[H-GEN] software runs the world

Russell Stuart russell-humbug at stuart.id.au
Sat Mar 19 03:12:07 EST 2005


On Sat, 2005-03-19 at 16:05, Greg Black wrote:
> One of the problems with mailing lists is shown by this very
> thread which has now appeared on three different Humbug lists.
> That shows that (1) we have too many lists; or (2) that nobody
> knows what the lists are intended for.  Since there's no
> consensus about where this belongs, I'm going to leave it on the
> list where the previous item in the thread appeared.

Uhmmm - That was my doing.  It wasn't deliberate.  I set 
the reply to wrongly - or rather left it at the default
which in my case is general.  I sent the original post to
dsig because it was about what the future might be like
for programmers.

Secretly of course, I don't really think it is my fault. I
blame the "reply munging to considered harmful" meme, which
has infected the clan who runs this list.  Because the list
no longer does reply to munging I have to do manually.
Since I really shouldn't have to do it manually (there are
after all lots of lists out there where I don't have to), 
it ain't my fault if I stuff it up.

> When I post to a list, people get to reply to me, to argue the
> point with me, to show me the error of my ways, etc.  On my
> blog, nobody gets to comment directly.  I like it that way and
> have no plans to allow comments.  When people wish to comment,
> they either email me (if they don't know me and care about me
> seeing their comment) or they comment in their own blog (which I
> may or may not read, and probably will never hear about if I
> don't already know them).

Yes, and possibly therein lies the rub.  Blogs have given
people a new option - instead of posting to a list, they
can sound off on a blog.  If this is an alternative to
posting on a list, then it is going to negatively impact
lists such as this one.

In fact, I am pretty sure I have seen posts here where 
someone has said they posted something to their blog 
rather than posting it here.  QED.

> One last remark about blogs versus lists, at least when it's a
> blog like mine -- I write different stuff to a list, because I
> know it will get pushed down the throats of all the subscribers
> and so I need to be a bit restrained in both content and style.
> The people who read my blog choose to read my writings, rather
> than to be connected to a discussion group; so it's fair enough
> for me to write as much or as little as I like about anything
> that takes my fancy.  People who get bored with my opinions can
> stop reading my blog without missing out on anything else at
> all.  But they can't escape from what I send to a list without
> also losing the other valuable material the list might have
> offered them.  In other words, list etiquette is much more
> exacting than blog etiquette.

I am going to give blogging a try, just because I think I 
should.  But I am viewing it with some trepidation.  I am
not into writing diaries.  If I take the trouble to right my
thoughts down, it is usually because I want to clarify my
ideas on a subject.  Writing something down imposes a certain
rigour, forcing me to think things through.  If I or someone
else learns something from it then it has been a success, 
otherwise it has been a waste of time.

No matter how much thought I put into something, I often get
it wrong.  It seems when I post something that is wrong to
a list, a lot of people will take the time to tell me so.  I
may not like it at the time, but I can tell you that when I
look back on the discussions I have had here for example, the
ones I learned most from were those I was challenged on and
proven wrong.  Perversely, looking back on it, it is those
very discussions that I now think were the best.  Ones that
spring to mind are when Andrae forced me to reconsider the
performance of garbage collection in java, Chris made me
re-think PKI, and aj prompted me to look at what makes
computer payment schemes successful.  Perhaps you now view
the discussion you had with aj on blogs in the same light.

Right now I think this feedback will be missing when I write
something and  put something up on a blog.  I guess I will
find out soon enough.






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