Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-16 Thread Richard Clamp

On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 06:01:54PM +0200, Paul Johnson wrote:
 Simon Wistow said:
 
  Where would we be if we'd not bothered writing some Matt's Scripts
  replacments on the assumption that nobody would pick them up. Or
  written an extensible MLM in Perl on the assumption that despite having
  whinged about it for ages nobody would actually care.
 
 
 Oooh, did I miss something?  Has someone (plural?) written (present
 tense?) a new MLM.

Yes indeedy. Plural, present (and mostly past), and new:
http://siesta.sourceforge.net/

I announced in the week before YAPC::Europe here, so maybe people just
didn't pick up on it.

It needs a few things pulling together for its first release, but it's
all self hosting and stuff.

-- 
Richard Clamp [EMAIL PROTECTED]




Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-12 Thread Greg McCarroll
* David Cantrell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 03:58:41PM +0100, Lusercop wrote:
  On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 03:49:27PM +0100, Simon Wilcox wrote:
   * Must be a poster to the list
   * Or a regular on IRC
   * Or a regular at the pub and/or technical meets.
  OK, how do you judge any of these?
 
 Matthew, let me introduce you to this thing I found called common sense.
 

Please don't be using common sense it will spoil all the best
arguments on the list and on IRC. If you use this common sense thing,
the next thing you know, people will be saying things like yes, you
prefer foo and i prefer bar, thats like a difference of opinion and we
can live with that and not rant at each other for 3 hours on IRC.

Never again will we have the pointless arguments that have defined
#london.pm for the last 2 years, people will just agree that fox
hunting is stupid barbarism as opposed to adopting stances on the
argument based on their stances in the fastseduction argument a
few minutes previously.

It will be a terrible future, full of progress and a severe lack
of dancing monkeys arguing about buckets.

;-)

Greg

p.s. I apologise for all posts over the next few days, as I shall
be OD'ing on cough medicine.

-- 
Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/
   jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED]




Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Lusercop

On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 03:49:27PM +0100, Simon Wilcox wrote:
 * Must be a poster to the list
 * Or a regular on IRC
 * Or a regular at the pub and/or technical meets.

OK, how do you judge any of these? How often does one have to post in order
to be a poster on the list. How much time spent whiling away one's life on
IRC (OK, so I do it a bit too), and in particular, whiling away one's life
on #london.pm.

Spanner in the works? I doubt it.

-- 
Lusercop.net - LARTing Lusers everywhere since 2002




Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Roger Burton West

On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 03:58:41PM +0100, Lusercop wrote:
On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 03:49:27PM +0100, Simon Wilcox wrote:
 * Must be a poster to the list
 * Or a regular on IRC
 * Or a regular at the pub and/or technical meets.
OK, how do you judge any of these? How often does one have to post in order
to be a poster on the list. How much time spent whiling away one's life on
IRC (OK, so I do it a bit too), and in particular, whiling away one's life
on #london.pm.

The simpler version is to substitute leadership for rules: Somebody
whom most people on the mailing list know about, and the leader decides
in case of dispute.

Roger




RE: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Ivor Williams



On Friday, October 11, 2002 4:17 PM, Simon Wistow [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 04:02:21PM +0100, Ivor Williams said:
  Maybe introduce some kind of XP style voting system, like on Perlmonks or
  Everything2.

 Alternatively we could just do it and then, if anybody complains, deal
 with it then rather than our current modus operandi of burning our
 bridges before we come to them (I know that doesn't actually make sense
 but I just liked the imagery)

[snip]

 Carpe the tuits! If you script it THEY WILL COME! They drew first blood!
 I'll be back! Friends, Romans, Perl Mongers! etc etc ad infinitum ad
 nauseam.

 Having said that I'm currently in no position to write the code to back
 my polemic up so I should probably shut up.

Perhaps we don't need to write code. It may just be a case of downloading and 
installing the Everything Engine. Anybody got a machine on which to host it?





Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 04:16:56PM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote:
 Of course sometimes I think exactly the opposite but if yer optomistic
 then you get a lot more done.

Hear hear. Just post to webmaster and then have them check it in.
Webmaster might like to provide a template (in the general sense) to
fill in or have as an overall guide, and to help them integrate it into
the site. If someone then objects to the content, have them review it.
Simple. No need for scripts and endless chatter. Just fscking do it.

Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

What is a lollipop with out the good ship? It is silence, silence,
 silence.
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/




Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Simon Batistoni
On 11/10/02 10:16 +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
 Which made me thing - is there a section on books we wrote on the
 london.pm site to give blatant free advertising plugs? [No]
 
 Would it be a good idea? Not sure. Because then we'd have everyone
 (even Matt Wright?) subscribing to london.pm just to get their link.
 And not all books are equal. I don't think we'd want to end up with
 the same page promoting Data munging with perl, Object oriented perl,
 Learning perl and some masterpiece by someone allergic to use strict;

It could be a long, dark, slippery slope, but I think that it's
possible to distinguish between involved perl mongers such as Dave,
and freebie-seeking hangers on, who don't even come to a
meeting. There *is* a problem of perceived cliquishness, of course,
but... I dunno.

It would be a nice section of the site to have, and avoiding doing it
because we'll be obliged to include every screed turned out by every
mailing list member seems... like a very odd version of political
correctness. Mileages may vary.




Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Dean Wilson
- Original Message -
From: Simon Batistoni [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 It could be a long, dark, slippery slope, but I think that it's
 possible to distinguish between involved perl mongers such as Dave,
 and freebie-seeking hangers on, who don't even come to a meeting.
 There *is* a problem of perceived cliquishness, of course, but... I
dunno.

I haven't been to an official meeting in the best part of twelve months and
i had to miss YAPC. Does that make me a freebie-seeking hanger on? If it
does and the criteria for getting something on the site is going to the pub
then fine but if it doesn't then you have to have a solid set of rules and
they have to be the same for everyone, if we start 'he's my friend so he
can go on the site' then we are going to look like elitests.

I dislike the idea of having a two tier membership.

 It would be a nice section of the site to have

If you are going to do personal bios on the site put it in there if you
consider it something you want mentioned, having a seperate section just
seems out of place.

  Dean
--
Profanity is the one language all programmers understand
--- Anon





Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Simon Batistoni
On 11/10/02 12:53 +0100, Dean Wilson wrote:
 I haven't been to an official meeting in the best part of twelve months and
 i had to miss YAPC. Does that make me a freebie-seeking hanger on? If it
 does and the criteria for getting something on the site is going to the pub
 then fine but if it doesn't then you have to have a solid set of rules and
 they have to be the same for everyone, if we start 'he's my friend so he
 can go on the site' then we are going to look like elitests.
 
 I dislike the idea of having a two tier membership.

I feel exactly the same (although I do manage to make it to the pub
because it always seems to be 2 streets from my office), and I was
trying to juggle that feeling with the feeling that it would be nice
to have such a feature on the site. It appears I may have dropped my
balls. *cough*

 If you are going to do personal bios on the site put it in there if you
 consider it something you want mentioned, having a seperate section just
 seems out of place.

I think personal bios still have a problem, in that there has to be
some criteria for bio-worthiness, which doesn't wind up looking
elitist. I have a sinking feeling that the two things are
incompatible, and that nice idea as it is, it really wouldn't work in
practice.




Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread the hatter
On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Simon Batistoni wrote:

 I think personal bios still have a problem, in that there has to be
 some criteria for bio-worthiness, which doesn't wind up looking
 elitist. I have a sinking feeling that the two things are
 incompatible, and that nice idea as it is, it really wouldn't work in
 practice.

I don't see how it could work for bios, but for books, what's to stop us
letting people add short reviews/opinions under it.  If you question the
sexual orientation of strict, for example, would you be in a hurry to get
your book on the list, when (a) most of the people reading the site will
disagree, and will be able to air their views and (b) google reads the
site quite regularly, so someone looking for details about your book will
bring up lots of peoples sound arguments for why it's not worth the paper
it's printed on.


the hatter






Re: Books on london.pm.org (was Re: applying patterns)

2002-10-11 Thread Nicholas Clark
On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 02:09:37PM +0100, Simon Batistoni wrote:
 On 11/10/02 12:53 +0100, Dean Wilson wrote:
  I haven't been to an official meeting in the best part of twelve months and
  i had to miss YAPC. Does that make me a freebie-seeking hanger on? If it
  does and the criteria for getting something on the site is going to the pub
  then fine but if it doesn't then you have to have a solid set of rules and
  they have to be the same for everyone, if we start 'he's my friend so he
  can go on the site' then we are going to look like elitests.
  
  I dislike the idea of having a two tier membership.
 
 I feel exactly the same (although I do manage to make it to the pub
 because it always seems to be 2 streets from my office), and I was
 trying to juggle that feeling with the feeling that it would be nice
 to have such a feature on the site. It appears I may have dropped my
 balls. *cough*

I guess the simpler thing is only to link from members (if we did it)
o the reviews of any book (which we would have to have before we'd accept
making a link)

Then if we don't like a book, we can slag it off in the review.
That makes the links to members' books page objective, and decouples it from
the subjective content (whether we believe the book to be good)

I think I'm safe in saying we here - if someone does a review that
enough other people disagree with, then I would expect someone else to come
and write the contradictory review.

 I think personal bios still have a problem, in that there has to be
 some criteria for bio-worthiness, which doesn't wind up looking
 elitist. I have a sinking feeling that the two things are
 incompatible, and that nice idea as it is, it really wouldn't work in
 practice.

I don't think I can see a way round this, hence I suspect doing bios won't
be practical.

Nicholas Clark