On Thursday 09 July 2009 09:39:11 Tony Marston wrote: > There are too many people in this newsgroup with the idea that you MUST > obey the rules, whatever they are, WITHOUT QUESTION. I do not subscribe to > this notion. I have been working in IT (or DP as it was originally called) > for over 30 years, and in that time I have worked with many groups, and > each group has had its own version "the rules" (aka "guidelines" or > "standards"). When moving to a new group the new rules will always be > different, and will sometimes contradict what you had before. Why is this? > Why do some groups say "do A instead of B" while others say "do B instead > of A"? Does it make a difference? > > The problem partially lies in the way in which the rules are created. It > starts with some wise ass saying > (1) Without rules there will be anarchy, so we must have rules. > (2) There are no such things as bad rules. > (3) Do not allow any choices. If there is a choice between A and B then > choose one as the standard. It doesn't matter which one. > (4) Everybody must be the same, nobody is allowed to be different. > (5) The rules must be obeyed without question. > (6) If a rule causes a problem then you must work around it, you cannot > change the rule. > > Item (5) usually exists because the author of the rule cannot justify its > existence. He just flipped a coin and it came down tails instead of heads, > so that's it. Any moron can make rules like this. > > Some people just cannot understand that sometimes a rule was created for a > certain set of circumstances, but if the circumstances change then the rule > needs changing in order to keep up with the times. Because they do not > understand why the rule was created in the first place, they do not see > that it needs changing. They also do not have the intelligence to see how > the rule might be changed to suit the new circumstances. > > I have fought against arbitrary and stupid rules for decades, and I will > keep fighting till the day I die. If you have a problem with that, then so > be it. > > -- > Tony Marston > http://www.tonymarston.net > http://www.radicore.org > > "Andrew Ballard" <aballard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message > news:b6023aa40907081232k35fa7b1em4ba543ffbb65e176@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > > On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Tony > > Marston<tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > [snip] > > > >> I don't like this rule, so I choose to disobey it. > > > > Now that's some scary ideology. > > > > Andrew Tony, No offense, but Daniel gave the reason why this rule existed, and it does seem like a fairly good reason to be fair. The emails are archived on several web-based lists. If a thread is made up of a mixture of top and bottom posting, then it won't be easy to read a all online. It might be fine for reading in a message-by-message basis in an email client if you've been following the thread since its inception, but a lot of people will come into a thread part way, or choose the digest method for email delivery rather than one email per message. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
