Hello friends in the list,
I did not want to reply, however, I have now been forced to reply.
On 04/19/2011 05:26 PM, Jenda Krynicky wrote:
Try Alcoholics Anonymous. This is not a post-traumatic mutual support
group, this is a technical mailing list! If you can't handle a terse
and to the point reply, you should change the profession and try to
find nicer talking people in the humanities. The catch is that the
emails will start with a greeting, continue with a compliment, use
soft words ... and be empty, empty, empty.
A 'Technical mailing-list' does not mean that the posts are posted/read
by bots! Posts are posted/read by humans who have feelings and can get
hurt. Statements like the ones quoted above do more harm than good.
On 04/19/2011 05:26 PM, Jenda Krynicky wrote:
As it is, those people should not be doing anything technical in the
first place. The compiler will not start with a greeting and
compliment their hairstyle either.
No one is born a programmer; nor does anyone become a perfectionist
overnight. Perl might even be some people's first attempt at learning a
programming language. Quoting Learning Perl: "… we're pleased that we've
had many reports of people successfully picking up [Learning Perl] and
grasping Perl as their first programming language …". This list is
focused on such people. Beginners! We should encourage them and grow the
community rather than be rude and let them search for 'green pastures'.
For a language to survive, there has to be a thriving community of
users. A mailing-list that welcomes new users and assists them is what I
call a 'healthy mailing-list'. Such lists will increase user
participation and eventually lead to the list being 'useful' to the
posters as well as to the community.
Flaming is __HARM__ done to the community. No one enjoys it. It is the
best way to be destructive!
One of my personal experiences:
I once posted an answer here (which happened to be wrong) and I had
included a sentence: "Hope it is clear now." at the bottom of my
message. However, a public reply that I got included (other than some
useful corrections), a reply to the above sentence: "No, nothing is
clear from those answers." which was an avoidable, unnecessary quote. If
the replier had appended a smiley :-) to the sentence, I would have
certainly considered it humorous. If you are into pun, or play with
words, consider using smileys as this list is followed by people from
different nations, backgrounds, cultures and native languages. Most (if
not all) are able to understand smileys. Not everyone's first language
is English. It is better not to be ambiguous.
In my humble opinion, for rules like quoting e-mails, using/not using
line numbers, indenting, et cetera, a wiki page should be created which
could then be pointed to when needed. If anyone is interested, please
let me know so that we can build one.
As an aside: I am sorry if any uneasiness was caused by my statements.
This was inevitable.
A proverb for the thoughtful: "Prevention is better than cure".
Regards,
Alan Haggai Alavi.
--
The difference makes the difference
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