On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:46:46AM +0800, Russell Keith-Magee wrote: > On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Phil Mocek > > On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 06:58:53AM -0700, joeygartin wrote: > > > Their inner sorrow is projected out in a form of rage and that > > > usually (hopefully) only comes out as rude, curt and inpatient. > > > > That's a common misperception. > > > > <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#keepcool> > > Phil - I can tell that you _really_ like ESR
My frequent referral to his writing doesn't indicate much about the degree to which I like him. His is simply *the* essay that people refer to when teaching newbies how to deal with technical discussions on Usenet, mailing lists, and Web forums. It has been for almost a decade. "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" is a distillation of many lessons learned and norms established over a quarter-century of discussions in computer-related discussion forums. It's better, I think, to point to something written by someone with a whole lot more seniority than I have than to simply express my own opinion as if it were mine alone. My opinions hold little weight. Not so for uber-hackers in the class of ESR, RMS, John Gilmore, Linus Torvalds, Allan Cox, Larry Wall, and Guido van Rossum. > 1) We'd be much obliged if you'd stop reposting great chunks of ESR's > essays. A link is fine. Roger that. In my defense, it seemed that posting a link wasn't effective. Sometimes peoples' appetites need to be whetted. But I will concede that this was poor form. > 2) If you would stop changing the subject line of discussions every > time you respond, that would be just dandy, too. Rapid-fire subject > changes don't help anyone keep track of what is going on. I didn't do that. I only change the subject line when the topic of discussion changes. It would be nice if more other people did as well. When the topic of discussion in a thread changes, it's good etiquette to change the subject header to reflect the change. Customarily, the first person to reply after the change trims the "was:" portion. This well-established custom [1] allows subscribers who have stopped reading the discussion (likely because of disinterest in the topic at hand) to know that the topic has changed. It also allows people who are still following the discussion to know that the new topic is one that branched from the old one. [1]: <http://www.google.com.mx/search?q="mailing+list"+etiquette+topic+"change+the+subject";> How is the conveyance of such information preferred on this list? Neither this message nor that to which I am replying is at all related to a comparison of Django and web.py, it's courteous to avoid indicating that they are. > It doesn't take much effort to write in a way that won't be > interpreted as insulting. Hackers don't get a special pass to treat > other people like crap simply because they have 133t skillz. Agreed. And "AOLamers", their modern equivalents, and newbies of all sorts, should only get one pass to treat a thousand others like their personal research assistants because they haven't yet discovered man pages, documentation, mailing list archives, and Google. Once they've been introduced to those things; there's no excuse. Continued similar behavior is at best inconsiderate, and at worst, insulting to fellow subscribers. > The correct response to the perception of insult isn't to direct > someone to an essay as to why they are wrong in their perception - the > correct response is to apologize for any perceived insult, indicate > that the insult wasn't intended, and to rephrase your point in a way > that isn't insulting. I didn't intend to be insulting. I apologize for any perceived insult. When someone here suggested that I had been insulting, I acknowledged that his misperception was a common one -- so common, in fact, that one of the fathers of the free software movement wrote a whole section of his famous essay about how to effectively communicate on lists like this one *about* such misperceptions. These aren't just my feelings, they're those that many, many, people have felt over the years, and the only way to avoid having to repeatedly feel them is to explain to people that they could communicate a whole lot more effectively and waste a whole lot less of other people's time if they looked at the traditions that we've developed over many years of conducting these discussions. The "correct response" can only be repeated so many times before it makes sense for people to write down all the things that people keep asking and implore them to read it before posting their own question. We call this a FAQ. Is it rude to point people to the FAQ when they skipped over it and asked the same question that has been asked and answered hundreds of times? There's a lot to be said for keeping a mailing list's signal-to-noise ratio low. Ignoring a problem like an abundance of messages that are summarized by subjects like "Help! Can I do this?" or "registration" does nothing but encourage more of it, and that tends to chase away the people who would otherwise be able to help solve new problems. > Anyone who makes a regular habit of posting inappropriate abusive > responses will be asked - politely - to find somewhere else to vent > their frustration. It seems I have misjudged what is appropriate on this list, and for acting on that misjudgment, I apologize. Perhaps what *is* appropriate should be formalized in writing and provided to those who wish to participate. I and another subscriber briefly discussed off-list the possibility of directing people to "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" before subscribing. It now sounds like that wouldn't go over very well. What do others reading this post who have been around the Internet a few years think about all this? Local customs trump any general forms of etiquette, and the same holds true on mailing lists. If anything goes here and that's the way people want it, then I'd be way out of line to continue to lobby for tightening things up. -- Phil Mocek --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
