Anyway, I don't find it especially interesting, but since this new
topic (tone of OpenACS Forums posts) started between Peter and I in
email, and is at least potentially important (e.g., if I'm wrong below
it could be very important), here's my contribution:
On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 02:32:33PM +0100, Peter Marklund wrote:
> Hey Andrew!
> I take your point, and it's good. However, please note that this kind of
> tone in our forums does not invite beginners to ask questions. Mohan
[shrug] Well, you're entitled to that opinion. My tone is usually
much more helpful, even (especially?) to clueless newbies who don't
know what they're doing, as you can see from my posting history. In
this case, the tone seemed justified to me, even necessary. Why else
would I post an essentially redundant comment, after all? For
emphasis.
> Pakkurti has talked to several developers in Europe who have confirmed
> that this is a real problem that we have.
Rumor and hearsay. If we're going to go by anecdotal evidence (which
in this case is probably fine), we should at least know the full
details of the anecdote. And any such discussion probably belongs in
public on the BBoard, not here.
Tone and culture cut both ways. I would hope that NO developers
trying to use and/or contribute to OpenACS consider themselves
"incompetent". If they do, well, I don't think we want them, do you?
(Of course, the truly incompetent never consider themselves such, but
that's straying of topic...)
Further, IMNSHO, the OpenACS BBoards show an unusually high degree of
both competence and helpfullness on the web. High signal to noise
ratio. That's why I like it so much. I could be wrong, but in
general I don't see any "tone" problem.
