RESEARCH/LEARNING/CAREER:

Please be as specific as you can be in answering these questions.
The answers will be used to judge if the list is a useful resource.

 II.1) Please tell how, and how many times, the messages on
CCL, answers to your CCL queries, or CCL archives helped
you in your research. List all instances you can remember (e.g.,
you acquired particular software based on CCL messages twice,
you selected computer hardware based on information from
CCL, on three occassions you received needed parameters/data,
five times you were directed to read particular paper based on
CCL information, you changed your approach/method once
based on CCL messages, comments on the CCL contributed to 
the discussion part in two of your papers/reports, etc.):
       
 II.2) How many times did you find about a conference via
CCL and attended it as a result?

 II.3) I started a collaboration with a subscriber of the list
as a result of exchanges on the CCL.

 II.4) Did you find a position or a candidate for the position
using the positions.offered file in CCL archive? Did you seek a
position in particular organization/group based on messages
posted to the list?

 II.5) Add any comments about benefits of the list in your
career:

III. IMPACT ON TEACHING:

Answer these questions if you are teaching or if you are
involved in intracompany training. Please be specific and add as
many comments as you wish.

 III.1) What subject do you teach, is it an
undergraduate/graduate/professional course?

 III.2) Has the list had any impact on the contents of your
courses (e.g., you used materials/examples/opinions from
messages or CCL archives in your course, you revised/created
curriculum/syllabus based on CCL material, you suggested a
graduate project based on CCL postings, etc.):

 III.3) Do you encourage your students to subscribe to the list
or forward material from the list to them?

IV. YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE LIST:

Please supply the best estimates. We understand that they are
approximate. 

 IV.1) How many questions have you posted to the list?
       How many answers or opinions did you post to the whole
       list?
       How many answers did you send directly the participants?

 IV.2) How many answers/opinions did you receive to your
personal mailbox instead of list as a result of your
question/opinion? Did you ever receive a response with the
restriction "for your eyes only"?

 IV.3) How many people have reprimanded/flamed you for your
posting(s) to the list? For what? Have you reprimanded/flamed
somebody? For what?

 IV.4) What is your estimate of the portion of suitable
messages, i.e., messages which adhere to the list rules (e.g.: 3/7,
10%)?

 IV.5) What portion of messages on the list do you find relevant
for your own research/teaching/development/administration? Do
you forward on occassion messages from CCL to people who
are not subscribed? Did you encourage someone to subscribe?

 IV.6) How do you choose messages to read? What portion of
messages do you delete/skip before reading based on the
Subject: field? What portion of messages do you delete/skip
after reading the first few lines?

 IV.7) How do you receive messages (e.g., you are subscribed to
the list directly, you are subscribed to a local/internal
list/newsgroup which receives messages from CCL, you are not
subscribed but view archived messages via gopher/WWW)?

 IV.8) How frequently do you scan CCL messages and when
(e.g., as they arrive, more than once a day, once a day in the
evening, once a week on weekend)? How much time on average
do you spend reading messages?

 IV.9) Have you ever searched the CCL archives, and if not
why? Did you access CCL archives and in what way (e.g., e-
mail, ftp, gopher/WWW)?

HOW WOULD YOU IMPROVE CCL?

Provide your ideas assuming that resources are not an issue and
everything is possible. Try to provide ideas, and methods of
implementation, though you need not be too detailed/technical.
Please note that some examples given here are very
controversial.

 V.1) How would you improve the list if it stayed unmoderated?
Examples (do not be suggested by them, unless you agree with
them 100%). 
      a) Split it into smaller lists: ccl-ab-initio, ccl-
semiempirical, ccl-force-fields, ccl-molecular-graphics, ccl-???. To
which smaller lists would you subscribe yourself?
      b) Allow anonymous postings if someone chooses to do so.
      c) Restrict the scope of messages even further than in the
rules.
      d) Add specific files to the archives (which?).
      e) Add additional services (which?).
      f) Each subscriber would provide a list of
keywords/regular-expressions and would receive only messages
which contain/satisfy the keywords/regular-expressions.
      g) Allow only 10 messages a day, and queue the messages
which are over the limit.

 V.2) How would you improve the list if it was moderated?
Please, share your ideas.
      For example (only an example):
       a) 24hrs/day monitoring of the list by anonymous
moderators residing in different time zones, so the messages are
essentially approved/rejected in a real time.
       b) provide a once a day digest of subjects and a
mechanism for retrieval of full messages via e-mail, ftp, gopher,
www.
       c) the moderator(s) beside rejecting/approving messages
would classify them into topics (e.g., quantum chemistry,
molecular mechanics, molecular graphics, QSAR/QSPR,
hardware, drug design, [what topics?] and subscribers could
choose which topics they want to receive. Which topics would
you subscribe to?
       d) Provide a rotating body of volunteers in their respective
fields, who would respond to the simple/trivial questions,
forwarded to them by moderators (e.g., would point to a file
already residing in CCL archives, or explain that HONDO is an
ab initio program).        
       e) Split the list into "introductory" and "advanced" and
moderator(s) will assign messages to the appropriate category.

  V.3) Should the list be available as Usenet newsgroup? Why?

  V.4) Should the list be monitored/censored? Why and by
whom?
       Would you be willing to act as a moderator of the list,
how much time you would contribute and under what
conditions (remember, your answer is nonbinding, and
anonymous)?

  V.5) How do you see a development of networks/network
services in the future (say, 10 years)?

VI. USE OF OTHER RESOURCES

Please share all your experiences and use of resources other than
CCL.

 VI.1 What other Internet and network resources do you use
and how heavily/frequently (e-mail, library catalogues, gopher,
WWW, newsgroups, commercial databases, stock prices,
commercial news, listservers/electronic-lists, electronic
submissions of manuscripts to journals/books/conferences, etc.,
etc.). How much time do you spend on using the network
resources?

 VI.2 How much time do you spend on reading CCL list and
CCL archives compared to other network resources?

VII. MEMORABLE MOMENTS.

VII.1 What do you remember as the most useful/most
pleasant/most unpleasant/most obnoxious event on the CCL
(and/or other Internet services)?

VIII. COMPARATIVE RATING.

VIII.1 Please rate the CCL as to usefulness, effort/benefit ratio,
etc. in comparison with other online and offline services and
sources of information.

IX. PLEASE ADD WHAT WE MISSED

IX.1 What questions/topics should have been included in this
survey but were missed?
IX.2 Share any thoughs concerning the CCL list which were not
addressed in the survey.

---------============== SURVEY END===============------------
             THANKS FOR YOUR KIND COLLABORATION!

(Again: please respond to [email-masked],
NOT TO THE LIST) !!!!!!