In the olden days, someone on the list would offer to curate a FAQ. The purpose 
of a FAQ is to squelch debate that is not productive, and I think specifying 
some guidelines would add value. 

Here's my suggestion. 

1) What sort of discussion is appropriate for concurrency-sig?
a: How to generalize parallel problems (is a discussion topic adequate covered 
by more general prior discussion)?
b: How to generalize Python approaches/components/solutions to parallel 
problems (frameworks, multicore, MPP clustering, coroutine/pipeline idiom, 
event processing, etc.)
c: How to hypothesize performance of an approach to a problem via Amdahl's Law 
and/or difficulty getting a good implementation
d: How to design and conduct robust testing
e: Analysis of test data
f: Discussion of implications to general knowledge (goto a:)

Discussion should, IMHO, progress through a..f states and then the particular 
subject can be closed. If you want to know how to get more concurrency in a 
Python solution to X, that falls under a. If you want to compare X and Y 
toolkits, that's probably b, but the discussion needs to point to c. Trouble 
with any given system are under c and d. Bring data everyone loves e! With new 
data, we can cut loose a little bit and prune our collective dogma together :)

2) What sort of discussion is inappropriate for concurrency-sig?

If it doesn't fit one of the states in 1), or it prevents discussion from 
progressing through those states, we're not interested.

On Nov 15, 2011, at 5:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> From: David Beazley <[email protected]>
> To: py concurrency sig <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [concurrency] about the concurrency-sig list
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Pete's wiseguy thread comment not withstanding, I'll freely admit that I'm 
> usually not interested in participating in online discussions about 
> concurrency due to excessive religious dogma backed by a lack of empirical 
> data or experiments.   IMHO, there needs to be more level-minded 
> experimentation, analysis, and discussion.  If this is what this list might 
> be about, then it might be worthwhile.
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave
> 
> 
> On Nov 11, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Peter Portante wrote:
> 
>> Perhaps we would want to avoid dogma, and have this list provide 
>> understanding of how things work and pros & cons?
>> 
>> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Jesse Noller <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Friday, November 11, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Peter Fein wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi-
>>> 
>>> I started this list & the concurrency section on the wiki
>>> http://wiki.python.org/moin/Concurrency after taking one of Dave
>>> Beazley's classes. Other folks & I wanted a place to discuss the kind
>>> of issues Brad discusses below, in a general and cross-toolkit
>>> context. I don't know why it never really took off, though I'd love to
>>> see it have more life.
>>> 
>>> Other possible topic includes: Python under Hadoop, MPI, data
>>> processing pipelines (generators).
>>> 
>>> Should we just establish "Threads: you're doing it wrong" as a ground
>>> rule and be done with it? ;-P
>>> 
>>> --Pete
>>> 
>> No, given that "Threads: you're doing it wrong" is patently incorrect except 
>> for certain cases. I use them more than I use multiprocessing. :)
> 

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