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Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:00:27 -0700
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To: Sean Coates <sean@seancoates.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Some Stats
From: kris.craig@gmail.com (Kris Craig)

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On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Sean Coates <sean@seancoates.com> wrote:

> My response earlier was meant to be funny, mostly, but I did also intend
> to convey some of the same things Rasmus said. The only person who wants =
to
> participate in a conversation where someone is hogging the floor is the
> person doing the talking.
>
> Yeah one of the problems that really frustrates the hell out of me is tha=
t,
> after I've answered a question or responded to an objection, somebody new
> jumps in and raises the exact same issue.  When I tell them to read earli=
er
> in the thread for my answer, they tend to get hostile and will often just
> keep re-repeating the criticism until I finally get fed-up and just repea=
t
> the response I'd posted earlier.  Rinse and repeat.
>
>
> In my opinion, the main reason this happens is because of your "natural
> verbosity" (as you put it). People are busy=97especially smart people. Yo=
u
> want the smart people to be able to read the important bits of your
> proposals/ideas, but most of them are unwilling and unable to sift throug=
h
> hundreds of messages. This is why they ask questions that have already be=
en
> answered.
>

But isn't that just a circular argument?  I.e. "They're not reading the
list because its too cluttered," and, "They're cluttering the list because
they're not reading it."

If people would read the first few messages in a thread, there wouldn't be
all this clutter because they wouldn't be asking questions that have
already been answered.  And if they can't be troubled to do that, then they
should hold-off on posting.  Busy or not, rule #1 on any forum is that you
should *read* the thread you're responding to.

Yes, I can do my part by making my posts more succinct and I'll work on
that, but what I'm saying is it's a two-way street.  Me doing that alone
won't be enough to solve this problem.  Here's my rule:  If a thread is
important enough to object to its content, it's important enough to read.
 If it's not important enough to read, then it's not important enough to
respond to.  Simple as that.  If you're too busy to read everything, I
respect that.  But if you then start cluttering that same thread with stuff
that's already been said, you're just making the problem worse by turning a
lively thread into a deluge.

If I post an RFC and somebody raises a concern, I'll respond to it.  It's
totally unnecessary for someone to then post the same concern as if I never
did respond, and then turn around and complain that the thread is too
cluttery.  We can't have it both ways.

--Kris

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