[Sigia-l] Five questions about the future of this community

[David Heller]

Karl,

There is one aspect to your "assumptions" that you didn't consider ... That
is they are relative or subjective. Not everyone agrees with what is not
those things or is those things.

To use previous terms in these threads, 
One person's "troll" is another persons "hero" or "martyr".

It seems to me that what is really happening here is just personal
interpretation. 

Your assumptions are not the assumptions that we should be making to judge
the individuals or the group, these are the assumptions we can make about
everyone on the list and if you feel otherwise then you should take the
first step of responsibility. (Again this is a virtual world. Victimization
can happen, but in a very limited way and if people start screaming victim
on this list that feels way too extreme for me and would have a hard time
acknowledging it without some serious archival research.)

What is clear to me here is that no one on this list has been maligned in
any way. Yes, people get poked a bit. Maybe I'm living in NYC too long, but
being poked is a daily part of my existence. I get it at work, I get it on
the subway to and from work, it is just there.

What I am suggesting is that some are, and I'm going to risk poking people,
just placing their own relativistic subjective interpretations on IMHO is
just a great list and a great group of individuals who are making valuable
contributions to the community and field.

For all those lurkers who have expressed fear and trepidation regarding
posting. Ok, this is important. All new and current members of this
community need to feel welcome and respected, but I would encourage the
discouraged to think of this as cold water. If you try and tiptoe in and
wait till it feels right, you'll never get in the pool. If you jump right in
(and be sure to cannon ball the slow poke next to you) you'll one, have a
lot more fun and two you'll soon notice that it wasn't so bad after all.

No one has any voodoo dolls that I have experienced. (Ziya! Did you cause
that back pain I've been having?) The worse that happens is that someone
says, "Why'd ya ask that? The answer is just so obvious." ... To me this
happens all the time in many institutions. Sheesh, when I was in grad school
I would get those responses (notice I quit grad school) and these people
were in front of me, like in person (this isn't why I quit).

An off the cuff suggestion ... Maybe we create two lists. I have seen this
before for example w/ the coding community where they create a standard list
like this one and they also create a newbie list where people are encouraged
to ask all the bad questions and not look at the archives or FAQs before
hand. People who don't like stupid questions shouldn't join. People who like
to lend a hand or better want to gain insights from the pov of people who
are not brainwashed by the discipline's think machine yet are very welcome.

I kinda like that idea.

-- dave