[MUD-Dev] Attributions vs brainstorming ( or, Z, DOWN FOR THE COUNT! :) )

[Michael Hohensee]

Since you obviously got confused about what we were saying, I'll try to
make it clear to you. :)

Stephen Zepp wrote:
> 
> Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> >
> > It is interesting that you seem to think that attributions are
> > done for ego or idea ownership purposes.  This thought had
> > never occurred to me until now.  I always thought this was for
> > clarity, readability and courtesy.
> 
> Um, hmm....
> 1) I'm not the one complaining that something I said doesn't have my name on it.
> 

We don't care about having our names on our posts in order to "take
credit" for whatever we say, but instead to make it easy to identify who
said what.  

For example, if J.C. writes about a wiz-bang logging system
implementation, and I decide that more information might be useful, I
can talk to him directly and learn about the nuts and bolts of
implementation.  If there were no attributions in the post that piqued
my interest, I'd have a hell of a time tracing the thread backwards till
I found his name.  Indeed, I may have gone and deleted the critical
message, and I'd never know whom to speak to.

> 2) Clarity? When I get a message from this list, I change my settings so that >> text is white on white, so I can _read_
> the damn thing. I don't know, maybe I walked into a buzz saw here, but with one or two exceptions, I haven't been able
> to trace a single person's thread of input through any of these posts that interest me, because of the techniques used
> for attribution.  

If this is true, I feel sorry for you, as this is the standard form of
attribution used throughout the net.  Lines with one > represent stuff
written in the post which is being replied to; lines with >> in the
beginning mark stuff that was written two posts ago.  If this form were
not used, we would have to put someone's name at the top of every quoted
paragraph in order to keep things clear.  As most mailers (yours
included, apparently), automagically put > at the beginning of every
quoted line in a reply, it can't be too much of an inconvenience for you
to conform to this system.

Refusing to conform to this system is unwise for the same reason it is
unwise to fail to conform to the spoken/written language.  If I decide
to treat the word "yes" to mean "pumpkin", nobody can stop me, but
nobody can understand me.  I'll go through life wondering why people
talk about pumpkins first thing upon answering the telephone, and people
will wonder why I keep nodding my head saying "pumpkin".  It's not about
conformity, but about communication.

> 
> 3) Courtesy? I just don't see where this comes from. I spent 6 years working Special Operations, 3 of which was directly
> for the State department working diplomatic issues.  One that that I've found is that a lot of misunderstandings and
> conflicts have arisen because two parties were too "polite" and "courteous" towards each, other, masking any real
> communication.

I've been on this list for a long time, and I don't think that any of us
are *too* polite.  Most posts are quite informal in style.  We refrain
from insulting each other directly, as insults can hurt people's
feelings and lower the signal to noise ratio.  Further, treating each
other with respect motivates people to really think about what they're
writing.  I wouldn't want to write a poorly thought out reply to any of
these people; if someone else puts thought into what they write, shall I
do no less?

>  We're all busy, and with few exceptions, this forum is about our hobby.  We all have varied and
> interesting backgrounds, and we all have our strengths and weaknesses. We all share an interest.  If I respond to a
> post, or if someone responds to mine, that shows curtesy in my mind right there...they showed enough interest to take
> the time to say "Cool idea!", or "that would suck, because of", or "have you tried".

We do, in fact, respond in this fashion (although we usually change
"that would suck" to "but wouldn't X cause a problem").

> Maybe I'm different, but I look at
> the information that's in a post, and if I don't understand a reference, I go back and check previous posts in the
> thread ( sort by threads in my email app )  If I were to try to reference it with all these indents, I get lost counting
> the number of > for each line.

If you have the space on your hard drive for that, please feel free to
do so.  But you should understand that others may not, (I sure don't)
and that by making things more difficult for them to understand who said
what, you are make it harder for them to give any sort of reply at all.

> 
> >
> > What's even more irritating, is this post that I'm now responding
> > to.  Formatted at 100+ characters and requotes an entire previous
> > post for no apparent purpose.
> >
> 
> Hmmm..irritating.  Sorry to make you resize your window.  Doesn't matter that I have to play kindergarden at the
> university level cut/pasting to make each post a work of art, but that's okay.  I don't mind, really.

We're sorry if you have a funny mailer, but not everyone can resize
their windows.  I don't believe, however, that this is particularly
important to us, and we probably wouldn't have mentioned it if you
hadn't cut the attributions out of your posts. :)

> 
> Had hoped that this list would be worthwhile, replacing the flame-happy and braggards of the newsgroups, and be a forum
> for intellectual, advanced and in some case heated debate.  Instead, I find that I'm told:
> " What I'd actually recommend is that you just watch the discussion for a
> while, and see the formats and patterns we tend to use, as is recommended
> in the welcome message." [this quote cut from message written by J C Lawrence, in response to a post from Stephen
> Zepp].  In other words, we don't want to hear from you until you conform. Sorry, didn't know this was a Communist
> Revolution in progress...

This is so that you can get a feel for the list's "culture".  Most
people who are invited onto this list have only had experience in
newsgroup discussions, which are, as you have pointed out, full of
flame-happy braggarts.  We avoid the tendancy to post as if we were in
usenet by behaving in a semi-formal (very semi) manner.  By seeing how
everyone else formats their messages and arguments, you can learn how to
match said format to make things easier for people to read them.  We're
not here to toot our horns at each other (much), we're here to have a
civilized exchange of ideas.
 
The crack about a Communist Revolution, for example, has no place in a
civil discussion.  It belongs in usenet.

(Of course, this entire post is off topic and useless for
MUD-development, and by not letting it die, I'm being rather
hypocritical.  I try to justify myself by saying that I'm doing it to
help a new member understand our mysterious ways, but I know that really
isn't much of an excuse.  I'll probably have to be burned at the stake
in penance ;)

> In addition, I find a few posters that drive the threads, mentioning "I do this, or this is how it should be done" [too
> minute to attribute], but never mentioning precisely what all these large words actually mean, or _discussing_ those
> advanced and seemingly interesting topics. 

If you want to know more about something, then by all means *ask*.  If
you're afraid that we don't really know what we're talking about, then
ask an intelligent question, and hope for an intelligent answer.  If
there is none forthcoming, we can discuss the subject until we *do* get
one.

Nothing will reliably happen in the way you want it to if you don't take
a hand in it.

> At least I could enjoy JA on the newsgroups flaming other because they were
> ( in his mind ) idiots, instead of being teased by how much better everyone else's code is ( not that it is, but that's
> what I hear from the list ).

Heh, we all get a touch of egotism from time to time, pay it no mind. 
We've all done X in the muds we're developing, and we wouldn't have done
X (for the most part) if we didn't think it was better than Y, Z, and
the rest of the alphabet.  It is useful to see two people discussing the
same problem, with one touting X, and the other Y.  It allows you to see
the advantages of both, and since the two coders will be arguing about
which one is better (in a civil and intelligent fashion, flames are
useless), you will get to see a list of their disadvantages.

> 
> Guess I'll go crawl back into my shell, and finish up those pesky ai nodes...

Cool, are you using a single AI network to control the actions of all
critters, or are you working on giving each critter its own little
independent system? 

> Z

--
Michael Hohensee       michael at sparta.mainstream.net
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/9025/
      Finger me for my PGP Public Key, or use: 
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