On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Jos? Matos wrote: > On Thursday 05 March 2009 16:30:54 Orcan Ogetbil wrote: >> ... which I find disturbing. It is really hard for a new contributor >> to get used to the jargons used in these email lists, to the point >> where it becomes discouraging, sometimes. > > And where do you stop explaining all the terms? > What is the lowest level that you assume for your readers? > Like I tried to imply on the last sentence of my original message, I assume the lowest level to be the Fedora Guidelines. > If you come from the academic world and you entering a new area the scenario > above is precisely what you find, some incomprehensible jargon and a strange > reasoning. :-) > > What in this list has worked until now is to ask if you don't understand what > is the context. > > This is a friendly list and I don't remember answers like RTFM (read the fine > manual). As a general rule there is always someone that either answers or at > least provides places where to find more details. > -- > Jos? Ab?lio Yes, I know that things keep working in a way or another. But there is no reason to not make them work better, right? The academic world also keeps improving its inner dynamics over time. I find the "unambiguity" as one of its strongest qualities. At the very least, I can just shut my eyes and say "There is probably a good reason why the academic world evolved around this. People must have thought about this." and believe that this is the right way. There is no need to go in circles and slow down the evolution. >From personal experience, I can say that the way things work right now in Fedora makes it hard for outsiders to become insiders. For instance, someone may read this thread 2 years from now. He won't make much sense of what has been written if there are no proper references. While it may not matter much for this particular thread, it does for many threads about software bugs. Many times, I have gone through a situation when I am reading a thread from an archive of a big mailing list. And because some contributors do not give proper references, it gets really hard sometimes to dig out the necessary information, even with the help of search engines. But many people didn't have a PhD training here, so I can't blame them for not obeying the scientific rules. Sorry if I offended anyone. Orcan
