> Argumentative. I've explained this enough. Your attempts to upset me
> will not work. So you might as well drop it.
Nah, I'm not trying to upset you. Just yanking your chain a little
bit, but I did have a point to make.
I found your recent exchanges to be very interesting, and
thought-provoking, but not for the reasons you might suspect.
It struck me that over and over and over, your message was not so much
"you are wrong", as it was "you should not post because you don't know
what you're talking about".
I think your point (the latter) was quite valid, because we all know
that techy forums and lists are chock full of misinformation.
Valid, yes. But is your way the best way to conduct things.
So, I gave this some thought (the best my meagre brain could manage).
Choice one: Only posts by people who are relatively expert.
Choice two: Posts by everybody who feels they want to post.
It may surprise you, but I come down 100 percent on the side of posts
by anybody, and if that includes lots of misinformation, so be it.
A couple of reasons: first (as I was hinting, unsuccessfully, in my
earlier post), in Choice A, who is the god who decides on what is
"enough" expertise? 1 distro back, or 2 distros back, etc. A very
slippery slope. Do you want to be moderator and check every posting
to see if it's up to your standards? Maybe only people who have RHCE
can post?
Second reason: I suspect (just my opinion) that the dynamics of lists
and forums would be harmed by demanding too much professionalism. If
people are intimidated from posting because they don't think they have
adequate expertise, there might be less "traffic", and less traffic
begets even less traffic....and so on. Forums die, lists languish.
When I google for information on some problem I'm having, I would
rather have 20 hits, with 10 of them being misinformation, than to
have only 1 hit with only a fraction of what I need to know. I'll
take on the task of weeding out the misinformation. I vote for
healthy forums and lists, with misinformation and all!
So, my own personal preference would be if everybody took "you should
not post" out of their vocabulary, and, absolutely, when required,
replace it with "that is totally bogus and wrong-headed". (But no
personal attack please)
Of course, it's just my preference, and my opinion. It has nothing to
do with distros or specifics, and it might even be wrong.
John
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