Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/03/06/00:38:15
On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, Paul Shirley wrote:
> In article <199703022040 DOT PAA22429 AT delorie DOT com>, DJ Delorie
> <dj AT delorie DOT com> writes
> >As for the usual censorship argument, let me remind you all that
> >moderation and retro-moderation don't stop posts, they only stop posts
> >in the wrong groups.
>
> The only choice needed really is wether crossposts are automatically
> deleted or do they need examining first.
> Of course I could be being a little extreme here ;)
>
> Back in the real world: I suppose its worth discussing what an
> appropriate response to the FAQs that annoy Eli so much should be.
> Converting them to an email response *most* of the time sounds
> reasonable to me.
I'm not completely convinced of that. It's easy to say when you're a
DJGPP veteran and know exactly where to look when you have a question, and
are already familiar with a lot of the background information. But,
people new to DJGPP might need a little more assistance than simply a
pointer to an albeit excellent FAQ. For me, the most important piece of
information in the DJGPP readme was the mailing list address (I think at
the time it was something like djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu). I came from
Turbo C, which didn't require linker options on the command line (you
could do most everything from the IDE), didn't need special switches for
debugging, didn't have a program called "symify" to perform a post-mortem
analysis, didn't have source code you could look at, didn't have protected
mode vs. real mode issues, didn't need to a append a stub with coff2exe or
stubify programs, etc. The people on the mailing list provided me with
all the information I needed, both at the time to get myself effectively
using DJGPP, and also provided me with the basic skills and pointers so
that I could learn more about how DJGPP worked on my own. I feel that
this is the primary goal of the mailing list/newsgroup, and anything that
potentially affects that does not make the list as valuable as before. I
have also benefitted from discussions, which could potentially be
re-routed elsewhere according to some proposals, that have enhanced my
C/C++ skills (especially concerning issues such as portability,
efficiency, and standardization), understanding of how to milk each
microprocessor and system architecture, optimized algorithms, and the
like. And I wager that most people in the DJGPP community would agree
with me that most of the "gray-area" discussions can be beneficial to at
least some of the people listening to the discussions, and at the very
worst force someone to press the delete key once more to skip the message.
I feel that in order to continue providing the excellent service we do for
the DJGPP community, we must learn to accept some of the posts that most
of us used to do when we were unfamiliar with the environment (especially
those with a relatively weak UNIX background). I just ask that if it
comes down to a vote of the entire group or just DJ's decision, to please
strongly consider this information, and acknowlege how the willingness to
help on virtually anything is one of the greatest assets of the
list/newsgroup. My official position remains one of neutrality, but I
would lean substantially toward no moderation should those "gray area"
posts from which I have benefitted so much, be affected.
Just my two cents.
>
> Last time retro moderation was discussed on a group I read it was still
> a brand new idea. Are there any sources of information on groups already
> using it?
>
> ---
> Paul Shirley: shuffle chocolat before foobar for my real email address
>
---Michael Phelps
morphine AT cs DOT jhu DOT edu
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Morphine
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