From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:02:24 -0500

Antony Stone wrote:
>
> Of course, if the list maintainers prefer to restrict the lists to people who
> follow rules, rather than open them up to as many people who want to use and
> potentially contribute to Rockbox as possible, then it's their right to do
> so, but I seriously don't think this is in the best interests of the Rockbox
> project, and little bit of compromise would be a significant improvement all
> round.
>

One significant problem with compromise is that it essentially leads to
giving up entirely. One consideration - perhaps the current state (where
people are basically never banned from the list, and are merely reminded
of the rules) is a significant compromise from preventing people from
posting entirely (perhaps a moderated list, or some sort of scanning for
obvious top-posting)?

If you agree to a compromise, then once you've reached it a new group of
people can come along, not familiar with the compromise, and simply say
"we just want this little bit more. You compromised with them, why won't
you compromise with us?" This losing ground by halves eventually leads
to a gradual erosion of position.

You can compromise with a static group. If the group continues to
change, you will always have new people who feel they should push for a
new compromise, and either they will feel just as oppressed as you do
now by maintainers at that time saying "we've already given all that we
want to give" or the position will have to continually change.

> So please, etiquette enforcers, consider relaxing the rules and running the
> Rockbox lists rather more like many other open source project mailing lists
> (I'd be surprised if you're not also on several of those as well, so you know
> how unusual Rockbox is in this respect), so that the lists end up focusing on
> discussing Rockbox software, how to use it, how to improve it, and how to
> encourage people to install it on their players, and not on arbitrary rules
> of how to write emails or which list to ask questions on.
>

Why couldn't this paragraph be phrased as "please, users, just don't top
post or post things not related to Rockbox so that the lists end up
focusing..."

It's not like the rules are difficult:
1) Don't top post.
2) Questions should only be about Rockbox, and you should've checked in
the manual first.
3) Don't post to the development list with things that aren't about
actually developing Rockbox.

This is the problem I have - responses like yours act like the rules are
extremely draconian. Like it's too much to ask of people. Which part of
these three rules is particularly difficult to follow?

In fact, how many people do you think have lost posting privileges for
breaking any of these rules?

> These lists would be a far nicer place for everyone if the focus were
> "discussing Rockbox, using these guidelines" rather than "how to use mailing
> lists, and this one's for Rockbox".
>
See, I agree with this point. Maybe you could propose guidelines that
are more lenient than the above that solve the same problems, given that
"top posting" isn't a negotiable issue?
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Received on 2009-06-21