Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-19 Thread Hugh Perkins
Just found this in a gmail adtext link, it's quite interesting (and convincing): http://www.janestcapital.com/yaron_minsky-cufp_2006.pdf ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-18 Thread Andrew Coppin
Bryan Burgers wrote: I heard that Fermat didn't even actually have a proof. That's unsubstantiated conjecture! :-P Oh, sure, it took over 300 years to arrive at the modern-day proof, which runs to over 400 pages of cutting-edge mathematics spanning multiple very modern disiplins, and is so d

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-18 Thread Bryan Burgers
On 7/18/07, Martin Coxall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 7/18/07, Jon Harrop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tuesday 17 July 2007 23:26:08 Hugh Perkins wrote: > > Am I the only person who finds it interesting/worrying that there are few > > to no people in the group who are ex-C# programmers. I m

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-18 Thread Martin Coxall
On 7/18/07, Jon Harrop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tuesday 17 July 2007 23:26:08 Hugh Perkins wrote: > Am I the only person who finds it interesting/worrying that there are few > to no people in the group who are ex-C# programmers. I mean, you could > argue that C# programmers are simply too s

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-18 Thread Martin Coxall
On 7/17/07, Thomas Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 7/18/07, Hugh Perkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Am I the only person who finds it interesting/worrying that there are few to > no people in the group who are ex-C# programmers. I mean, you could argue > that C# programmers are simply too

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Derek Elkins
On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 00:26 +0200, Hugh Perkins wrote: > On 7/17/07, Thomas Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > And this is where I think Haskell has it all over C++, Java, > and the > rest. Haskell is easy to learn at a simple level, and hard to > learn at >

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Jon Harrop
On Tuesday 17 July 2007 23:26:08 Hugh Perkins wrote: > Am I the only person who finds it interesting/worrying that there are few > to no people in the group who are ex-C# programmers. I mean, you could > argue that C# programmers are simply too stupid to do Haskell, but ... you > know, there is an

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Thomas Conway
On 7/18/07, Hugh Perkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Am I the only person who finds it interesting/worrying that there are few to no people in the group who are ex-C# programmers. I mean, you could argue that C# programmers are simply too stupid to do Haskell, but ... you know, there is another e

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Hugh Perkins
On 7/17/07, Thomas Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: And this is where I think Haskell has it all over C++, Java, and the rest. Haskell is easy to learn at a simple level, and hard to learn at the expert level, but once learned is very powerful and has excellent payoffs in terms of productivity.

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Martin Coxall
On 7/17/07, Magnus Therning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 19:43:51 +1000, Thomas Conway wrote: >On 7/17/07, Martin Coxall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>Me too, which is why I find your statement that expertise in C++ is >>easy to acquire. Seeing some of my colleagues' code is

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Magnus Therning
On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 19:43:51 +1000, Thomas Conway wrote: >On 7/17/07, Martin Coxall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>Me too, which is why I find your statement that expertise in C++ is >>easy to acquire. Seeing some of my colleagues' code is enough to tell >>me that this is most definitely not the

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Thomas Conway
On 7/17/07, Martin Coxall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Me too, which is why I find your statement that expertise in C++ is easy to acquire. Seeing some of my colleagues' code is enough to tell me that this is most definitely not the case. You're quite right. That was careless on my part. Though t

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-17 Thread Martin Coxall
And this is where I think Haskell has it all over C++, Java, and the rest. Haskell is easy to learn at a simple level, and hard to learn at the expert level, but once learned is very powerful and has excellent payoffs in terms of productivity. With C++ or Java, the expertise is somewhat easier to

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-16 Thread Thomas Conway
On 7/16/07, Malcolm Wallace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: OK, so I'm not genuinely suggesting that you must possess or be studying for a PhD, to grok Haskell. But I find nothing alarming about the suggestion that one needs a fairly high level of intelligence, and some training, in order to be able

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-16 Thread Jonathan Cast
On Monday 16 July 2007, Hugh Perkins wrote: > On 7/16/07, Malcolm Wallace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > After all, we would expect the same attributes (intelligence and > > training) from a neurosurgeon, a nuclear scientist, or someone who > > calculates how to land a person on the moon. Programm

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-16 Thread Hugh Perkins
On 7/16/07, Malcolm Wallace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: After all, we would expect the same attributes (intelligence and training) from a neurosurgeon, a nuclear scientist, or someone who calculates how to land a person on the moon. Programming computers may not seem very skilled to most people,

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-16 Thread Alex Queiroz
Hallo, On 7/16/07, Malcolm Wallace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: OK, so I'm not genuinely suggesting that you must possess or be studying for a PhD, to grok Haskell. But I find nothing alarming about the suggestion that one needs a fairly high level of intelligence, and some training, in order to

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-16 Thread Malcolm Wallace
"Alex Queiroz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is so much true. It has the effect of disguising Haskell as > a PhD-only language. And what would be wrong with Haskell being a PhD-only language, if it were true? OK, so I'm not genuinely suggesting that you must possess or be studying for a

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-16 Thread Andrew Coppin
Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: zednenem: On 7/15/07, Derek Elkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: There is no version of bytestrings without stream fusion and there never was. Bytestrings have no compiler support, it is just a library. I'm not sure that's correct. Stream fusion is a pa

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Donald Bruce Stewart
zednenem: > On 7/15/07, Derek Elkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >There is no version of bytestrings without stream fusion and there never > >was. Bytestrings have no compiler support, it is just a library. > > I'm not sure that's correct. Stream fusion is a particular fusion > technique that wa

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread David Menendez
On 7/15/07, Derek Elkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: There is no version of bytestrings without stream fusion and there never was. Bytestrings have no compiler support, it is just a library. I'm not sure that's correct. Stream fusion is a particular fusion technique that wasn't introduced until

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread ok
Malcolm Wallace said that Usenet is pretty bad these days. Lutz Donnerhacke disagreed. Living as near the Antarctic as I do, I find that the Internet works fine, e-mail is just great, but NNTP is effectively dead. I stopped reading net news (with sadness and reluctance) about eight years ago whe

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrew Coppin
Claus Reinke wrote: Maybe I'm looking wrong, but it often isn't obvious to me how to figure out the answer to the question "does all this cool stuff work yet?" I'm not really sure what we could change to fix that though... the Haskell Community & Activity Reports were created in part to answe

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Claus Reinke
This is a bit tangental, but... One problem I sometimes have is not knowing the status of things. E.g., you read about Associated Types, and then you go "hey, is this implemented now? is it being implemented soon? etc." (Don't all rush in and tell me about ATs - I'm only picking it as an exam

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrew Coppin
Derek Elkins wrote: On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 18:47 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: I could have sworn I heard somewhere that the debugger would be in GHC 6.6.1... but, apparently, I am mistaken. I have no idea which version it *is* going to be in... (Presumably the next one.) On the very pag

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Derek Elkins
On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 18:47 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: > Derek Elkins wrote: > > On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 17:49 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: > > > >> This is a bit tangental, but... One problem I sometimes have is not > >> knowing the status of things. E.g., you read about Associated Types, and >

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrew Coppin
Derek Elkins wrote: On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 17:49 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: This is a bit tangental, but... One problem I sometimes have is not knowing the status of things. E.g., you read about Associated Types, and then you go "hey, is this implemented now? is it being implemented soon? e

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrea Rossato
On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 09:56:46PM +0800, Michael T. Richter wrote: > One of the frustrating things about seeing this happen over and over > again is the insistence of people that "this community is somehow > different". It isn't. People are people and politics is politics. > It's all the same ma

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Derek Elkins
On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 17:49 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: > This is a bit tangental, but... One problem I sometimes have is not > knowing the status of things. E.g., you read about Associated Types, and > then you go "hey, is this implemented now? is it being implemented soon? > etc." > > (Don't

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrew Coppin
This is a bit tangental, but... One problem I sometimes have is not knowing the status of things. E.g., you read about Associated Types, and then you go "hey, is this implemented now? is it being implemented soon? etc." (Don't all rush in and tell me about ATs - I'm only picking it as an exam

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Alex Queiroz
Hallo, On 7/14/07, Michael T. Richter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: While it is understandable, given the intense interest most grognards of any language have in playing with the language, for people to enjoy conversations that go into the ever-more-esoteric, it is decidedly not helpful to the

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Jules Bean
Andrea Rossato wrote: I may be wrong, but I think you do not get the specificity of the Haskell community, that is quite peculiar, I'd say. Interesting. I've just read your message three times, and you argue eloquently, and coherently. But I feel a bit of a disconnection. I don't recognise th

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH
On Jul 15, 2007, at 0:47 , Jonathan Cast wrote: Usenet is a giant network of NNTP servers (and UUCP servers before that...) that ISPs (and various Unix sites before that) maintained at one time (most seem to have given up on it now), with thousands of general-purpose newsgroups that at one

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Michael T. Richter
On Sun, 2007-15-07 at 10:56 +0200, Andrea Rossato wrote: > > I've seen this pattern so often in communities. > I may be wrong, but I think you do not get the specificity of the > Haskell community, that is quite peculiar, I'd say. I think you're wrong. ;) The specifics of motivation and sty

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrea Rossato
On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 07:05:53PM +1000, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > So how would you think we can approve? We have to help in more specific > ways, and listen more carefully to what people are asking? I usually do this when I want a newcomer to join my community (for instance my research commu

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-15 Thread Andrea Rossato
On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 11:24:36AM +0800, Michael T. Richter wrote: > I've seen this pattern so often in communities. I've also seen it in > management (the supervisor/manager who can do the job better than his > underlings -- so he does) or in teaching (the popular teacher gets a > heavier course

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-14 Thread Jonathan Cast
On Saturday 14 July 2007, Andrew Coppin wrote: > Anthony Chaumas-Pellet wrote: > > From: Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >> Really? Most web servers will accept a connection from anybody. (Unless > >> it's *intended* to be an Intranet.) I'm not quite sure why somebody > >> would configure t

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-14 Thread Andrew Coppin
Anthony Chaumas-Pellet wrote: From: Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Really? Most web servers will accept a connection from anybody. (Unless it's *intended* to be an Intranet.) I'm not quite sure why somebody would configure their NNTP server differently... The scale of an NNTP serv

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Michael T. Richter
On Fri, 2007-13-07 at 09:35 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote: > But I wonder if there are also any useful technical > tips for users like myself, who would like to be able to keep up, but > feel they are gradually drowning? I have a couple of simple heuristics that are almost universally applicable

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Michael T. Richter
On Fri, 2007-13-07 at 20:39 +0200, Andrea Rossato wrote: > > > > http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/buildingausercommunity.jpg > Now, I'm telling this because I believe that the expert ones are in > part responsible for the gap the picture shows. In many ways the experts in

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Michael T. Richter
On Fri, 2007-13-07 at 12:11 +1000, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > * Give tips on how to answer questions > > Answering politely, and in detail, explaining common misunderstandings > is better than one word replies. I can give one added tip, though, that is an opposing force which

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Claus Reinke
Perhaps those of you who have found good, free NNTP servers would care to share these well kept secrets? have you tried gmane.org? http://gmane.org/about.php http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=haskell (there's nntp://news.gmane.org/ and http://news.gmane.org/ among others) claus

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH
On Jul 13, 2007, at 17:41 , Anthony Chaumas-Pellet wrote: From: Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Really? Most web servers will accept a connection from anybody. (Unless it's *intended* to be an Intranet.) I'm not quite sure why somebody would configure their NNTP server differently... Th

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Derek Elkins
On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 14:33 +0100, Claus Reinke wrote: > > As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: > > > >http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png > > > > with nearly 2000 (!) people reading haskell-cafe@, perhaps its time to > > think some more about how to build and maintain this lovel

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Anthony Chaumas-Pellet
From: Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Really? Most web servers will accept a connection from anybody. (Unless > it's *intended* to be an Intranet.) I'm not quite sure why somebody > would configure their NNTP server differently... The scale of an NNTP server is simply a *lot* bigger than mo

RE: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Re, Joseph (IT)
D] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Coppin Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 5:04 PM To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community Mark T.B. Carroll wrote: > Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >> ...and when you view a we

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Jens Fisseler
On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Andrew Coppin wrote: > Mark T.B. Carroll wrote: > > Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > > > ...and when you view a web page, your web browser has to connect to a > > > web server somewhere. > > > > > > I don't see your point... > > > > > > > Very many n

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Andrew Coppin
Mark T.B. Carroll wrote: Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ...and when you view a web page, your web browser has to connect to a web server somewhere. I don't see your point... Very many news servers will only serve news to people on the network of whoever's running the serve

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Mark T.B. Carroll
Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Mark T.B. Carroll wrote: >> Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >>> Just curiose, but... what does NNTP have to do with your ISP? >> >> Someone has to provide an NNTP server for your client to connect to. >> Many ISPs don't. Things like gmane

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Andrew Coppin
Mark T.B. Carroll wrote: Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Just curiose, but... what does NNTP have to do with your ISP? Someone has to provide an NNTP server for your client to connect to. Many ISPs don't. Things like gmane can be used, of course. Some of the free ones can be

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Mark T.B. Carroll
Andrew Coppin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Just curiose, but... what does NNTP have to do with your ISP? Someone has to provide an NNTP server for your client to connect to. Many ISPs don't. Things like gmane can be used, of course. Some of the free ones can be okay. I like http://news.individua

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Andrew Coppin
brad clawsie wrote: to improve the list, might i suggest - push chatter to IRC - take this service off of email entirely. try a web forum system (you may have to slum it and use php). i don't recommend nntp, that just forces us to use gmane since very few isps provide nntp now. Just cu

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Dan Weston
The following recent reply from Dave Bayer is IMHO nearly optimal for "Maintaining the Community", and I applaud him for it: Dave Bayer wrote: > [someone] writes: > >> So what the hell is the difference between them? Int and Integer. >> They aren't synonyms clearly. What's going on? > > ht

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Andrea Rossato
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 12:11:58PM +1000, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: > > http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png > [..] > That is, to help people progress from newbie, to intermediate, to > expert, and thus ensure the culture is maintained (avo

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread James Britt
Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: > > http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png > > with nearly 2000 (!) people reading haskell-cafe@, perhaps its time to > think some more about how to build and maintain this lovely Haskell > community we have. Just yes

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Malcolm Wallace
Ian Lynagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think the number of posts in the wrong place would be > lower if these were more conventionally named (although there aren't a > lot of them anyway). There are very few inappropriate posts to the haskell@ list. I very much doubt that the list names are a

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Nicolas Frisby
FYI, Gmail *can* kill threads, the Geniuses just deemed it unworthy of a UI presence. This is news to me and related to earlier comments in this thread. HTH http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47787 On 7/13/07, Nicolas Frisby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Perhaps an informati

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Nicolas Frisby
Perhaps an information retrieval pipedream, but what if we attempted an automated FAQ answerer? I'm sure some keywords pop-up often enough in certain chunks of first posts (heterogenous lists, existential error messages, SOE and graphics, category functor monad, etc). It could respond with the sta

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Philippa Cowderoy
On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, brad clawsie wrote: > to improve the list, might i suggest > > - push chatter to IRC > This is problematic for some kinds of techie chatter, where email makes it easier to get all the maths down. > - take this service off of email entirely. try a web forum system (you >

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Conor McBride
Hi Don On 13 Jul 2007, at 14:47, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: I tried an experiment this week of just taking someone's post (Conor's idiom brackets), and putting directly on the wiki first, then letting the author know that's happened. Seemed entirely reasonable to me. If I have a spare mome

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread brad clawsie
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 02:30:49AM -0700, Jim Burton wrote: > Very timely! It's sad that haskell-cafe has so much noise now. I haven't > been around very long at all but it has gone downhill dramatically even in > the last 6 months just look for the date of my first post... to improve the list, m

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Thorkil Naur
Hello, On Friday 13 July 2007 17:08, Neil Mitchell wrote: > Hi > > > > * At any point, create [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > This would have the advantage that people might not be so intimidated > > > at making their first post here, and posts wouldn't be answered with > > > category theory or sca

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Neil Mitchell
Hi > * At any point, create [EMAIL PROTECTED] > This would have the advantage that people might not be so intimidated > at making their first post here, and posts wouldn't be answered with > category theory or scary type extensions. > The disadvantages are that it makes an artificial bar

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Thorkil Naur
Hello, On Friday 13 July 2007 16:45, Ian Lynagh wrote: > ... > * At any point, create [EMAIL PROTECTED] > This would have the advantage that people might not be so intimidated > at making their first post here, and posts wouldn't be answered with > category theory or scary type extensions. >

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Ian Lynagh
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 09:35:09AM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote: > > Yes, the sheer volume of posts is definitely becoming a problem (for me, > at least). The Haskell lists are quite peculiarly named; the haskell@ list is pretty much what would be haskell-announce@ anywhere else, and haskell-cafe

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Felipe Almeida Lessa
Besides traffic, which is something I'm quite used to (try to read the Python mailing list), I think dons made a quite good point. On 7/12/07, Donald Bruce Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: That is, to help people progress from newbie, to intermediate, to expert, and thus ensure the culture is

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Jonathan Cast
On Friday 13 July 2007, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > claus.reinke: > >personally, i tend to be more willing to answer questions > >on the list than to fiddle with wiki markup and conventions, > >but there is no reason why people who are happier with > >wiki editing

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Philippa Cowderoy
On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > How do people feel about allowing posts in -cafe to be placed on the > wiki, without extensive prior negotiation? What copyright do -cafe@ > posts have? > Currently, snagging the whole post for non-archive purposes isn't necessarily legit. > I

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Neil Mitchell
Hi I tried an experiment this week of just taking someone's post (Conor's idiom brackets), and putting directly on the wiki first, then letting the author know that's happened. How do people feel about allowing posts in -cafe to be placed on the wiki, without extensive prior negotiation? What c

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Donald Bruce Stewart
claus.reinke: > >personally, i tend to be more willing to answer questions >on the list than to fiddle with wiki markup and conventions, >but there is no reason why people who are happier with >wiki editing cannot extract content from list answers to the >wi

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Claus Reinke
As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png with nearly 2000 (!) people reading haskell-cafe@, perhaps its time to think some more about how to build and maintain this lovely Haskell community we have. my replies to some of the issues raised in thi

RE: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Philippa Cowderoy
On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote: > We need at least one forum in which it's acceptable to ask anything, no > matter how naive, and get polite replies. (RTFM isn't polite; but "The > answer is supposed to be documented here (\url); let us know if that > doesn't answer your qn" is

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Jim Burton
Jules Bean wrote: > > Jim Burton wrote: >> Very timely! It's sad that haskell-cafe has so much noise now. > > I disagree with that characterisation. I don't mean to be pedantic, but > I don't think haskell-cafe has lots of noise. I think it has lots of > signal! Quite different. > > I thin

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Lutz Donnerhacke
* Malcolm Wallace wrote: > If anything, Usenet is even worse than mailing lists for volume, > especially of spam. Also, very few sites maintain their nntp servers > adequately these days - e.g. comp.lang.haskell has never made it to > where I work. I beg to differ. Of course, I'm an Usenet admin

RE: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Simon Peyton-Jones
| > Very timely! It's sad that haskell-cafe has so much noise now. | | I disagree with that characterisation. I don't mean to be pedantic, but | I don't think haskell-cafe has lots of noise. I think it has lots of | signal! Quite different. | | We don't have a problem (in my perception, at least) w

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Jules Bean
Jim Burton wrote: Very timely! It's sad that haskell-cafe has so much noise now. I disagree with that characterisation. I don't mean to be pedantic, but I don't think haskell-cafe has lots of noise. I think it has lots of signal! Quite different. We don't have a problem (in my perception, a

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Jules Bean
Malcolm Wallace wrote: Yes, the sheer volume of posts is definitely becoming a problem (for me, at least). All your suggestions for keeping the community polite and helpful are good. But I wonder if there are also any useful technical tips for users like myself, who would like to be able to kee

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Malcolm Wallace
Lutz Donnerhacke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Switch to Usenet. The new haskell group will die, if the traffic will > not increase. If anything, Usenet is even worse than mailing lists for volume, especially of spam. Also, very few sites maintain their nntp servers adequately these days - e.g.

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Dougal Stanton
On 13/07/07, Jim Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: As well as being nice, can't you sometimes tell people to RTFM? Or, You've asked that before, or That's an FAQ, search the archive? I suppose you could, but speaking as someone who doesn't know much but tries to answer questions when he does k

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Jim Burton
Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: > > As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: > > [...] > > * Give tips on how to answer questions > > Answering politely, and in detail, explaining common > misunderstandings > is better than one word replies. > > > * Adopt a near-zero-toleran

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Lutz Donnerhacke
* Magnus Therning wrote: > One obvious solution is to split the list into several, more specialised > lists. It's far from obvious, at least to me, how to do that with this > list though. Switch to Usenet. The new haskell group will die, if the traffic will not increase. _

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Magnus Therning
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 09:35:09 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote: >[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donald Bruce Stewart) writes: > >> As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: >> >> http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png >> >> with nearly 2000 (!) people reading haskell-cafe@, perhaps its time to >> thi

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

2007-07-13 Thread Malcolm Wallace
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donald Bruce Stewart) writes: > As we sit here riding the Haskell wave: > > http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png > > with nearly 2000 (!) people reading haskell-cafe@, perhaps its time to > think some more about how to build and maintain this lovely Haskell > comm