This isn't a good analogy, because if I were in a bank that ran
the way the *.answers submission process runs, I would never
even get to finish the transaction. The correct bank-analogy
equivalent would be:
Teller: Hi there, how may I help you?
Me: Well, I'd like to open a couple accounts and deposit some money.
Here's my paperwork; I've done my best to fill it out as
the directions request.
Teller: Everything looks okay, except here on this one line
you need to put today's date *before* where you put your name
on the form. Sorry, I can't process this like it is.
(Now, what should happen next?)
Current-system Teller: Here is our standard form letter, with
all your errors outlined in gory detail. Please go back to
the end of the line, and wait two weeks. I don't care if it
will only take you 30 seconds to erase the date and name and
write them properly. The next available teller will process
your paperwork, assuming they don't misunderstand something
we've agreed on here, and send you back into the line a third time.
New-and-improved Teller: Here, why don't you take 30 seconds
and fix this up, and I'll take care of it for you.
(Which system do you think would work better?)
Here's another analogy:
Imagine you're logged into a computer system which
is so thoroughly overloaded that it only handles one command-line
input per user every two weeks. It's great if you don't care
about time, or if you only need to send it one command, but
it's lousy if you have any need to *interact* with the system.
Imagine how frustrating it gets when you type in a fairly long,
complex command, and a typo - or even a transmission error -
confuses the system, so it can't process your request. And then
you have to wait forever to try again.
> Except--who will staff that side window? That might mean taking one of
> the tellers off the regular window. The queue will slow up and people
> will get frustrated again.
No, what I want to do is train the tellers that already exist to
fully process each person's transaction when it comes up, so that
no one has to wait in line more than once, and no one has to hand
a completely new teller a set of documents which are completely
unfamiliar to him/her, but which the original teller could have
processed almost blindly. This will *speed up* the whole
system, so that *everyone* will have less time to wait and get
frustrated.
********************************************8
Robert F. Heeter, rfheeter@pppl.gov
Graduate Student, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab
Conventional Fusion FAQ Maintainer and General Annoyance
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