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On Mar 24, 5:00 am, "Jeff P. Bailey" <nos...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 23/3/2008 23:57, Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
>
>
> > jacob navia said:
>
> >>Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
> >>[snip]
>
> >>>Likewise, I assure you. But I think we differ over who we think the
> >>>morons are. If you don't like my articles, why not killfile me?
>
> >>I would say the same. Good advice. You could use it yourself and
> >>stop answering my posts.
>
> > Since it is in your commercial interest to have as few people as possible
> > pointing out your misunderstandings, blunders, and product plugs, your
> > response does not surprise me at all. It may surprise *you*, however, to
> > discover that I actually reply to relatively few of your articles. (It may
> > surprise others, too.)
>
> This is the sort of thing I was talking about - a pointlessly negative
> post. Every article of jacob's I've read has been well-informed and
> useful - and if his posts put C in its wider context, instead of being
> narrowly focussed on minor details, then so much the better!
>
In a discussion thread on topicality,
Navia calls Heathfield's views "stupid" and "bullshit"
Heathfield says Navia's posts contain "misunderstandings, blunders,
and product plugs"
and you say Heathfield's comment was "pointlessly negative"?
Morphius: "Do you think that is air you are breathing? Hmmm."
> What I really can't understand is why people are /so/ exclusive. A
> reasonable person would say that threads (which will certainly be part
> of the next C++ standard, and I believe are also being considered for
> the next C standard) are a topic of interest to C programmers, whereas
> the breeding habits of gazelle aren't. And if something's borderline,
> why not "be liberal in what you accept"?
You are the second person to suggest including discussions of
threading should be topical in c.l.c because it is being added to the C
++ language. Why would that be of interest to C programs?? C++ is a
different language! It has it's own group. By this argument, you might
be in favor of discussing some new feature of Transact-SQL in
comp.databases.oracle.server where is normally discussed PL/SQL
programming. Is that really your contention?
IMHO, Threads is not on topic in c.l.c, for example. Threads is a
perfect topic for comp.programming. Is it really so bad to send
discussions to the groups where they belong? That is why groups exist
by topic. These are not some AOL chat rooms. Try visiting
comp.programming There are some smart people there. Some of them are
even the same people as here! It is so much easier to get right
answers in the right groups.
Some groups are liberal in discussions. Some discussions just
naturally drift off topic on occasion. It can be beneficial to accept
borderline discussions, but not clearly off topic discussion. It is
beneficial to cut short threads that are borderline. It is fundamental
to the concept of groups: TOPIC is the key.
>
> The reason it seems crazy to me is that it costs you (in Thunder Bird at
> least) a single key-press to *ignore* a thread that you're not
> interested in - you don't need to reply to it, or even take any time
> seeing any more posts in the thread once you've ignored it. Making a
> series of "that's off topic" posts takes /much/ more time than just
> pressing the ignore key!
But if no one points out off topic posts, then they become more
frequent until the group loses its identity. There is no censorship in
unmoderated groups like this. Staying on-topic only happens when
people know what is on-topic. A certain amount of negative feedback
helps. Discussions like this are on occasion necessary in healthy
groups.
Ed
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