I must say, sometimes i lookup to your courage in frequent cross
posting, even though i consider your posts are proper with respect to
the various forum's explicit or implicit charters. (though, i do see
your tendency to peddle your website, and freely inject your little
personal gripes about Mathematica or whatever)
When i cross post, and if my subject or opinion is controversial, and
or my writting demeanor is to be non-conformal, i limit myself to
maybe 1 post per week or month, as a matter of self-imposed discipline
and respect for the larger community. I've been following this more or
less since about 2004.
And, when i post controversial or non-conformal ways, i made sure i
spend great time on it. (1 or 2 hours is typical. 6 hours composition,
broken into multiple days, is not unusual) I almost never, do a post
that's trivial like just few lines. (i've been gradually relaxing this
rule in recent years, however.)
For example, some of these philosophies i've written publically before
(often with the result of being ostracized from the community).
• Philosophies of Netiquette
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/phil_netiquette.html
• “Old School Netiquette (The traffic of Well-written vs One-liner
posts)”
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/os_netiquette.html
My own dilemma in recent years, is whether i shall keep aloof with
some sense of immaculateness in limiting sensitive posts to a few, yet
persistent possibly until i die. Or, should i just “relax”, mix-in,
adapt more of a every-body-is-a-friend writing style, and post
profusely, like multiple posts per day, with just one or two line per
post (like “thanks, but i don't agree.”), like them.
The litanies of nagging has its powers.
For example, in recent years i have spent great energy in emacs lisp.
I spent several months out of my decade long keyboarding experience to
have deviced a ergonomic shortcut for emacs (or any text editing tasks
on computer keyboard). (been thinking of patent it) By my usual
practice, i would put it on my web page (so it's public), make a
announcement in appropriate forums once, and never speak of it again.
The basic philosophy is that I, don't do peddling. If it is good, let
people come to it. Marketing is a necessity, but its not something I,
shall deign to do. Like, if Einstein invented relativity, and nobody
belived it, that's their problem. History, will possibly eventually
recognize good things, possibly a while after the inventor is dead.
(long list of examples here... e.g. Dvorak keymap in our context.
(btw, Richard Stallman, is somewhat aloof like this, however, he
invented the the Gnu General Public (viral) License, Free Software
Foundation, full-fledged with laws and lawers, which in the end made
him and his ideas successful, as opposed to the huge number of free-
spirited software such as BSDs etc. (Richard Stalman, also, freely
abused English words such as “hacker”, “freedom”, to sell his
ideas.)))
But, i have second thoughts. Fame, power, leadership, seduces me. For
example, instead of my aloof behavior, i could just be like a “normal”
human animal. When i see people asking about difficult emacs
keybindings in emacs forums, which happens frequently maybe at least
once a month, i could just say, “hey, by chance i did this keymap. Try
it out, maybe it'll help!”. And whenever i did minor update to my page
about it, or have some minor thoughts about my keymap design, i'll
just post: “hi guys, thanks a lot for previous feedback. Recently i've
been thinking xyz design, what do you think?” Usually, the more
trivial the question, the more numerous the reply. People, especially
in modern society, in particular the tech geekers, are a very lonely
bunch. They are EAGER to help, contribute their opinions. We NEED the
emontional touch. (every book on friendship, leadership or politics,
will tell you about the importance of establishing supporters) Also,
avoid making a post that's more than, say, 2 short paragraphs long, or
construct very logical sentences, or use big words. That makes you
less approachable.
I'm not sure Socrates or Plato would approve such relationship style.
But by Allah, didn't Goddess Fortuna put Socrates to death by poison
drinking?
Ok, 2.5 hours went into this post. I shall make a stop and post what i
have now, lest i become unapproachable.
Xah
∑
http://xahlee.org/
☄
