Whither common courtesy ?

Peter, I couldn't agree more. I can understand a spoof email address to deter spam, but why would it hurt to use your real name, and explain the reasons behind the query. Oh wait, perhaps if I was a student trying to cheat my way to a qualification, I'd use a pseudonym, to avoid detection. I'm not sure that newsgroups are fostering the death of civility, maybe they're just festering in their own deaths. I noticed comp.dsp has just been through a bad patch too, I've given up reading most of it. Symon. (Although my real name is Luxury Yacht)

There were times when the internet, and usenet in particular, was used mainly be an academic elite. You could expect most people you meet there to be reasonably smart and cautious.

Today with hundreds of millions of internet users we will encounter more and more people who are less polite, more greedy, or just plain stupid.

If we let ourself get annoyed to much by these we only hurt ourself because the useful posts get less. Try too keep up a high spirit despite of the annoyances and ignore them.

The other alternative would be a more closed community. Either moderated or with membership levels. I do not believe that would work out to well.

Kolja Sulimm

Peter Alfke wrote:

How would you react if they offered help and favours in the same manner?

I have always regarded usenet as pretty impersonal. As you probably noticed from my other recent posts I am more concerned about the general health of usenet than civility levels.

Damn, another post from Google asking a question ;)

Well, I am an optimist, and I believe that most people are decent, but some are just uneducated. If we point out their misbehavior, we can eliminate many of these problems. Few people like to behave like an insensitive idiot, especially once they got their sins pointed out to them. I will never post anonymously, I will just leave the company name out of this, when the posting is my personal voice and has little or nothing to do with Xilinx. As far as I am concerned, a fake identity is even better (and friendlier) than none. Many of us want to keep this newsgroup functioning, with a pleasant and polite tone of voice. It has been that way for many years, and I have enjoyed it. Peter Alfke

Peter,

There may be cases where anonymity is important. Someone asking particular questions (or giving particular answers) may clue a competitor in on what that person/company is doing.

Anonymity and civility are two separate issues.

People can be impolite, in newsgroups, the same way that they can be when driving their cars. Would you push someone out of a line in a store? Of course not. Yet, cutting someone off, on the road, is commonplace. The cloak of a 4000 lb car, or a computer's screen, is a tempting excuse for some people to be rude.

I'm not a religious person, but the "do unto others..." motto works well, for me.

You are a gentleman, Peter -- on the internet and in person, too.

Bob (not my real name)

So do I. However, it's also fair to point out that courtesy and other nuances are hard to do at all, and yet harder to do well, when you're working in a second language as so many posters are. Perhaps anonymity provides a way to side-step that problem, and perhaps we should instead measure courtesy by the appropriateness and inherent interest of the problems offered.

It's also worth remembering that conventions of courtesy and urbanity are fairly uniform across most of Europe, and at least mutually recognisable across the Atlantic, whereas I suspect things are markedly different on the Pacific rim.

Peter is a European who's been long-term resident in the USA and can be courteous in at least three languages; I'm an old-fashioned Brit whose attempts at courtesy often are taken for pomposity in the USA, and whose civility stretches to only one and a half languages. I'm in a poor position to complain.

I am not going to comment about newsgroups in general, but I know for sure what 'comp.arch.fpga' is fostering.

I have been reading the group for a few years, and I have learnt a lot of things that would have been impossible to learn without the group.

I am no longer a beginner, but I am far away from the point I can contribute with anything useful. Actually I am afraid I will never reach that point, the group is always way ahead.

Politeness, civility should be of concern to all of us, not related to this group I think, but to this world we are building (or we are allowing others to build) Beleive me, I have teenager children :)

The previous comments about the first-second-etc language and social conventions are well to the point.

Josep Duran

Hi Peter,

I agree with all that has been posted here. I find that society as a whole is traversing down this path; not just the newsgroups. This feeling of entitlement these days, where everyone should, "help me because I deserve it" is extremely annoying. Demanding help and requesting it are two very different animals.

That being said, I must say that I can't tell you how much I appreciate your level of professionalism and willingness to help. On many occasions, your thorough answers to other posters (be it ignorant / insolent / or otherwise) have answered my questions as well.

Many thanks from an engineer out in here in New Hampshire USA. Warmest regards,

Ian. (yes, my real name)

For what it's worth, this group seems much more polite (and informative) than many I read.

I'm not a big fan of public rudeness, but there is something important about the empowerment of anonymity that allows people to say things they might not otherwise say. I have been on the receiving end of rude posts, but at least I don't have to guess how they feel!

I'm reminded of the bar car on a train trip to Mardi Gras. There was a mask that folks passed around and whoever put it on did a show for the car. Some of the quietest folks had pretty wild acts! Without the mask, how would we see the show?

Chris

Peter Alfke wrote: