Hi,
Okay I suppose it is time for a response to the recent flurry of
messages concerning the distribution of shifts. I was planning to raise
this at the collaboration meeting in a few weeks but maybe something is
necessary now.
Firstly, I agree that the distribution has been unfair. Keeping
shift statistics was intended for exactly this purpose; so we could see how
things balanced over time and take it into account. On the other hand I am
trying to work within the constraints I am given. For the graduate
students the constraint is generally when they are unavailable. And I must
say the students have been very good about this (witness over 100 E-mails
to this affect). For other members of the experiment I am often told only
when they can take a shift so I am inclined to fill these in as given and
then fill in the spaces as I can.
Since we are still debugging one thing or the other I try to keep
the people supervising or organising things on shifts which still allow
them to be here during the day. This is unfair I know and hopefully can
end soon when we are routinely taking data but I think this is necessary in
order to get running.
It would be very good if I received more responses from the
non-graduate student group about when they can take shifts and if these
could include some fraction of the less popular shifts.
I think we should discuss this at the collaboration meeting 14
July. Some things to consider are:
1. voluntary shifts - create a sign-up list an run it basically on
the honour system with statistics and possibly a "wall of shame"
2. weight the shifts differently (e.g. weekday day = 1, weekday
evening = 1.25, weekday overnight = 1.5, weekend day =1.25, weekend evening
= 1.5, weekend overnight = 1.5) still need to agree how many points
everyone must take)
3. divide total number of shifts by number of authors, assign
uniformly, and then let groups decide how to distribute amongst their own
students and post-docs.
4. determine which fraction of shifts should be born by students,
post-docs, etc. and then let the graduate students manage it (Aaron's
suggestion from last year)
On another related topic it has been suggested that we stagger the
shifts so there is better continuity of information from shift to shift. I
agree but the amount of stagger is the question: 1, 2, or 4 hours?
Personally I favour 2 hours say 01-09, 07-15, 09-17, 15-23, 17-01 as
something approaching normal hours. 4 hours 00-08, 04-12, 08-16, 12-20,
16-24, 20-04 or 02-10, 06-14, 10-18, 14-22, 18-02, 22-06 seems too bizarre.
Cheers,
Douglas
26-415 M.I.T. Tel: +1 617 258 7199
77 Massachusetts Avenue Fax: +1 617 258 5440
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA E-mail: hasell@mit.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Feb 24 2014 - 14:07:29 EST