is laziness a programer's virtue?

[Xah Lee]

2007-03-29

Dear tech geekers,

In a couple of posts in the past year i have crossed-posted (e.g.
recently “What are OOP's Jargons and Complexities”, “is laziness a
programer's virtue?”, “On Java's Interface (the meaning of interface
in computer programing)” ), there are a some controversy, and lots of
off-topic and careless follow ups.

I think a few things today's tech geekers should remind themselves:

• If you deem something off-topic to “your” newsgroup, and want to
tech-geek by changing the “follow-up group”, start with yourself.
Please do not cross-post yourself, and tweak the follow-up, and
proudly proclaim that you changed the follow-up as a benign gesture.

• Please remind yourself what is on-topic and off-topic. Unless you
are the auhority of a online forum, otherwise, Meta-talk, and
policing, are off-topic in general, and only tends to worsen the
forum's quality. This issue is cleared up in online communications as
early as early 1990s.

• The facility of cross-posting is a good thing as a progress of
communication technology, and the action of cross-posting is a good
thing with respect to communication. What the common tech-geekers's
sensitivity to cross-posting are due to this collective's lack of
understanding of social aspects of communication. Cross-posting isn't
a problem. The problem is the power-struggling male nature and
defensiveness in propergating the tongues of a tech geeker's own.

  Tech-geeker's behavior towards cross-posting over the years did
nothing to enhance the content quality of newsgroups, but engendered
among computing language factions incommunicado, and aided in the
proliferation of unnecessary re-invention (e.g. the likes of Perl,
PHP, Python, Ruby that are essentially the same) and stagnation (e.g.
the lisp camp with their above-it attitude).

If you are a programer of X and is learning Y or wondering about Y,
please do cross-post it.  If your article is relevant to X, Y, and Z,
please cross post it.  If you are really anti-cross-posting, please
use a online forum that is more specialized with controlled
communication, such as mailing lists, developer's blogs, and website-
based forums.

I hope that the computing newsgroups will revive to its ancient nature
of verdant cross communication of quality content, as opposed to
today's rampant messages focused on politics, mutual sneering, closed-
mindedness, and careless postings.

References:

“Tech Geekers versus Spammers”
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tech_geekers_vs_spammers.html

Netiquette Guidelines, 1995, by S Hambridge. (RFC 1855)
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855

  Xah
  xah at xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/