From: "Brandon McCaig" <bamcc...@gmail.com> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Raymond Wan <r....@aist.go.jp> wrote: > An extension to your reasoning is that there aren't just two groups of > users on this list -- advanced and newbies -- but multiple levels. > Beginners who don't follow the advanced programmers' rules may have > questions that intermediate programmers can answer who aren't as > nit-picky about the rules. Then, advanced programmers can direct > their attention to more immediate questions by people who write in a > way that they like and everyone is happy. How the question is asked > implicitly says who (which group) the question is for... > > Core Perl experts that think it's just them and beginners on the list > "risk" scaring people in the middle groups away, further making the > problem worse [for them]. No??
> The mailing list rules are about being fair to everyone. Exactly, but they are not. > If you bottom post, quoting only what is relevant, then everyone can easily > read > through the thread without having to jump large sections of text, If everyone top-post, nobody need to jump any portion of text. Yes, I know that false reason that maybe somebody doesn't remember about the thread, that maybe he is subscribed to more mailing lists, but for this problem there are solutions, like to define rules in the mail client and redirect the messages from a mailing list to a special folder. If somebody reads a message on the current thread, do you think that he might not remember what is this discussion about? > or downloading the same data numerous times for no reason. Not everybody > has a high speed broadband connection and not everybody reads their > mail from a Web browser or GUI client. This is another false reason. Don't tell us that someone is usually reading email messages using telnet to the port 110 of his POP3 server in a command line... And it doesn't matter if the message is top-posted or bottom-posted for the size of the message. The old messages need to be trimmed. Yes, that's the solution, but not the bottom-post. > I find the rules make a lot of sense and challenging them is just lazy, not > logical. We can also say that it is lazy to not wait until you download that unneeded data, but it is not fair. Fair is to read the messages as easy as possible, not with a bigger effort just because an old rule says that. > It doesn't even require much effort to bottom post properly so I find this > argument > extremely childish. Can yougive some hints about how to bottom-post as easy as top-posting when using Outlook Express? (But please don't tell me that another eventually less used email client that doesn't have other more important features is better and that I need to change it.) > Looking for software solutions on the Web I > encounter a lot of poorly designed message boards where everybody just > clicks on a 'quote' button. You end up with a horrible mess where the > original message is copied n times throughout the thread, the second > message n - 1 times, etc. It's just ugly and makes it very difficult > to read. I am a member of a mailing list and I don't care about forums. I don't like the forums because they are much hard accessible. If the messages from the mailing list are stored and presented on the web as a forum this is a secondary scope of a mailing list. The most important scope is to be used as easy as possible. > practices weren't used. I pretty much won't participate on mailing > lists that don't enforce such rules. Ok, if you don't care about the other members' problems due to these rules, go ahead and unsubscribe if you don't like it. Or if you are so important for the mailing list and you can impose a rule that makes other members' life harder, say your opinion clearly and show that you don't care about those members. I love to hear that. > It's just too much work to try. Much work? For what? To be able to read the new message immediately without needing to jump over a lot of text you already read? For those who need to jump over a lot of same and same messages just to be able to read a line or two of the new message involves much more work. Trimming is OK, but bottom-posting is not, and those who like or care about forums should use forums, not mailing lists. > As for the experienced members correcting coding style, I really > appreciate it. It helps you to learn how to write clean Perl a lot > faster than if you struggle with it yourself. And not only cleaner > looking code, but cleaner logic too. Helps you to spot errors that you > wouldn't otherwise have spotted, etc. Reading this list, and reading > those corrections, has quickly helped me to learn Perl and become > comfortable both reading and writing Perl code. You don't always have > to agree with the advice you're given, but it certainly doesn't hurt > to be given it. Yes you are right, but it depends how that correction is made. If I ask if the code $x=$y+$z; is correct, it is very OK to be answered that yes, it is OK, but that it be helpful to add other things like use strict; maybe even use warnings; and that it is also nice to use spaces between vars and operators and that it will need to declare the variables using my $x = $y + $z; ... But is not OK to be first told that I need to use strict and warnings, or that I need to add "my" or spaces, because maybe I already know these things and use them in my code, but I stripped them down on the mailing list because I am interested only in the code. The corrections are OK because other beginners will read them and they will be very helpful, but it is not OK to start the messages with them making the person who asked to feel stupid. Octavian -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
