Russ Cox was once rumoured to have said:
> it's like arguing with toothpaste.
Sure, you might not like the IRC crowd, but posting this to 9fans in
anger over a few members of #plan9 is about as mature as the US
walking into the Gulf because "members of al Qaida, an organization
bearing responsiblity for attacks on the United States, its citizens,
and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11,
2001, are known to be in Iraq"[1].
#plan9 provides a multilingual, almost 24 hour/day, support service
for free due to the efforts of its members.
It also serves a general port of call for those of us actively
developing or porting to bounce ideas off of people in real-time -
something that can't easily be done on (and isn't really suited
for[2]) a public mailing list.
Of course, one has to take things said on #plan9 with a pinch of salt,
but that is the nature of IRC and applies equally to any channel.
C.
[1] HJ 114 IH - "Authorisation for use of military force against
Iraq"
[2] Media Richness Theory / Media Synchronicity Theory - early
phases of collaborative or planning work tends to start in a
"conveyance" phase which demands more interactive forms of
communication.
