From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2006-12-20T13:47:00+09:00
Subject: Re: where have all the experienced users gone?


dblack@wobblini.net wrote:
> Hi --
>
> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, Michael T. Richter wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2006-20-12 at 02:31 +0900, James Britt wrote:
> >
> >> Agreed.
> >>
> >> I've been marking all list mail as 'read' upon arrival so there is no
> >> instant clue that there are new messages.  I visually scan for certain
> >> sender names or topic words, and have some filters to catch references
> >> to a small set of keywords.  Just in case.
> >>
> >> But I don't bother trying to keep up or pitch in as I once did.  I'm
> >> sure I'm missing some interesting topics, but it's too tedious to wade
> >> through "What is the best IDE?" , "What's wrong with my ajax?",  "Why is
> >> my model not validating?", and "Your opinion on [foo] is teh sux."
> >>
> >> All in all, I'd rather just focus on writing, and writing about, Ruby.
> >>
> >> (This started way before the holidays, too, so we can't blame Santa's
> >> elves.)
> >
> >
> >
> > While I can understand and appreciate the reasons for this approach,
> > James, it does have a significant (and in my opinion bad) side-effect:
> > you're leaving the field to those who can't contribute as much or as
> > well as you can.  This means that a Ruby Newbie (hah! :D) coming into
> > the mailing list for the first time does not see a vital community full
> > of knowledgeable people ready to share what they know.  Instead they see
> > an increasingly hostile community fraught with flames and lacking
> > support for them.  A significant fraction of these (likely the majority)
> > will then conclude that learning Ruby won't be worthwhile and will go
> > elsewhere to less productive, less useful, less fun languages.  They
> > suffer and so does the Ruby community as a result.
>
> If it were all that deterministic and manipulable and predictable,
> we'd just do whatever it was that pushed the "Make this a great forum
> for all people, forever" button and that would be that.  It's
> certainly too bad to see James pulling away from the list, but I think
> we have to bend before we break, so to speak.  James is free to do as
> he likes.
>
> The increases in hostile, flame-like rhetoric on the list in recent
> times will not, I'm afraid, vary inversely with signal.

Has it increased? I imagine there's probably some conservation
principle at play. after all what would life be without a little drama
now and then, eh david?

flame-wars are underated ;-) and honestly its the one's with real
bullets that get too much hype.

t.