In the last few weeks I
have had two complaints submitted to me by members against other
members. The first contended that a certain respected (well, at least
by me!) contributor was biased against certain products. There's a
surprise. I have yet to meet an informed techy who was not predisposed
more to one product line or technology than another. I like to
exercise a very light touch in moderating Groups and in general will
only block a message if it is offensive or totally irrelevant in my
judgement. That is why you do not see many postings in this Group
inviting you to hang a Rolex around the enlarged subject of another
spamail.
I do discourage
billboarding, by which I mean blatant marketing spiel pushing a
product. However, there are valid reasons why people should believe in
the virtues of products and there is no reason to interdict a sincere
appreciation of such products or technology per se, provided it is
within the criteria I have just mentioned. For example, if someone in
this Group were to contend in so many words that Java was mannah from
heaven and .NET was crap, a Microsoft supporter or employee would be
fully entitled to refute that statement with an argument producing the
relevant comparative facts.
I have also recently had
a complaint that a certain individual is overly promoting a certain
technology as a universal SOA solution against all others. The
complainant is not happy that I tolerate this and is suggesting that
this turns many of you off and that amny of you will abandon the Group
in consequence. Obviously this would be unfortunate. Some of you may
recall the epic battles between Seán McGrath (in the XML corner) and
David Forslund (in the CORBA corner). You may also recall Mark Baker's
(in the REST corner) skirmishes with the WSDL/SOAP/UDDI gangs. Jeff
Schneider has also been known to put the odd contentious boot in to our
general entertainment (BTW< it is a long time since we heard from
Jeff - are you still there?). My point is that all these gentlemen
argued their case with great conviction whilst maintaining requisite
levels of politeness and impersonal address.
My next point is very
simple: if you object to someone's arguments for whatever reason -
answer back! Just take the trouble to observe common courtesies (which
is very rarely a problem with this Group) and hopefully we will all
learn from the debate. What I am not prepared to do is to censor
automatically any stance that deviates from that oxymoron "conventional
wisdom" as laid down by the major vendors and their more sycophantic
media people.
We look forward to
wisdom emerging from polite conflict.
Gervas
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