On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Heidi Ellis - [email protected] wrote: > My reasoning is that first, I think that book edits are not likely to be of > interest to the general TOS audience as the comments can get quite specific. > There may also be a lot of them. I know that I have multiple comments on the > "Getting the Code" chapter. I would prefer that we avoid the situation where > folks start ignoring TOS posts because it gets cluttered with detail-level > stuff they're not interested in. It also lets the folks on the forum focus > at that detailed level. (Hmmm, sort of like levels of abstraction now that I > think of it. :-) )
Initially, I thought to remind you that we can start new mailing lists if there is a need to separate out particular areas of interest. That runs fairly parallel to everything that a forum can provide. But, then I reflected on your mention of a specific chapter. In that case a forum could have an area for the textbook with a sub-area for each chapter. A mailing list would require each originator of a thread on a particular chapter to put a keyword, such as [Code], in the mail subject field to subdivide the textbook mailing list into sub-areas based on chapters. I view that as the less convenient (training required) method. Thank you for focusing my thinking. > > Second, I trust Karsten. He has been working in the OSS world and organizing > communication within that world for longer than I. So if he indicates that a > forum is going to make communication easier and thereby also make getting > our task done easier, I'm inclined to at least try his approach out. One of > the interesting interplays that we have in TOS is the balance between the > profs, the OSS folks, the students and others. We all have areas that we're > familiar with and fitting all these areas together is very fun. As part of > that, the community has a wonderful sense of respect for the opinions of > others and an openness for accepting the expertise of the others. TOS is > also a place to try out new ideas, so if the forum doesn't work, we will all > have learned something. And the same goes for if it does work. And either > way we will have had some fun! I don't think anyone here need operate solely on trust. We all have life experiences that can be brought to bear on the function of this community. Karsten certainly has been one of the leaders of this community. I've always tried to make sure leaders have all the information I possess to make the best decisions. > Just my thoughts for the moment. > Heidi > Excellent and well presented. Thank you. _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
