Thomas Molina writes:
> On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Richard Gooch wrote:
>
> > But it's not consistent. I'm not asking for dogma. If it's not written
> > down somewhere (even if marked "in the opinion of the author"), then
> > every new FS^H^Hpiece of code has to survive a trial by flamewar. And
> > inevitably, the same old ground is covered each time. It's wasteful of
> > the time of the people flaming, and it makes linux-kernel more
> > voluminous, which leads to more people filtering it (or
> > unsubscribing).
>
> IMHO this flamage/trial by fire is a strength, not a weakness. Yes,
> each "new" idea generates the same/similar arguments. However, it
> is through the trial of the arguments that the ideas are tested and
> retested to see if they are valid.
I think you're missing my point. It's so wasteful having to cover the
same ground over and over again. There should be an easy way to locate
the various arguments in some repeat debate. Trawling the list
archives is too hard, since a good flamewar can last for weeks, has
several hundred messages, and can recur every few months.
> Certainly anything which has gone through the wringer more than once
> deserves mention in the FAQ. If it generates identical arguments
> then it deserves to be ignored. However, what about when someone
> says I understand that a, b, and c were extensively discussed
> before, but here is a new answer which I think invalidates some of
> the objections and here is the code which demonstrates that.
Exactly. If we had pro and con documents pointed to by the FAQ, people
could see what's already been covered. That might reduce the number of
repeat posts which are effectively "me too". So if people do have
something new to say, they won't waste bandwidth, and they can
reference the documents.
And if people start arguing the same points again, people can tell
them privately that this ground has already been covered, please read
the FAQ.
> Good/Bad/Indifferent ideas are certainly floatin around all over the
> place. I've seen a number of them, and a percentage of those have
> matured in their seperateness and eventually got included in the
> kernel. vfat support and devfs are cases in point.
Yes, and when I started thinking about devfs, all I got was short
answers from HPA (not blaming him) saying that this had already been
covered. So I had to trawl the list archives to see the points he and
others raised. It would have saved me time to have these points
already documented somewhere.
> We also have the court of final authority in our benevolent
> dictator, Linus Torvalds -- even if sometimes he claims to wear a
> brown bag. He's said more than once, "I won't even consider X, so
> don't bother submitting patches for it." Let's use that; such
> things also belong in the FAQ. The system works well, even if it
> occasionally generates numerous messages. That is what procmail
> recipies and the 'n' key are for.
It's not about how the decisions get made. It's about how we can
reduce list noise and also make discussions more accessible to people,
so they don't have to either start the argument again, or trawl the
archives.
And procmail isn't such a good solution, because of subject
drift. People rename the subject line even though the topic hasn't
changed (a capital offense, IMNSHO) because they want to stamp their
pedantic view, or the subject line isn't changed but the debate drifts
into something new.
The trouble is, the solution involves work. It's like documenting. And
we all know how much of that gets done. Perhaps the Linux companies
should by paying more people like Zack Brown (Kernel Traffic) to do
this sort of thing. Considering how many developers are being paid by
these companies, they're losing a lot of money due to developers
processing email. Hiring more documenters/argument archivers would
improve the efficiency of their developers.
Regards,
Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current: rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca
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