From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-08-21T00:59:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Old guard FAQ culture

On Thursday, August 21, 2003, 1:29:01 AM, Brandon wrote:

>>>When someone first
>>> mentioned ruby-talk, they mentioned it as though everyone already
>>> knew what it was.  I didn't; I assumed it was some chat channel
>>> somewhere and I wasn't going to delve into that sort of thing.
>>
>> That's because, contrary to common guidelines of Usenet etiquette -
>> which you'll no doubt declare are of no interest to you personally
>> right now - you have not spent any time lurking to get the feel of the
>> group.

> I don't believe in lurking "to get the feel," and never have.  It is a
> luxury for people with all the time in the world.  It's also a form of
> submissiveness (shut up, don't speak until you know the ropes) that I don't
> expect out of children, adults, or basically anybody.

OK, so you don't believe in something that most other people do
believe in.  And you're going to shout to high heaven about your
rights.  You're a stranger marching into a party beating a drum and
demanding attention, and you wonder why you're getting a bad response.

> Proper community behavior is tolerance for and information sharing
> with newcomers.

Many newcomers here will attest to that.  And see ruby-doc.org for a
"document bundle" with heaps of information especially collected by
newcomers, for newcomers.

> Nobody, IMHO, should be busting a newcomer's chops about whether
> they've read all the FAQs or not.

No-one did so until you posted about 30 messages in about 2 days.  How
do you justify such time expenditure?

> Pointing at info that's available in FAQs is quite ok.
> That's what they're there for.  I only feel more strongly about these things
> now that Usenet isn't an academic backwater.  We passed the point of
> newsgroups being identical to cozy little mailing lists with uniform, rigid
> community standards a *long* time ago.

AFAIK, and despite your ill-grounded protestations to the contrary,
this was first a mailing list, then a gateway to a newsgroup was
created.

>>  If you did, you would see a regularly-published comp.lang.ruby
>> FAQ, containing posting guidelines and links to resources, like
>> www.ruby-talk.org.  Of course, you could have looked at
>> www.ruby-lang.org as well.  Not too hard, is it?

> I *did* look at www.ruby-lang.org before coming here.  I *read* a FAQ about
> Ruby.

But not about comp.lang.ruby, which is different and, I think, up to date.

> And the Python people confirmed that it was out of date.  Which put
> my interest in your local FAQ process at zero.

Polite, as always.

Gavin