On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 10:46 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote: > On 2006-08-02 00:51:28, Conrad wrote: > > > Which begins "A few years ago" > > Exactly. Isn't this a good start for honesty? It doesn't claim to state > anything up to date. > > It continues "I did some research", "some" being a very clear indicator > that I didn't consider this a thorough research. From the stated results of > this research it should be clear to any reasonable reader what kind of > research that was. "Claimed to have", "seemed to have" are not really > expressions that try to claim more than they are.
I think the communication breakdown here is two-fold: 1) PostgreSQL fans are perhaps a bit paranoid about claims of MySQL being better. There used to be a tiny bit of truth in this claim for certain applications (mostly relating to performance and ease of use). This makes them tend to read statements such as yours as an attack and so you get defensive responses. Also, comparing MySQL to PostgreSQL is a bit like comparing PHP to Python: not even in the same class. PostgreSQL users probably consider the whole comparison is a bit insulting to begin with, then to suggest that MySQL *might* be better is practically a slap in the face ;-) 2) When you qualify statements with modifiers such as "some", "seemed", etc, you are almost bound to be misinterpreted, since those modifiers are apparently invisible on the net. I suspect most people scan messages, taking away the main point but discarding all the nice words the writer was so careful to write. For future reference, if you don't know and intend to convey that you don't, it's probably best to end your statement (no matter how carefully qualified) with a clear statement that you are fishing for informative responses. For instance, were I to say (on this list): "I've heard that Python is slow compared to PHP, and that many people recommend PHP because it's hard to find hosting for Python apps anyway.", I'd probably get a nice mix of both helpful replies and extremely irritable ones, despite the fact I clearly qualified my statements. Both of those statements were at least somewhat true at one point and as such tend to invoke more passionate responses from Python proponents. On the other hand, had I appended "So I'd like some other opinions because I don't know." to the end, it would probably cut the irritation down considerably (or at least be in a much more defensible position if it didn't). Regards, Cliff -- -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
