Mailing List Archive

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> btw, while we're on this topic, here's an interesting
> article by kent pitman:
>
> http://world.std.com/~pitman/pfaq/cross-posting.html
>
> "Why are crossposts generally antisocial?
> - Physical Burden of Reading Crossposted News
> - Consumption of Community Resources
> - Targeted Audience
> - Inclusivity and Exclusivity"

Well, I have no time for reading that. Obviously crossposts
are useful. I'll tell you how it works:

1.There's one issue A you want to investigate,
and the people with a balanced view read different newsgroups,
B, C, D, E. You even know that some people in E are too young and E is
obviously
a contender with A. As the people in E is quite alike that in D, you
leave out E, even if you think
it's more probable there's more people that actually know about A in E
than in D.
You know that B is a contender with A, but there's nothing you can do
about it, as that
seems to be the most promising group.
So you _crosspost_ (not multiple post) to A,B,C,D
2. You have to explain that you want to be straight regarding A, so you
give an example of how
some thing C and is obviously not in a D tradition is `wrong' but
good. So that the same could
be true about A.
3. You correct a point regarding C (still on the same line), which
relates to F, that you know
about and it's good, but where something bothers you, specially
because sometimes you
_do_ consider F. You obviously have to add F to the discussion.
4. Nobody comes up with anything against A. So you learn that your
preconceptions about
A are wrong, that all the bad things that were said about A were
religious, and that all you can do is express your stylistic and
philosophical objections against A, but nothing more. The A people is
happy. It has been a great victory, and something has changed from
today. The A people fade off.
5. Suddenly, the silent B people start compaining. What vibe did you
touch? Was it an explicit G vibe (you don't care about telling G because
it's pointless, and you don't care about fixing G either, even if you
`are a G' (by force)), or an implicit B vibe? Is it just some people
that think they own the truth? And that do not like learning? (If
something tells you you're right, and you already believe that, you
learn nothing. If they tell you you're wrong, at least you'll
contemplate the issue) Or is it that they were silent only while
something bad about A was looming?
6. Suddenly, your beliefs about B are changed. It seems that even if B
were good, you don't want to have anything to do about it, because then
you would have to hang around with the Bs. And you think that maybe A is
better just because the As are more mature (of course you've never set
foot in A). Oh, are the As having a party.

In conclusion, when choosing a language one must not underestimate the
style of its community. And actually,
not wanting to hang around in G, even if I have used G for the last 4
years has always struck me as basically perverse (actually, I even went
offline for a couple years, as there was not a compelling reason to be
wired. Occasionals emails and FTPs were enough).

May I have my PhD in Anthropology now? ;-)

> Well, I have no time for reading that. Obviously crossposts
> are useful. I'll tell you how it works:

Congratulations! Welcome to my kill file!

In article <376621CF.88C95B5E@iname.com>, Fernando Mato Mira
<matomira@iname.com> wrote:
> Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>
> > btw, while we're on this topic, here's an interesting
> > article by kent pitman:
> >
> > http://world.std.com/~pitman/pfaq/cross-posting.html
> Well, I have no time for reading that. Obviously crossposts
> are useful. I'll tell you how it works:
> <snip: long off-topic ramblings>
No time? You do seem to have plenty of time to flood several language
newsgroups with off-topic postings like the present one. Revealing
priorities.

--
-- F

Fernando Pereira wrote:

> In article <376621CF.88C95B5E@iname.com>, Fernando Mato Mira
>
> No time? You do seem to have plenty of time to flood several language

No time to read a philosophy of `closed mindness' that I don't share.
What is off-topic to you is not to everyone. For comp.lang, I rarely
look outside of comp.lang.lisp. Even comp.object, which would be
a natural environment for me was going unread. And if a comp.lang.misc
exists, who said the `people that know' looks there?

If all you do is code in your own favorite language, this kind of
discussion
will obviously not be intersting to you.

And nobody still gave me a reason why I should look beyond
the www.python.org front page (I'd already been there).

I'm out of here. If one of the previous flamers wants to send me email
regarding
that question, you're welcome to do so. But I won't waste any more time
defending myself and showing other points of view regarding crossposting
to dogmatic people that think that when an authority puts up a web page,
it must obviously be `the truth'.
Actually, you should read that better. The first sentence says
`generally'.

Obviously, comp.lang.python falls into the generality. No one from
any other group complained, even when I explicitly pointed out something
that "they" (i.e. I'm part of them) might not like. What does that say
about you?

[.The cool people around (including _every_single_one_ who stood up for
tcl)
please excuse me (specially Guido, since I have a hunch he must be a
really cool guy).
I'm not talking about you. But really, this infuriates me so much,
if someone asks me what I think about Python I'll probably just answer
"Don't go there"]

You can cheer now.

> "cult" "kiddie" "flamer" "dogmatic"

interesting. a lot of new cool things to add
to my business card. given that fernando has
never met me in person, it's amazing what he
could figure out just by reading a usenet post
or two. he's a sure genius, that guy ;-)

</F>

<WASTE OF BANWIDTH>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> > "cult" "kiddie" "flamer" "dogmatic"
>
> interesting. a lot of new cool things to add
> to my business card. given that fernando has
> never met me in person, it's amazing what he
> could figure out just by reading a usenet post

Just to clarify:

"cult" not used in any negative sense, and I never called
anyone "kiddie". I only wondered exists(k) / reads-python(k) ?

As you can see from the tags, you can see I how understand
what the problem is. Sorry if I've never had less than T1 for free,
and never stepped out from `expensive' newsgroups. For some of
us `old guys' this thing about people paying to take even the subjects
home is new (after 10 years wired, who reads guidelines, if they have
always been basically the same?).

</WASTE OF BANWIDTH>

Constructive bit:

Put in your FAQ and guidelines to warn about this to any new guy
before somehow making him feel he is being flamed.

I also have to go through Kent's piece and see with him, because the
`intersection'
part is very misleading. The people interested is that in
intesect(A,I) U intesect(B,I) where I is the set of ALL people
interested in issue I
which will in general be very different from intersect(A,B)