>I wonder if anyone would comment from a manager's point of view how much
>employee time and company money they would consider spending on a list.
>I know that there are many variables, but many of you must have gotten
>into this with some concrete idea of expense, something more than good
>faith and dreams. :-)
 
"entirely variable" and "depends."
 
is still the correct answer.  I suggest that you start a
small list from whose experience you can extrapolate.
Consider the "experience" of the owner/operator (where
experiences includes both technical and people skills) when
working up the cost.  E.g., you could have an excellent
technical employee who had little people experience who
ended up costing your company big $'s (or mega Yen) because
they had no people experience and infuriated your customers.
 
Running a list is not just a matter of bits and bytes.
 
What was the experience of your web-master in maintaining a
reliable, available, useful resource?  Maybe extrapolate
from there?  No doubt that whatever info that you can
extract will be somewhat "soft" -- either it does not carry
over completely, or when trying to convert it to some other
context, doesn't completely match.  Just like the arguments
on the "cost" of client/server computing.  It is hard to
ID the life-cylce costs and reach consensus.
 
I'll bet those that study computer-mediated-communications
would love to get their hands on this kind of data.
 
--  co-owner:   INFOSYS, TQM-L, CPARK-L, ERAPPA-L, JANITORS, LDBASE-L, et -L
URL:mailto:[log in to unmask]                    "PSUVM.bitnet RIP 12/31/96"