lynx-dev Re: nature of list (was: cmdline sup/#'d form inputs)

[Heather Stern]

Jhawk, I may say things you don't like here, and I'd like you see what
I say all the way through to the bottom before you comment upon it.  I
believe I can shed some light on why the annoyance about CCs to you. I
have done you the grace of cc'ing you on this anyway, so I hope you can
do that kindness for me.

I post this publicly, because I believ that all present should have the 
option to discuss further.  But I'd like to add I hope we can all get back
to discussing lynx instead of coder psychology.

Jhawk> >> I don't believe this is an appropraite discussion for lynx-dev,
     > >> so I've dropped it from the cc list.
[snipped mightily]
> You don't seem to address my point. If the lynx project wishes to
> assert that lynx-dev is not an address for the submission of bug
> reports and feature contributions by non-members, then the PROBLEMS
> section of README should make that clear.

Incorrect-amundo - it is the one and only correct location as far as I
know;  but we found it distressing that you are so eager to contribute
valuably (by generating code) without wanting to stay EVEN BRIEFLY to
hear the resulting discussion.

Um, in one message you asked someone what authority they had in the list,
and in another you assume authority, and here, you assume something that
seems counter to what's actually written in the README.

What no-one seems to have brought up so far, is there have been times in
the past when active members were *not* signed on directly, but were actively
following the maintained archives on an open web site.  (And if that's 
still "live" rather than occasionally updated, could someone cough up the
URL for jhawk here??  TIA) 

With the active archive, and an "outsider" willing to use it, no such silly 
requirement to defeat our mailers' standard behavior was necessary, to get 
messages to that person.  When they posted, we knew they were using the 
archive, because of web-isms in their quoted message, but (almost) no-one 
felt compelled to comment upon it.

> If lots of people on the mailing list want to just yell, well, I am
> disinclined to respond.

When I saw an early part of your thread, you said something that carried
across to me like "who made you a god over how this list works?"  I could
not say at first whether you were being rude, ignorant, or curious (such
that I'd mistakenly added emotion to your message).

Now bear in mind I'm not a coder... (at least not here!)  I use lynx day 
to day, but I don't even work at a big ISP.  So if this were some big 
corporation instead of an open source, shared list project, my opinion might 
not mean much.  

However:
it seems to mean as much here as any other helpful soul.  So I'll say what
I'm thinking, and you can think what you like:  you, jhawk, need to find
a better attitude.  Your ideas, your energy you are willing to give us and
that's good.  I am planning to play with a dev version soon (after a long
while with only "shipping" versions) and I hope to contribute well to debug
efforts.  But I presently wonder whether you look at how things are around 
you before flaming it.  It did not improve my opinion of how deeply you may 
have looked at code before submitting a patch.

I hope the patch coordinator saw his way past this to consider your code
fragment, for as Klaus notes, the patch seems to have been fairly acceptible
to the coder types present.

> >Particularly for the lynx list, overriding the reply address is a nuisance,
> >and people making fast responses will soon forget to do so, with the
> >result that you will drop out of any discussions.
> 
> Such is the nature of life in the Big City^H^H^HInternet, evidently.
> 
> I wonder, with an ironic bent, whether I would have been much better
> off omitting my "Please cc me, I'm not on lynx-dev" and just sent my
> submission without it. Surely it would have generated a lot less posturing.

The one-line note of this was fine.  Sprouting a whole thread on it... well.
(I'm sure no-one cares, but that other list, decided to move TOWARDS being
a force-reply-to-the-list format.)

Having less of a chip on your shoulder about it, would have generated less
posturing by far.

> Surely it is not my place, as an "outside contributor" or even were I
> a "recent subscriber" to comment that the dangers of mailing lists
> that set Reply-To: are well-known.

If you don't mind I'd rather think of you as a telecommuter;  several of
us are here all the time, pipe up at threads, and so on.  If you want to
join for only a week or two while your code thread is argued out, or you
want to keep an eye on the active archive, great.

If you insist on "being a loner" don't be surprised if some of us don't
make the effort I did to cc you.  Yeah, so it's obvious.  Don't go crying
about it either, and we'll consider you more the kindly for being rational.

> I think that further discussion of this topic without the intent to
> take concrete action (amend PROBLEMS, change the list software, create
> a "lynx-bugs" list, etc., etc.) is probably fruitless and I would suggest
> that it does not benefit the community to pursue it.

I *entirely* disagree over sprouting a different list for bugs.  We had a
list lynx-users and it seems to have died a while ago.  Why?  Because only
newbies sign onto it.  The veterans live here.  The fact is QA types like
me want to know what to test, dev types need to know what to fix, and end
users need to know that clueful regulars are present to give them answers.
Dev types also need to know that some of their hot ideas are not so useful
as they think to some end users, before they go so far it becomes a major
design flaw.  That implies strongly that the development will continue 
best if all lynx discussion happens on one list.

Now, if you see that and say "oh, well why didn't you SAY so?" -- why, I'd
be entirely glad to see that last paragraph, or something like it, patched
into the right place of the README.

  * Heather Stern * address@hidden * Starshine Technical Services *