Re: Satchmo, the bloated manatee

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Cal Leeming [Simplicity Media Ltd]
<cal.leeming@simplicitymedialtd.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Jacob Kaplan-Moss <jacob@jacobian.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 7:15 AM, Bobby Roberts <tchendrix@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > satchmo has become a bloated manatee of a codebase.
>>
>> Hey, this isn't OK. I can tell you're frustrated, but insulting other
>> people's work isn't acceptable around here. You should realize there
>> are real people, just like you, on the other side of these insults.
>> Attacking them isn't nice, and won't get you the help you need.
>
> Hold on, we are in danger of restricting the freedom of speech on this
> mailing list.
> I think OP was just expressing his honest opinion, and his comment wasn't
> rude or insulting in any way.

Yes, it really was. He opened a request for a subject line and first
sentence by comparing Satchmo to a fat, ungainly animal. That's isn't
a productive way to begin a request for help.

> Just because something is open source (and/or contributed to by people in
> their spare time) does not make it exempt from scrutiny/criticism.

There's a difference between criticism and insults.

Consider the following:

"Problems with recent Satchmo versions

I'm having some serious problems with recent versions of Satchmo. Over
the last couple of versions, it seems to have massively increased it's
memory requirements -- to the extent that my 256MB slice at Slicehost
isn't really usable any more. Am I missing something, or do I need to
feed it treats to get it to work properly"

Almost exactly the same content, but doesn't start with a slap in the
face to the developers of Satchmo.

Better still would be to document exact what he has done, why he did
it, and what he has observed. That way, someone would be able to help
him.

Better still again would be to ask the same question on the right
forum -- the Satchmo mailing list.

These aren't controversial ideas -- in fact, they should be the core
of the "how to ask questions on the mailing list" wiki page i.e.,

* Don't insult the people you want to help you
* Provide as much detail as possible
* Ask the question in the right place.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

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