It seems to me that there is newgroup etiquette that for this group should include anyone requesting anyone else to move a discussion to private mail, or to sage-flame. At least for a while.
Common courtesy would be to agree, even if it might not be entirely to your liking. Changing code is more troublesome. Group A says 0^0 should be simplified to1 because it is consistent with x^0=1. Group B says 0^0 should be 0 because 0^x=0. Group C says it is undefined, UND or NaN. Group D says signal an error... or someone fresh from a calculus course says the answer is log(abs(x)) not log(x). (Remember that?) How to mediate? Not obvious, but sometimes a consensus can be reached through an educational process. Or as is sometimes done in Maxima, by introducing a "flag" that allows you to implement both choices. Or having a library that, when read in, makes a bunch of changes to suit some context of mathematics. (This is extremely easy in Maxima, loading a Lisp file. I assume there is a way from Sage to cause routines to be overwritten, and even to instruct Maxima to overwrite some of its routines. If a group of people conspire to write, review, and approve a bunch of changes that another group of people think is wrong, then consider the US Congress. Do you want votes, vetoes, filibusters? I think the "nuclear option" is to make a project fork, as was done for example in the CAS Axiom <--> FriCAS. RJF On Saturday, November 15, 2014 9:05:51 PM UTC-8, Nathann Cohen wrote: > > Hello ! > > > Here are some links to discussions that look to me have gone astray. > Also, as you might notice > > that some of the participants in these discussions have since ceased to > post on the public > > mailing lists, even though they were active contributors/developers > before: > > Ahahaha. Such a long thread, advocating that criticism should never get > personnal, and all of a sudden I learn that it is only there to decide what > Sage should dispose of my humble self ? :-PPP > > > If we want to avoid that discussions drift off to private mailing lists > or to loose > > contributors, as we all seem to agree is not desirable, then I think > guidelines > > for discussions would be helpful. > > You see, in this case the effect of guidelines would only be to close > discussions. Or, to be more direct, to throw me out of it. > > And I do not think that this is a good way out. If I make no mistake, in > two of those threads I was mostly complaining against lack of actions. The > thing with a code of conduct is that a winning strategy is just to stop > answering/posting as it only condems insults and verbal violence, while I > believe that in some cases that would be escaping one's responsibilities. > > Responsibility is hard to define in a code of conduct. > > Nathann > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
