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Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.7 KB

Path: newshost.lanl.gov!tanmoy
From: [e-mail] (Tanmoy Bhattacharya)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Off topic post
Date: 02 Feb 1996 23:15:12 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
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In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 2 Feb 1996 09:44:54 -0700

In article <4etf26$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Blair P
Houghton) writes:
<snip>
   And, not being comp.lang.c.moderated nor comp.std.c, this
   group expects and grants a much greater latitude.  While
   this Tanmoy chap seems competent enough, the great gurus,
   like Karl Heuer, Chris Torek, Doug Gwyn, and Guy Harris, all
   seem to have been absent since I started reading this group
   again a few weeks ago[*].  It seems to me that in the spirit
   of laissez faire the right thing for him to do would be to
   follow them, or to exhibit the realization that one's own
   standards aren't to be expected of people one's never
   vetted.  If I were asking random questions at a White House
   cocktail party, I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath
   waiting for only the First Lady's answer.  And if I were
   the First Lady (Scenes We'd Like to See, episode DCXII), I
   wouldn't ask the attendees to clear their conversation
   topics with the Appointment Secretary.

I could not find your footnote (isn't that what the [*] was supposed
to be?). In any case, this discussion has gone on long enough and it
hardly seems worth it to continue it. In fact, in a previous post, I
had stated that I have nothing further to add: it seems, I was wrong.

The discussion, for one reason or another, has focussed on me ... so,
I feel I ought to clarify that I believe a lot of things you are
assuming about my posts are untrue. It is easy to check ... just visit
http://www.dejanews.com/ and search for posts by me. I believe you
will find that I rarely respond to a completely off topic post: I
usually try to ignore them. I however do point out any violation of
the standard in posts I have chosen to respond to: and this is what
the original poster was objecting to. I have also voiced the opinion,
when relevant, that posts dealing with system specificities do not
belong here. I have responded to questions pointing out that no
portable solutions are possible. And above all, I usually respond to
incorrect, or incomplete, responses; or to explain some basic concept
in C. I also respond to posts which state explicitly that portability
is not important, but only when I feel that that is a misstatement in
the given context.  I am aware that I need not post anything
whatsoever, but I think most people do want to learn, and if I know
something there is no reason for me not to take an hour or so a day to
see if I can do something to help. And, I strongly believe, that most
people use non-portable constructs because they do not know that the
construct is non-portable; or they have never thought about such
issues like portability.

To err is human. I have sometimes been unable to confine my irritation
to myself. I apologize for those occasions when pointed out. I started
this thread to point out that I very strongly disagreed with the
person who objected to my post. In that particular post, I had pointed
out some violation (use of `far') and then gone on to explain what the
poster wanted to know. In fact, the voice of irritation in that post
had nothing to do with the keyword far, but rather that the poster was
very vague about what (s)he had tried: I can hardly help any one if I
do not know what their confusion is. I did not want to continue on the
original thread because people not specifically interested in this
debate are welcome to not read it: and having an appropriate subject
line helps.

   What this group not about is attempting to define what it's
   about at the expense of time that could be spent educating
   the net about something productive.  You'll find it
   fractal, NP-complete, and a bona fide rat-hole trying to
   nibble the edges to pristene clarity.  (This being a self-
   similar paragraph, I claim noblesse oblige, and donate it
   to the public.)

   If you insist on taking a hard line, then I can, too; and I
   know how to say things like "take it to news.groups" and
   "this is metadiscussion, you're wasting bandwidth."  But
   I'm older and fatter and don't run so fast, so I prefer the
   negotiated solutions, any more.

comp.lang.c.moderated was formed precisely because the discussions in
comp.lang.c were going too far off topic. And off topic posts are not
harmless: there are currently upwards of 150 posts each day, and it is
really difficult to find the posts that do deserve an answer. Off
topic posts mean that the people who have real C questions often do
not get the answer they need simply because some of us who would
normally have answered him/her just fail to spot it.

I could, of course, stop reading comp.lang.c altogether. For one reason
or another you will notice that quite a few of us who were regulars at
the time that c.l.c.m was formed continued to read and post to
c.l.c. I do not think that doing that was a mistake.

Cheers
Tanmoy
--
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