Date   : Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:28:13 +0100 (WET-DST)
From   : PCOGHLAN@... (Peter Coghlan)
Subject: [OT] Where's the love?

>
>OK, where's the community spirit gone?!
>

I think its a combination of two things:

1. Claims are made on the list from time to time which are somewhat
dubious. Sometimes, people that know a little about something
then make assumptions and jump to conclusions which causes them to
make statements which are just plain wrong. Often, they qualify
their statements with "I think..." or "Maybe..." or similar which
is fine as everyone then knows to take them with a grain of salt but
occasionally, we see emphatic statements made that others on the
list know are completely false.

2. Other members on the list can sometimes be somewhat over
enthusiastic in their quest to ensure that incorrect or dubious
information is not presented on the mailing list unchallenged.

Perhaps we could all check our facts more carefully before
posting something that we are not 100% sure about. Alternatively,
if we could be rather less dogmatic about that which we are
not greatly experienced and highly qualified in, I think it
would help to avoid conflict.  "As far as I can see", or
"from my limited experience of" or "according to a friend of
mine" or whatever goes a long way to alerting recipients
of our postings to the level of knowledge we have of the subject
in hand and the amount of research we have done before reaching
for the keyboard to post. Perhaps we could take a minute to verify
that if someone should query what we are about to say, that we
would be able to stand over it and show how we reached our
conclusions if asked to.

Remember that there are a large number of members on the mailing
list and many of them are very knowlegable and very experienced
across a broad range of subjects - just check out the signatures.
Thats a lot of critical eyes to be putting our random thoughts
and unverified assumptions before.

Secondly, when we do spot something posted to the list which we
believe to be wrong, perhaps we could post a calm, polite
correction for the benefit of any list members who may have been
sent astray by it. There is nothing to be gained by and no excuse
for rude or deliberately offensive postings. There is no good
reason that list memebers should have to end up worrying about
their children coming across postings from this list.

I for one, when I do a search of the mailing list archives, want to
be sure that the information I find is correct and helpful to me,
not some incorrect assumptions that nobody bothered to correct
or some excerpt from a flame war (or a spelling war for that
matter :-)

Regards,
Peter

(hoping that this message doesn't add to the hostility and that anyone who
thinks they recognise themselves in the above won't take offense.)