James Byrne wrote:
Bart Zonneveld wrote:
How'bout splitting this list up into a more "beginners" oriented
version, and a discussion one?
This list is called rspec-users, so let's let this be the starting
point of questions like "I can't get rspec/cucumber/whatyouhaving to
work", and have a rspec-discussion list with the more high level/BDD-
oriented discussions?
My own experience with this sort of bifurcation has not been happy.
Putting all levels of experience together seems to provide a richer and
more satisfactory experience for all, in most cases. Where the audience
spans a vast range of experience then a seemingly innocuous how-to
question like, How do I get this regexp to work in cucumber, may lead
into a more fulsome examination of not only how, but why and when, you
use regexp in testing at all and why and when you should not. The real
value of experience lies in knowing what questions you should be asking
and not in just parroting back answers to the problem posed. That sort
of expansiveness, of looking at the underlying issues, tends to
disappear in nube/old-hand lists.
If a mailing list is divided arbitrarily along knowledge lines then one
has created an additional task of evaluating which list to post on. If
the list is to be divided at all, and I am not convinced that there
exists any pressing reason to do so, then I believe that it should be
fractured along the subject matter rather than experience levels.
James, I strongly agree with your point of view. Consider: as a Ruby
programming beginner, and one about to write my first Cucumber feature
(with RSpec launching to follow soon after), I monitor the Ruby-Talk
discussion list daily. I manage the volume by having the posted
displayed in threaded form. I filter all traffic for the list as a whole
to its own folder. When an thread of interest to me comes up, I flag it,
and come back to it later. Yesterday, there were a total of 6 new
threads. Today, so far, there have been two. All other traffic has gone
to other threads, started earlier, and I've already marked them as
interesting to me or not. Problem solved.
So, may I humbly suggest that people simply use better the email
management tools they already have at their disposal?
I do NOT want to split the community here at RSpec/Cucumber into
fragments. I'd learn less, and I wouldn't have as good a contact with
the natural diversity that's here. That diversity is interesting,
entertaining, and rather often education to me, and most likely to
others as well.
As you said, this is simply not a high volume list. I don't think we
really have a problem here.
t.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< t...@tomcloyd.com >> (email)
<< TomCloyd.com >> (website)
<< sleightmind.wordpress.com >> (mental health weblog)
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