[Chicago-talk] Introducing Myself

Jonathan T. Rockway jon at jrock.us
Wed May 30 13:02:45 PDT 2007


On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 09:30:30PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> I'm asking because I already got burned twice in London.pm where I discovered
> that their everything-is-on-topic policy is actually 
> "everything-is-on-topic-except-some-things-that-aren't". They used to discuss
> Buffy a lot, but frowned upon me London.pm-ing a Star Trek episode I started
> writing (even thought it had some Buffyism). Then I posted an email with some
> Perl jokes I generated and collected, and was banned from the mailing list.
> Maybe it was annoying, but it was amusing, and was certainly on-topic. So I'd
> like to make it clear.

Here's the thing.  Most of the off-topic stuff on london.pm is from
members of london.pm -- people that go to meetings together, people
that drink together, etc.  They know each other in real life, and
hence know what's on topic or off topic.  When the guy down the hall
from you posts something stupid, you go over to his office and make
fun of him in person.  When some random Internet troll does something
stupid, you ban him from the mailing list.  Keep that in mind.

In general, chicago-talk tends to be lowish traffic.  It's not a
requirement, but it happens to be that way right now.  I would
recommend sticking to answering people's questions instead of starting
threads.  Once you get an idea of what's acceptable by actually
observing, feel free to post.  (Also, when you answer people's
questions, try to give them a real answer.  The answer to "how do I
run .t files" is not Test::Run, it's "prove".  Sorry.)

But I have to admit, it's kind of weird that you're here.  If you want
to adopt a PM that doesn't have anyone "famous", you are welcome to do
so, but keep in mind that chicago.pm has Andy, Pete, Josh, brian d
foy, etc.  Your time might be better spent elsewhere.  That said, it's
not really up to me to decide how to spend your time.


> Some of the more critical articles I wrote about what I perceived as
> unfortunate trends in the Perl world, and my general tendency
> towards tactlessness got me a somewhat bad reputation. This prompted
> me to keep introducing myself as the Perl Black Sheep to people who
> don't know me.

I think you are misreading people's impressions.  "Shut up and write
some code" comes to mind.  Nobody in the OSS community apprecites
"essayists" that whine about bugs.  Fix them!

> Plus, I'm not optimising for being loved. 

Are you really sure that's not what you want?  Being hated gets old
fast.

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway


More information about the Chicago-talk mailing list