tom kunesh wrote:
>
> anybody -
>
> i'm curious about why the tilde (~) is used in utc.edu addresses,
> and why some departments have them in their url and others don't.
>
> http://www.utc.edu/~artdept/ - why the tilde?
[many examples snipped]
> http://www.utc.edu/socidept/
>
> http://www.utc.edu/musidept/music/
> (why is the music dept. "musidept" and not just plain "music"?)
>
> on many web servers, the tilde indicates a personal directory and denotes a
> website for which the ISP is not personally responsible. this concept gets
> carried over to a public university web server whether intentional or not,
> especially for those of us who have been around the web for a long time,
> and appears to qualify the status of those departmental websites that
> contain a tilde as more personal, less-official, than those without the
> tilde.
Short answer to why: probably historical accident
If you want to know more, read on...
First, a clarification, technically a tilde just means that the
web page refers to the files of a particular account on the web
server.
~mathdept means the "math" account
~rgambrel means the "rgambrel" account
"scubaclub" means the "scubaclub" account
It is true that this means they are technically not the same
account (ownership) as the "web server document owner" account.
Most faculty, staff, departments, and many clubs have accounts,
so they "should" all be able to use the tilde to access their web
pages. The tilde should imply "responsibly" by the account for
it's pages, but that doesn't make them less (or more) "official."
It just means they have a different organizational responsibility.
So far as I know, the Catalog is official, the TimeTable is official,
the Faculty and Student handbooks are official, there are "official"
letters on letterhead one might get and there are official
announcements made on UTCSTAFF, but I don't know of any "official"
policy about "official" web pages, except perhaps those pages that
claim to be "official". Perhaps Chuck in University Relations can
speak to this point better than I.
I think the lack of a tilde in some page references is a historical
accident of how those pages were originally created (by the web
server document account) as well as due to ad hoc requests for an
alias for an account. As I understand it (I wasn't here), the pages
developed rather chaotically with many different people involved
and it would be somewhat difficult, but hardly impossible, to go
back now and undo what was done.
However, If I could suggest a policy, it would be that only pages
that are the direct responsibility of University Relations not have
a tilde and all other pages use one (unless the pages are on another
web server and not on the www.utc.edu site - e.g. http://itd.utc.edu/ ).
To implement that policy now would mean a good deal of fixing links
to pages and breaking bookmarks to pages that don't have the tilde.
The alternative would be to systematically alias every account on
the web server so that no tilde was ever necessary. That has
it's appeal, too, as you point out. It would take some staff
time to set up and we'd have to remember to add another alias
every time an account is created, but that could be done. Even
then, the tildes would have to be taken out of every web page
link before you would stop seeing them.
The work to do either one just has not risen up above all the
other projects and priorities we're about, but first which policy
is best would have to be decided. I'm not sure the work to
do either is worth it.
I do appreciate your observation. The difference is a nuisance
and it can make getting a web page link to "work" troublesome.
Richard
>
> just a thought.
>
> ;>
--
Richard L Gambrell, Senior Information Technology Consultant and
Director of Computing Systems and Networks
Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Fax: 423-755-4150 Support Help-Desk: 423-755-4000
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