Counting since 9.11.2005 <http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~ts/garbinfo/garb0160.html> Copyright © 1996-2007 by Prof. Timo Salmi Last modified Sun 25-Feb-2007 20:04:39

Why is Garbo's uploading procedure overly demanding?

Thank you. Despite of the serious personnel shortage , we strive(d) to be.

So, I tried to read through all the text in the "instructions for upload", telling me what to do and not to do, but finally I gave up. I was probably too tired to read a long text like this in the middle of the night, but why must it be so difficult?

Your observation about the difficulty is correct. Although once one figures it out and gets set, it is mostly routine. But there is no big secret about why the uploading procedures are fairly involved.

We are a university repository that runs on extremely limited personnel resources. We are really in a bind in this respect. The sad fact therefore is that we can't handle the incoming submissions'  queue fast enough. We have to find ways to keep the volume down. Furthermore, since there are fully commercial sites, who run the whole gamut of various kinds of programs, we aim to specialize both in scope and in quality. Our uploading procedure is one small part in the quality control chain. It is to be expected, although there is not a one to one correlation, that authors who understand and get the submission procedures right are a bit more liable also to write good programs.

All the best, Timo

As a shareware author I find it a real pain to upload or register my programs to a multitude of shareware sites each having a different format for program information.

Dear Shareware Author,

Yes, I am sure you do. Your concern is rational, from your end of things, and thus easy to understand. However, the sites do not necessarily have quite the same objectives as you have as an author.

Is there any hope that the different sites could band together and accept a standard format? Maybe simply uploading or e-mailing a single file containing program information?

I can only speak for Garbo archives. I do not see that happening here in a foreseeable future. At least at Garbo archives the policy of not having, nor even wanting to have, a standard format is quite deliberate. The main reason is related to quality control of the incoming material. Even if it is not an absolute guarantee of quality, filling out Garbo's customized upload submission format is one part of measuring the author's motivation and abilities. An author who is willing to go through the extra trouble, and get it right, is also more liable to be conscientious and skilful in his/her programming.

A second point is that the users of the programs, considering what to download and what not, will benefit from having different angles displayed concerning the submitted programs. I do not believe that in the long run it would be advantageous even to the authors if the net were in effect nothing but one big mirror of similar, faceless sites.

As a lesser detail, even if some of the sites often cooperate, I see no reason why we should accept to comply with the formats of other sites. It is a lot of (unpaid!) work and, more essentially, would limit our degrees of freedom more than I am prepared for. Our site is an individual site with its own personality and (despite its current personnel resource problems) will stay that way.

In this way developers could very quickly distribute their programs to a large network of shareware sites. The sites themselves would have many more titles submitted.

Here you make the implicit assumption that the sites automatically share the authors' goals of maximum propagation and a maximum number of titles. That's not at all necessarily the case. At least as far as Garbo shareware, freeware and PD archives is concerned (even when we still had the capacity to handle a reasonable number of uploads) it has never been our goal to maximize neither our incoming nor our outgoing traffic. Our main interests are quality and the categories we specialize in.

Thus, I am afraid that, at least as far as our Garbo site is concerned, the answer is an unqualified no to a unification of the program submission information.

All the best, Timo

From ts(ät)uwasa.fi Sat Oct 28 09:00:40 1995
Subject: Re: Garbo's stupid uploading
To: Angry Uploader
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 09:00:40 +0200 (EET)

Hi,

Yes, Hello.

I assume since your e-mail address is at the bottom of the submission form for entering stuff to Garbo, that you were the person to contact when experiencing problems

Yes, I am. Especially in this case as this also seems to be some kind of a policy complaint even if there are also technical aspects and misunderstandings to your grievance.

First off I think it's unfortunate that you've chosen to be quite rude in your documents as far as telling people what all the rules are for donating free software. It's sad that you

Garbo's foremost objective is to be a selective quality material site. We are striving at this with extremely limited man-power resources. The direct implication of this is that we cannot cope unless the users follow our procedures. I have written a lot of FAQs and advice files for the net, but experience shows that in this particular case (the uploading-to-Garbo instructions) the most effective mode is to come right out with it without a sugar coating. Hence, I have concentrated into making Garbo uploading rules as unambiguous as I can.

seem to have lumped in for-profit software firms seeking free advertising with freeware authors doing something out of the joy of programming, and doing a nice *free* service to others.

Also we are doing "a nice *free* service to others" by bringing the material (shareware, freeware and PD) to the users without charge to the net. Besides having written a few hundred (yes) for private users free programs myself I happen to have some insight into both sides of the matter. Nevertheless, we must arrange everything in an orderly manner if we wish to be able to bring the material to the net.

Your stupid ftp daemon refused to let me upload

You are barking up the wrong tree. This is a generic ftp daemon.

a file a second time after the first time failed.

This is a common feature of these daemons.

Why you'd want to protect a file that's corrupt is beyond me. I suppose I could've been rude and

This is a known problem with the corrupt or partially failed uploads. One cannot upload over an existing file. We have to delete it at this end first if you wish to repeat the upload using the same file name. I do not know outright how else technically to arrange this.

just left the corrupt file and gone on, but I thought I'd be nice and try to overwrite it with the proper file or erase it, but no, you'd rather have me waste my time and your disk space with a corrupt file. Well, that's your choice.

Now that is a totally ridiculous accusation. I have no motivation deliberately to waste the uploaders' time. But neither do I see any reason to allow wasting ours by uninformed uploading.

Why don't you just put up a start-up message on your ftp server to tell people that you really don't want software uploads. Because you obviously

We wish to receive quality uploads in an orderly manner. What our seasoned uploaders do in a case like this is that they email that their upload did not manage to make it intact and that wish to try anew. Or they reupload with a slightly different name and inform us about it.

don't want them. Or you apparently only want people using your service for commercial purposes.

I do beg your pardon? What on earth would you be talking about? This is a free university site, not a commercial service. You are complaining about a free service. Please get your facts right.

Because only they would put up with your services bad attitude.

Well, I would venture as far as to say that I am not the one of the two of us with the attitude at the moment. But if what you call bad attitude manages to act as an effective sieve to weed out amateurish or non-motivated uploads, then it has well served its quality guaranteeing purpose for Garbo.

You may just say: "if you don't like the way we do things, then don't upload"

Yes. That is quite true and accurate! Indeed if someone does not like the way we have arranged our services, s/he absolutely should use another service more to his/her liking. Why just not please go and find one.

Well, my answer to that is: I won't every try to upload again. But it's to late to get back the time and good mood your service already took.

I hope that your venting your frustrations in your tantrum has alleviated your obviously foul mood and made you feel better for it.

All the best, Timo

P.S. Those who after reading this still wish to make quality uploads to Garbo should carefully follow

ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/UPLOAD.TXT

Instructions for submitting material to Garbo archives

 

ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/UPTEXT.TXT

The required formula for your Garbo upload announcements