Users and administrators 9 May 2007

Microsoft's Raymond Chen says that nearly all computer administrators are idiots:

"That's not because the personnel department is incompetent or because it's impossible to train competent administrators. It's because, for a consumer operating system, the computer administrator didn't ask to be one. In nearly all cases, the computer administrator is dad or grandma. They didn't ask to be to be the computer administrator. They just want to surf the web and read email from Jimmy.

"All this means is that you can't say, 'Well, if the user is an administrator, as opposed to a normal user, then it's okay to show them all these dangerous things (such as critical operating system files) because they know what they're doing.' Grandma doesn't know what she's doing."

While we wouldn't describe either users or admins as idiots, Chen is otherwise spot on. The distinction between "user" and "administrator" is completely artificial outside of the business environment (actually, it's artificial in many small businesses too).