On Mon, Jun 26, 2000 at 04:57:54PM -0500, Autarch wrote:
> This has been bugging me for a while. Basically, [EMAIL PROTECTED] seems
> like sort of a black box. I send messages it to it and it seems that they
> go to some list of people (Andreas, G. Barr, J. Pritikin, K. Starsinic,
> ???) and then sometimes I get a response and sometimes not. Note, this
> has nothing to do with the messages I sent earlier today (I'm not _that_
> impatient). Rather, this has to do with messages I sent way long ago
> about the Exception & StackTrace namespaces. I see this sentence,
> "Generally a lack of response can be taken as acceptance of the module
> name being proposed," on the 04pause page but I really doubt that's what
> happened in regards to my earlier request. Heck, I wouldn't give myself
> the Exception namespace so I wouldn't expect anybody reading this to do so
> either!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] is a council of wise elders who give advice on
module naming, when they feel that their wisdom is applicable. A more
accurate version of the above quote might be:
`Generally, a lack of response can be taken as an indication
that there is nothing blatantly stupid about your proposal.'
> Anyway, what I think would be most useful would be some info on CPAN
> (perhaps on the 04pause page) listing the following:
>
> 1. Who reads this list (I know anyone can read the archives but who gets
> it mailed to them)?
Some of us appreciate some imagined level of privacy. What benefit
will you achieve from knowing each member's name and email address?
> 2. What do those people's responsibilities consist of (particularly of
> interest if different people do different things)?
Their responsibility is to listen when they have time, and to consider
the future of CPAN before they speak.
> 3. What to do if we get no response (give up, resend the message with
> more information, start our own parallel CPAN where we control all the
> namespaces. Hmm, MyCPAN! ;) )?
There is very little law on PAUSE. To quote 04pause.html, `Please, talk
to [EMAIL PROTECTED] before you decide upon the namespace'. Note the use of
`please' and the absence of `must'. Certain top-level namespaces (e.g.,
Sun::, DBI::) are controlled by force of law, and are documented as such.
Otherwise, you are simply requested to play nicely with others.
> Yes, I know everyone who reads this list is busy but then maybe you just
> need to get some more help. I am not the first to grumble about this list
> and frankly I think it sometimes is a bit of an impediment to getting more
> involved in contributing back to the Perl community, which is why we all
> want to put stuff on CPAN anyway (that and the glory of it all, I
> suppose).
I certainly want to support your efforts and the efforts of others to
contribute to CPAN, but I don't see how you've been kept from contributing.
I find CPAN (specifically PAUSE) to be unbelievably open, and fairly well
documented. Your legitimate complaints seem to be based in not finding,
reading, understanding, and/or trusting the documentation. Do you think
there's a documentation problem, an access problem, or another sort of
problem?
> And finally, would it be possible to enable read-only subscriptions to the
> list?
>
> I'd like to follow the traffic as from time to time queries similar to
> mine come up (exceptions, to name one) and I'd like to discuss these with
> the authors. For example, maybe everyone interested in exceptions could
> form a mailing list, get some standards together and come back with a
> better proposal for a CPAN namespace. However, regularly fishing through
> the archives is a terribly inefficient use of my time and generally I
> don't see stuff til way too late. Deleting a bunch of messages is much
> easier.
<IMHO>I am happy to be outspoken and say that I don't want to make
things _too_ easy. There's a certain level of commitment that's required
to participate effectively in CPAN, and I think that's a good thing, because
what we need most is committed and well-informed participants.</IMHO>
That being said, [EMAIL PROTECTED] isn't a discussion forum; it is
requested that the substantial discussion take place elsewhere first.
I hope that I haven't been discouraging in my tone, unless you're
easily discouraged, in which case I hope that I was extremely
discouraging. :^)
Peace,
* Kurt Starsinic ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---------- Senior Network Engineer *
| `Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle |
| is always a vice.' - Thomas Paine |
