> On Fri, 30 Sep 1994 12:26:21 GMT, "Aaron Watters" <aaron@funcity.njit.edu> wrote:
>
> I'll take this opportunity to say in general that a couple of members of
> this list (including and especially the owner) often come off as extremely
> ego-centric, and it has been a real turn off for me. I am quite hesitant
> to leave any questions here for fear of being reamed.
I know *I'm* ego-centric, and I have no intention of changing that.
However, I *do* intend to be polite and civil, so if you catch me
slipping, you may call me on it.
But - as I've seen in the flame contest raging on
gnu.misc.discuss,comp.lang.tcl,et.al. ( part's of it touched
comp.lang.python, but not the worst of it! ) people differ
quite a bit in their metrics for civility. I've been having an
on and off-line debate with someone about the difference between
"intellectual rock-throwing" - which Richard Stallman engaged in,
and I think, is defensible, and "character assassination" - which
some of the folks who attacked Stallman have engaged in. RMS
never said anything nasty about John Ousterhout, - only about tcl.
I think that's an important distinction. The other party
in that debate didn't think so. <sigh!>
Maybe it's a cultural difference: people in the academic world are
used to having their *ideas* attacked and shot down unmercifully.
Attacking and defending ideas is, in fact, their JOB! ( There *is*
character assassination going on too, but it's NOT considered correct
behaviour, and is always done behind someones back! ) [ Note that
John Ousterhout gave the perfectly civil academic's reply to this sort
of provocation. Of course, there's also a long academic tradition of
letting other people do the dirty work. But even "Darwin's Bulldog"
kept the debate civil, but intellectually unmerciful. ]
> The first question I ever asked was about the indentation significance in
> python, making VERY clear that I was not opposed to it, just wondering
> what the thoughts were behind it. Well, all the question did was put the
> regulars into defensive mode and put a bad taste in my mouth.
>
> Maybe Guido (and others) get a lot of flack that we don't see? I don't
> know. I do know that I like python, I want to learn and use it, and
> because of the general attitude here, I have no place to go for help.
Well - another thing to understand is that newsgroups and mailing lists
have a *history*, and not ALL of that history is condensabl`e into a FAQ.
You just rubbed a raw nerve with that one. ( Sort of like posting a
message titled "Why you should not use tcl" to comp.lang.tcl, except
that YOU didn't know what you were stepping into, and RMS did! )
In fact, the history is hard to contain or capture in any form.
My response to you is a perfect example - it is influenced by
that parallel debate about RMS, which YOU may be quite unaware of,
but which *I* can't quite get out of my mind. Just as you
are still carrying the "baggage" of that pervious experience
into this thread.
( I could probably purge references of RMS, etc. from this note,
but it would still form the "subtext" - part of the motivation I
have for responding to you - and why I'm posting it publicly instead
of just e-mailing you. However, I *won't* torture you by including
gnu.misc.discuss in the distribution! )
> Please take this in the spirit it is intended, and that is of constructive
> critisim (sp?).
Trying. :-)
I think it's difficult, and sometimes pointless to try to take
every question in a vacuum. And I don't think it's possible to
"unify" our histories and contexts. There's a lot of anecdotal
consensus that e-mail, news, etc. is just a more "severe" medium,
and it's not the presence or absence of smiley's, etc. that make
the difference, but the wildly different contexts in which things
are read.
So the best we can expect is a little tolerance AND thicker skins
all around.
Tolerance for newbies asking questions that *may* look like flame bait.
Tolerance for harried folks who are *trying* to update the FAQ,
update the program, and support users, all mostly in their spare
time, and who sometimes get stretched a little thin and let that show.
And if different "readings" of someones words are possible, you have
to try to give them the benefit of the doubt. (I recently wrote to
someone "I couldn't believe somone who misread me so severely didn't do so
intentionally!" WRONG!! ... OK. So I'm ego-centric *AND* inconsistant! )
Maybe Guido needs a vacation from feeling that he has to answer
everyone's questions, but then, if he did that, he'ld be hearing
complaints about how "unresponsive" he is. ( Sorry Guido - it looks
like a no-win situation! :-) I'ld like to fill in and be "Guido's
Bulldog" on occasion, but he and I disagree on too many things for
me to be an effective "defender of the faith" !
[ But then, I also have to admit that I'm an example of what he
often says: people often start out asking "why can't I do this",
"why can't I do that", but once they really learn Python, they
discover that they have been asking the wrong questions. ]
-- Steve Majewski (804-982-0831) <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU> --
-- UVA Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics --
-- Box 449 Health Science Center Charlottesville,VA 22908 --