Alt.sysadmin.recovery

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The correct title of this article is alt.sysadmin.recovery. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

ASR Coat of Arms

alt.sysadmin.recovery, or ASR, is a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the mental and emotional recovery of sysadmins. The anagram name Scary Devil Monastery is also very common, as many of the group's members, in the words of the Jargon file, "rather justify the reference"^[1]. In the words of the ASR FAQ, "Think of it as a virtual pub where we can all go after hours and gripe about our job."^[2] Many sysadmins consider the profession to be quite stressful. Commonly cited sources of stress include having to deal with lusers, cow-orkers, marketing weenies, and PHBs; brain damaged products; and customer dis-service from vendors.

The official motto of ASR is: "Down, not Across".

The name stems from the term "recovery" as used by many addiction support groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. A concept frequently put forward by such groups is that one is a "recovering" addict. Some say that only with great effort can one become "recovered"; others say that one never truly recovers. An early description for the group thus read "For recovered and recovering system administrators". (As of 2005, the description is "Getting over the trauma of system administration".) In ASR, one is only "recovered" if one has quit sysadmin work for another profession. Exactly how seriously any given member takes this view varies.

ASR is a place where BOFHs, gurus, IT managers, and other professional computer geeks can come to unwind. Actual computer-related discussion is fairly rare — in fact, such "Unrecovery Information" (UI) is considered off-topic and strictly taboo. The reuse of the abbreviation for User Interface is probably deliberate. "Useful Information" (another alternate expansion for UI) is greatly savored and enjoyed, as long as it is not work-related.

Some aspects of the common behavior on this newsgroup can make it annoying or hard for the casual browser coming from outside to enter the community. This is intentional: Members do not want to be bothered by people looking for technical help, nor do they want their rants associated with their professional careers. Many participants set the "No-Archive" header flag on in their postings, meaning that public archives (e.g., Google Groups) contain frequent gaps in the message threads.

The use of acronyms, footnotes and ROT13 is rampant. For instance, it seems to be regarded as taboo to give any company or product name, or Web address, in plain, cleartext form. The ostensible goal of this obfuscation is to make it harder for a person looking for technical help to stumble into the newsgroup by mistake: a search for "Linux" will not find the ROT13ism "Yvahk". More obtuse are references to chickens and blood sacrifices.