NASAdude

But it looks like whining might work. Ok, I didn't really whine, but I did research the issue and try to get us some more space.

Email sent to Erin Grenoble:

This Fall, PSU increased students' quotas from 100 to 500MB. It seems this isn't affecting clubs' storage space. I was uploading some files into the Wesley club's web directory (/:/services/www/clubs/wwwroot/up/wesley), and ran out of space at ~50MB.

-- Is this really the current quota?
-- Are there plans to increase it?
-- How do I go about getting an exception made if there aren't across-the-board increases planned?
-- Does bribery help in increasing a group's quota to the new student-standard 500MB? (I hope you enjoy jokes in your correspondence... I'm too poor to bribe anyone.)

I looked at the disk usage of other clubs and found that many are using the full 50MB quota, so it seems that I am not the only one who would be able to make use of additional space. I also noted that two clubs, juggling and sciencelions, are using 82 and 140MB respectively. So it seems that quota exceptions are permitted. Or maybe they aren't too poor for bribery.

I was storing a collection of the club's photos on a webserver in my PSU office, but my building was put behind a firewall and only "official" webservers are now visible to the public. So our photo archive is offline until I find space to host it elsewhere. I was hoping it would find a new home on the clubs server.

Thanks.

Erin Grenoble forwarded the email to clubs[at]psu.edu on 9/21 and I didn't get a reply. I then sent another email today (10/6) to that list:

I emailed Erin Grenoble regarding club quotas and she forwarded it to this group on 9/21. I have yet to receive a reply.

I'd like to reiterate the desire to get a quota increase for the Wesley club (up/wesley/). As a user, I have a 520MB quota, but the club only has 50MB allocated. That seems a little out of balance considering the club directory serves content intended for many users.

Already I've had to host some of the data on my own account. I'd very much prefer to host everything directly in the club's account to make group webmastering easier.

In my previous email, I pointed out that some other clubs are already well over the standard 50MB quota, so I'm hoping this will be a simple request to grant.

Thanks.

The reply:

From: Jeff D'Angelo
To: Me
Subject: Re: [Clubs] quota increase request

Sorry we haven't replied, Erin was waiting for an answer from me, and I in turn was trying to finalize some details before we proceed. I should have some news for you by Friday. Can you wait til then? I think you will like what you'll hear.

So it sounds like whining might work! ;)

If we get more space, I'm thinking about adding more features onto the gallery. It all depends how much additional space is approved. Ideas: 1) be able to view the original photo by clicking through from the shrunken version, 2) be able to download archives/collections of images as zip files (if I'm really skilled, we won't even store the zip files... but create them on the fly to save storage space), 3) allow authenticated users to add/change photo captions (ok... this is probably too much work)

I'll update this entry when I get more info.

Isn't it nice to get good news?

Oct 8 update -- I got an email from Jeff:

From: "Jeff D'Angelo"
To: Erin Grenoble
CC: Me
Subject: Re: [Clubs] FW: clubs web quota

I guess bribery does help, or at least just asking the right thing at the right time. ;) Congrats on bringing our attention to this so we could revise the general disk allocation policy for clubs.

Erin, since we are going to grant all of the student orgs 500 MB in the near future, I suppose you can just grant wesley the requested 500 MB now since Aaron has been patiently waiting. Thanks.

Yay!

Another update, October 12:

From: Karen Hackett
Subject: ITS and Student Affairs to Increase Clubs Storage Space, October 15 - 17, 2004
To: L-NWOFP@LISTS.PSU.EDU

Just an FYI...During the fall break weekend (October 15 - 17), Academic Services and Emerging Technologies (ASET) (http://aset.its.psu.edu/), a unit of Information Technology Services (http://its.psu.edu/), and the Division of Student Affairs (http://www.sa.psu.edu/) will increase student organizations' respective Web spaces/sites from 50MB to 500MB. This increase mirrors the recent increase issued to individuals' PASS earlier this semester. This marks the first opportunity in a new commitment to provide the same amount of disk space to student organizations as is provided to users' PASS. Student organizations are welcome to take advantage of this change to store more content and media in their Web space for members and related activities.

A Web-based version of this announcement is available via:
http://aset.its.psu.edu/announcements/clubs_space.html
Please feel free to circulate this to your staff and colleagues and/or link from your Web sites as appropriate.

Questions regarding this increase should be directed to clubs@psu.edu and not to me directly.

It's nice to know that one person can have an impact (however small) at such a large university.