Re: Proposal for First Draft of GNOME Style Guide 1.1

[Frederick I Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Dan Kaminsky wrote:

> >No, but mailing lists don't require syncronizing schedules.  The time for
> >the IRC conference seems to have been picked out of a hat.  At no point
> >was the question raised, "I am thinking of an IRC conference, when works
> >for people?"  After it was clear that many people here could not make it,
> >there was no discussion of changing the time.  Just, sorry that's the way
> >it is, live with it.  I strongly doubt the GIMP developers were that
> >cavalier with their IRC conferences.
> 
> Bowie screwed up by scheduling it on his sunday.  He COULDN'T change the
> time though; WAYYYYYY too many places had already listed the time.  The next
> one better be at a better time or I'll have to kick his ass.

I'll buy this one far better if Bowie would admit the mistake, and
promises to discuss scheduling before the next conference.  Note: before
flaming, the only mistake I am talking about here is the scheduling
mistake.

 
> >Also, nobody has seen anything to discuss in IRC.  What, are we all going
> >to have to sit through DCC SENDS of pieces of the style guide just to talk
> >about it?
> 
> 
> He already listed the web page to go to; http://www.primenet.com/~bjp/

For future reference, Primenet seems to be a site that has problems.  Many
of the things I tried to look at under Bowie's wab pages seemed to stop
partway through the download for no particluar reason.  Specifically, the
photos on the front page didn't resolve completely, the updated skeleton
would not finish downloading, the quesstion page stopped at question 11
out of 20.  Perhaps another site might be advisable.


> >The mailing list is an ideal place for this, a place which Bowie is not
> >making use of.
> 
> 
> What the hell is he doing talking in here?  :-)

He is talking here about many things in the abstract.  When I said the
sentence you quote, I was under the misimpression that more detailed
things were to be hammered out on IRC.  Now that the conference is over,
it is clear that he is being as abstract in the conference.


> >> Anyway, people shouldn't have to subscribe to gnome-gui to provide
> feedback
> >> to the project.  I mean, the VAST MAJORITY(I hope) of users of GNOME
> >> *aren't* part of this group.  It's in the IRC conferences that we get to
> >> show off our present state to our testing public and find out if we're
> ALL
> >> way off base.
> >>
> >> Geocentric?  Try listcentric :-)
> >
> >Listcentric is not a problem.  The people who want to contribute to GNOME
> >will go to the GNOME site.  If they want to be involved in gnome
> >devlopment, they go to the mailing list page, they see a line referring to
> >GUI development.  Those who want to work on GUI devlopment (such as the
> >Style Guide), will go there.  That's why I came here.  That's the point,
> >this is the list of people who want to work on the GNOME style guide.
> 
> So you're basically saying, keep it closed until the work is done.  I
> thought the idea was to keep it as open as possible without encouraging
> chaos?  I don't think bi-weekly meetings that are open to the public to
> subscribe without incurring dollar-pain because of the message load are
> necessarily bad.

I am not.  This list is not closed.  To my knowledge, this list has never
denied access to anybody.  To my knowledge, the only way to get denied
access to this list is to be abusive or harrasing.

I never said that IRC meetings were bad.  I said that IRC was an
inappropriate place to discuss the details of the style guide.  Now that I
have attended one of these IRC meetings, it is clear to me that details
are not what Bowie had in mind.

 
> >Puting public forum on IRC makes it open to people who don't care all that
> >much, but are bored at the time.  Advertising it as widely as it has been
> >ensures that anyone who wants to make our lives dificult will be there.
> >This mailing list will not allow non-subscribers to post.  This enforces
> >accountability, which the Undernet does not.
> 
> Make our lives difficult?  Yeah, that damn slashdot community...
> 
> >I still say that this list is an appropriate place for discussing the
> >details of the Style Guide.  I also still say that IRC is not an
> >appropriate place.  If enough people really want it to be on IRC, much
> >more attention needs to be paid to scheduling, pre-dawn monday morning is
> >a decidedly bad time to hold a meeting.
> 
> IRC is a great place for live discussion, quick back and forths, etc.  GIMP
> stands in DIRECT contradiction to what you're saying.

How does GIMP stand in direct contradiction to what I am saying.  I point
out problems with IRC, you give me an application?  I fail to understand
the argument.

If, you are referring to the IRC meetings that I am told were part of the
GIMP development, all I know about them is what Bowie mentioned, which is
that the developers found them cruical.  I know nothing about where they
were held, how they were advertized, or or if they addressed the points I
was making, or how similar or different they were from Bowie's meeting.

Just because someone found something useful is not an argument against
detailed points.  Did they find it useful in spite of the points?  Did
they find the points did not apply?  Did they take extra measures to work
around the points?

 
> I agree, the scheduling of this bit ass, but it bit because it was on a
> Sunday, not because it was at 3AM your time(what about the
> Japanese/Austrailians/etc?)

It happened not to be 3AM my time.  It was, however, pre-dawn monday
morning for many of the contributors here.  There were many comments to
the effect that they would have prefferred a Sunday meeting, even a
pre-dawn one.

I think that your annoyance at it being on a Sunday pales in comparison to
the disruption of work that their attendance would have required.  Yes, it
is always 3AM somewhere, but scheduing a meeting on Monday was just bad.

-Gleef