Advice for sci.electronics.design

ROTFLMAO!

I wonder, is "Guy" pronounced "Gee", and the "c" in Macon has a diacritical mark like a cedilla ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I can see some logic in this persons advice. I am quite curious about what such advice other 'campers' here have on the subject. Is there, in fact, some consensus on how best to post questions, and respond to such posts, etc.

After all, science has found order in even chaos theory.

--
Luhan Monat: luhanis(at)yahoo(dot)com
http://members.cox.net/berniekm
"Any sufficiently advanced magick is
indistinguishable from technology."

Luhan Monat wrote:

Well, you certainly can't shame, embarrass, or anger me. You aren't nearly good enough.

John

I think you are mostly on-track. But I disagree with a few points. First, it is always good to follow up to articles which give bad advice to people who may or may not have the judgement to recognize it. This applies regardless of all other considerations.

Also, when a new persona appears and posts off-topic stuff, it is totally reasonable (and probably even good netiquette) to follow-up and say "You're question is off-topic here. For a better idea of what is on-topic, please see the . For your particular question, you might find better advice at alt.foo.bar." Often, in other news groups, such people just say "Sorry, I didn't know. I'll go away now." The only reason I don't do that is that I got the impression that SED tolerated off-topic posts in a way that other groups I read most definitely do not.

Finally, I think it is reasonable to put-forth opinions on the best way to deal with off-topic posts if they are becoming a problem, even when such ideas contravene one of your guidelines. For example, if a regular responds to an obvious troll, it makes sense to tell the regular, "hey, don't feed the trolls!" And if Guy Macon believes there is a Better Way, it makes sense for him to post and tell everyone about it. Once. ;-)

But with trolls, or people (including regulars) who are deliberately trying to "stir the pot," by posting about politics and so on, the best course of action is probably to ignore them, which is what I think you are saying.

Just my $0.02

--Mac

"THE STANDARD ADVICE:

There is a way to influence what gets discussed in a newsgroup that works well, and another way that has never worked no matter how many people have tried it.

What works: Post articles on the topic you wish to see discussed, and participate in the resulting discussion. Use killfiles and filters so that you don't see the articles that you dislike. If you don't know how to use a killfile, use good old fashioned discipline and don't read the articles that you dislike. Never, ever respond to articles that you dislike.

What doesn't work: Respond to articles that you dislike, complain about articles that you dislike, complain about posters that you dislike, complain about how terrible everyone else is for not posting what you want them to post. Talk about how to respond to articles that you dislike. Make the articles that you dislike the center of attention, the main topic of discussion, and a personal crusade."

-Guy Macon

The above, of course, fully applies to my own posts - including this one.

(Wiping tears from my eyes)

Fred, you were doing so well till that last sentence. ;-)

Obviously, I am not filtering your posts.

The biggest joke is the abuse of "regular contributor"- there are more than a few "regulars" who no way in hell are "contributors." You know who consistently posts shyte after awhile so don't read them. I find this to be an effortless approach. You cannot shame, embarrass, anger, or invoke any normal behavioral response from a "moron with a keyboard"- so just let their shyte drift off to never land. I only read John Larkin when the thread title suggests his post may be on topic and therefore contains a mistake.

There is indeed a consensus of the technical groups as a whole. You can see it in action by reading groups such as comp.arch.embedded or you can learn by reading the standard FAQ on the topic at [

].

In sci.electronics.design itself you will find a couple of groups of posters who dominate most topics through sheer volume of posting and through inappropriate aggressiveness. Some of them are simply flamers looking for trouble, but others are knowledgeable engineers who, like most engineers, have serious control issues.

The reason most engineers have serious control issues is best understood by reading the Dilbert comic strip. Yes, things like that really happen, but they aren't funny when they are happening to you. An engineer often has the solution to a problem but is stopped from implementing that solution because bosses or customers who know far less than he does have power over him. This, along with the flamers looking for trouble theory, explains why we are seeing such a rabid reaction to there being a moderated product development newsgroup. They see it as just one more pointy-haired boss trying to control them. What they don't understand is that I am perfectly willing to whitelist anyone who isn't disruptive, and that I am also perfectly willing to give them a moderator account if they agree to reject disruptive posts.

So, how to make everyone happy? The answer is a simple one:

[1] If you wish to have a civil discussion about some aspect of product design without having to wade through flame wars and off-topic political posts, simply post to these two groups: [ sci.electronics.design,misc.business.product-dev ] and read the discussion there. You can then evaluate my performance as a moderator and vote with your feet if you don't like how things are run. (I would hope, of course, that you would make constructive suggestions first, and I will approve such suggestions if the subject line starts with the string "[POLICY]", which lets those uninterested in moderation policy killfile them.) [2] If you like the freedom/anarchy that allows most threads to degenerate into flame wars and off-topic political posts, simply post to this one group: [ sci.electronics.design ] and read the discussion there. You will see all of the posts by the folks who are in group [1], plus all the off-topic flames political posts that you and others post.

By making the above choices, everyone gets what they want, and the reader now has two choices instead of the one available now.

I invite those described in [1] above to join the discussion over in misc.business.product-dev and to help me to build it up into a place where working engineers can have a discussion about product development. And please feel free to make suggestions as to how to make it better. I want it to meet the needs of working engineers.

Fred Bloggs? I don't recognize the name. Oh! I remember now, you're the name-caller.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I agree 100%. I wrote the advice above for a non-technical newsgroup, and I now see that I need to add a paragraph about responding to bad advice. ("now children, pipe your uranium hexafluoride into the high- speed centrifuge...") We have a responsibility to speak up about the posting of false information. By the way, did you know that if you plug your 120 volt PC into 240 volts it will run twice as fast?

I do think that the advice not to make such articles "the center of attention, the main topic of discussion, and a personal crusade" is still appropriate.

Thanks for the insightful comment. I really appreciate it.

I have mixed feelings about the above. I too have seen people just say "Sorry, I didn't know. I'll go away now." Alas, I have also seen them launch into a flamewar that fills the newsgroup for many months. In the old days we would have emailed them telling them that they were off-topic, but nowdays it is common to obfuscate email addresses. I am not saying that I disagree, merely that I have some doubts.

More excellent advice. I know that I have, at times, had someone tell me to stop feeding a troll, and I have always appreciated the comment. It is an easy habit to fall into. I will work on some wording that reflects this.

Excellent comments, and much appreciated. Thanks!

--
Macon, you\'re a fraud.

You\'re not interested in moderating the group in order to make it more
"productive",  what you\'re interested in is having dominion over a
population.  Whether or not you ever exercise the power, merely being
_able_ to puts your ilk in a heady state of being. 

Besides, I believe, there\'s a fundamental flaw in your concept of a
public forum dedicated to product development in that anyone doing
product development is going to be constrained (either by an NDA or by
prudence) in what they can divulge without compromising their
marketing position.  I certainly wouldn\'t blab about what I might be
doing (loose lips sink ships, you know) to the world if I expected to
hit the market with my new widget before anyone else could.

So what are you going to wind up with?  A bunch of idiot sheep who
think they have something which is going to make them rich and a bunch
of vultures looking to fleece them.  

That being the case, what you\'ll be left with is endless dreary
discussions about "How can I get my widget to the marketplace?" which
could be easily handled with a FAQ.  That leaves just about zero
discussion except for the wimps who can\'t take it on sed and want 
Big Brother to do their filtering for them.  

As bad as you might think sed is, everyone here is free to say just
exactly what they want, including: "Go fuck yourself, Macon." without
having to wait for approval from anyone before it\'s disseminated and
the entire planet can read it.

The good thing about anarchy is that it allows natural patterns to become apparent. By forcing arbitrary external rules upon a system, one influences the kinds of patterns that appear, and thus limits the possible responses.

Japanese gardeners will wait until a path emerges before they put down stepping stones.

This clearly doesn't apply to everything in life, but I'd say that unmoderated usenet groups are a fairly good example of 'emergent behavior'. You simply never know what is going to happen next, and trying to control it, to 'influence the discussion', is going to make it worse, not better.

On a side issue, people often confuse the fact that a group is named, for example, 'sci.electronics.design' with the notion that only electronics can be discussed. From my perspective, a better way to view the situation is that it's like a club. The name of the club attracts certain types of people, who then do whatever they want when they get together. There are shared interests, which create a context within which people can get to know each other, make inside jokes, etc. If a club is devoted to, say, flying, then the people who are flying enthusiasts will attend, and often talk about flying, but just as often talk about recipies, spouses, children, investments, movies, politics, etc.

--
Regards,
  Bob Monsen

This is a piss-poor argument in favor of anarchy. The path appears where the people have been walking, duh. I heard a UL about a new school campus where they didn't install concrete walks right away, but just let the kids walk from building to building across the grass, and they put the concrete walks where the grass was dead that next semester.

The truest meaning of "anarchy" is "no kings or emperors or nanny or Big Brother". In other words, it's the scariest way known to refer to "Free Will."

But it should be obvious to any reasoning person that Free Will is the only way to properly run a universe. When every interaction between people is done to the satisfaction of each, both benefit and there's nothing to fight about.

Of course it does! Humans are the only species who denies Free Will!

Oh, yeah, there are predators who will "deny your free will" by killing you and eating you, but that's supposed to change Real Soon Now, according to Gawd.

Good Luck!

--
Rich

for further information, please visit http://www.godchannel.com

That's what all you moron-with-a-keyboard's say...

On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 08:23:07 -0500, John Fields wrote: ...

I have a couple of widgets that I'd like to see get to market, but unfortunately I don't have the resources or the contacts to go to an Asian manufacturer and say, "Hey, build me 100,000 of these things." And show them a drawing, and have a couple of containerfuls of left-hand opening microwave ovens or turbo house-vacs show up at the harbor.

But the one, fully half of the kitchens in the world cry out for them; the other will depend on the business of home handypersons or maybe professional house painters.

So, anybody wanna order 100,000 or a million left-hand opening microwave ovens, haul them to Sears, and send me, say, a buck an oven? For the house-vac, since it's only an attachment that couldn't break $9.95, I guess the best I could hope for is - well, I'd still like a buck a unit. WTF, what do I have to lose?

Thanks! Rich

Well, thanks for sharing this with those of us who are. :-)

And, BTW, just FYI, Fred, it's Fields whose contributions always contain a mistake, but I do have to admit, he corrects them forthwith, and his stuff evidently works. FWIW. ;-)

Cheers! Rich