Alan wrote: >You may find this comes back and bites you in the backside, although I >hope not. (Blake, not you specifically - it was just your post I >selected to reply to.) I enjoy the banter, occasional duels, and what I >perceive as an overriding camaraderie. > > Agreed. I saw a similar thing happen with the LSU-ITINFO mailing list, although its not a perfect analogy. Basically they made it to where no one could discuss their mighty informative mass emails, even though we all know OCS is FAR from infallible. As a result, it sucked, and I never paid much attention to it after that (NOTICE: Our security is unbelievably bad.... NOTICE: Our mail servers suck...booooring). For me it was a forum to stick one to 'the man' at LSU and point out to them when they just seemed lazy and were unwilling to discuss the reasoning behind stuff (case in point, STILL blocking ALL ICMP to/from campus, instead of filtering). They created an IT-FORUM for those of us who wanted to actually discuss things, but of course no one joined but the zealots, and I will bet not many will actually join the BRLUG-politics one, or not enough to get anything interesting going. People are lazy, myself included. And I also find that people dont like to argue without an "audience" to interject occasionally. There has to be critical mass.
I think the distinction has to be made between arguments about Microsoft vs linux TECHNOLOGY (not just this microsoft, but lets face it, it is prevalent) which is appropriate, I think, even if they get flamey, and Microsoft vs. Linux politics arguments, which most of us agree are inappropriate for this list regardless of flame levels. Let me explain why, at least from my perspective. Im a technology person. Microsoft's business policies interest me about as much as Citygroup's, or any other huge company. Dont care at all. I have learned that companies are not nice, on a whole. Even if you think they are, they arent They all try to seem nice, so that you will not hate them, but they just want to make endless sums of money for their investors. I have a BS in Management from Tulane. What did it teach me? I dont want to be involved in business at that level. Makes me feel dirty. Dont care about bill, dont care about ESR, dont care about Theo To illustrate my point, I admit Microsoft is evil and I really just dont care, but I do care about the quality of thier products. To further my example, I also ride bikes. I dont care if Bianchi is a responsible bike company, I just like thier frames. So sure, bash a Microsoft PRODUCT. I may even defend it, becasue I have worked with it for years and there are some things I like about it. Want to talk NTFS permissions vs. the linux persmissions model? Lets do it. Talk to me about how microsoft hates google? Dont care in the least, thats why we have that other group. A tech argument can be backed up with hands on experience with the product. I dont want people to be afraid of bashing a MS product n this list for fear of being "political". I dont think thats political , as long as you back it up with something other than "Cuz micr$oft sucks and linux is free". Which you can. A ton of people on this list are smart and knowledgable and dont need to reasort to that. There is one other major another problem, prevalent even among tech discussions - personal attacks. We are all supposedly adults - can't we all just hit a bong, er, get along? The non-anti-microsoft people and the anti-microsoft people I think can drop the personal attacks. Right guys? Its not that hard. Don't direct your posts at a person, but rather the thread, if possible. Dont post with the intent of pising the other person off (I think we are all guilty of that one - I know I am). Dont call people names. Just post what you think about the product or tech item being discussed, and try to be as polite as you would if we were all in a room together, where to open your mouth and smart off could possibly get you popped in said mouth by someone larger and/or crazier than you. Common consideration. Playground rules. I think we can do it =) Just my 2 cents. Thoughts? Expletives? Chris
