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Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 18:36:21 +1100
Subject: Re: Aggressive language on python-list
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
To: python-list@python.org
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On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 5:24 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
> In an ideal world, we'd all agree on what counts as acceptable behaviour,
> and stick to it, and discuss nothing but Python coding problems. But we
> don't live in an idea world, and there are disagreements and people
> behaving badly, and arguments about such, and meta-arguments about the
> arguments.
>
> Welcome to humanity.

Every negative is a corrupted version of a positive. Why are there
these sorts of arguments? Because people care about the quality of
posts. Why have meta-arguments? Because Python programmers have the
sorts of brains that are good at (and enjoy) such.

> And more importantly, welcome to democracy -- this is not a dictatorship,
> there is no Supreme Glorious Leader who decides what is on- and off-
> topic, no Thought Police to ban you for straying from the straight and
> narrow of what is allowed. And thank goodness for that. I've been on
> lists that do have such policies, and they tend to give lousy advice
> badly and have a culture of group-think.

Correction: Welcome to anarchy. In a democracy, we'd all vote and
anyone voted out would be banned. Otherwise, absolutely agree.

> Sure, it's frustrating to have to hit delete on a bunch of posts you
> don't care about. But that's true regardless of the topic or the list.
> Last night I deleted about 300 emails about designing a new asynchronous
> library that I had no desire to take part in. Did I post an angry screed
> calling it BS? No I did not, because I'm aware that even if I'm not
> interested in it, it is a part of Python culture and *somebody* needs to
> deal with it. I'm just glad its not me.

Heh, I'm skipping all those posts too - but I'm confident Python will
be the better for that discussion.

I'm on many mailing lists. Some quiet, some noisy, some public, some
private (and don't knock the private ones - it's WAY better to use
Mailman than huge cc: lists), some courteous, some rude. Not one of
them is useless to the world. If you don't like python-list, maybe
there's another forum that's more to your liking - Python is big
enough to have several. :)

ChrisA