tfurrows wrote about his perception of grex and SDF being more frequently unavailable compared to his other gopher servers, which I won't argue with because: i) I have no experience of grex, and ii) plenty of complaints about SDF so I'm going to keep my mouth shut about that. However, he seems to feel that his perception as a user isn't really a valid metric for comparing systems. I'm afraid I'm going to disagree (sorry). It seems to me that the single most important attribute of a communal facility is that it is available for the community it purports to serve. And so, (besides things like hard numbers on uptimes etc.) the perception of the service in the eyes of its users *is* an important (albeit difficult to measure) metric. If your pubnix isn't serving its users, it isn't fulfilling its prime function. The usual argument against this sort of expectation runs along the 'oh, but I'm doing it in my free time/out of my own pocket/etc.' lines, which is a cop-out. If you've made a commitment to run a service, then it's not unreasonable for your users to expect a certain level of continued interest and involvement on your part. Maybe I'm making too much out of a couple of lines in a phlog, but neglecting the actual users of a service is something IT is guilty of all too often. tfurrows dismisses his own feelings about the services he's using, even though they are reasonable and valid, and any sysadmin worth their salt should be willing to listen. Please note that no criticism of tfurrows is intended or implied. It just struck me that he seemed to be throwing doubt on his own experience as a user, which in the end is surely the only meaningful measurement of the utility of *any* computer system.