On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Simon King <simon.k...@uni-jena.de> wrote: > On 31 Jan., 07:13, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Emil Widmann <emil.widm...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > But. >> > I strongly resent the comments and "spirit" of Prof. Fateman. Using >> > classifications like "losers" and "winners", "top producers" and "junk >> > submitters" he introduces very elitist terminology and patterns of >> > argumentation into this thread. This spawned terms like "bad apples" >> > and "crackpot" and moved the focus of the thread. Before it was >> > positive and open minded with the goal to spread the word of sage and >> > attract new people for contribution. Afterwards it had negative and >> > defensive tone and - worst of all - was full of doubt. >> ... >> > But sometimes it is not only important if an opinion is >> > right or wrong, but also which words, phrasings, lines of >> > argumentation or more general "categories of thinking" are used. Right >> > and wrong are just relevant in reference to a specific framework. And >> > it is my strong opinion, that this specific intellectual framework of >> > categorizing people should not be used on a public (or semi public) >> > forum about a volunteer open source project. > > Meanwhile I agree, and I apologise for providing some paragraphs about > "losers". One should keep in mind that such categories are not > objective and thus ought not to be applied to people (being volunteer > for an open source project or not). And you are right that the output > of a person (to which "right" and "wrong" might apply) must not be > confused with the person itself. > >> I think absolutely *anybody* has the potential to >> contribute usefully to the Sage project, and for it to be a net >> positive. Seriously. Anybody. Your grandma. Some people program, >> some people find bugs, some find typos in documentation, some write >> documentation, and some write bug-riddled prototypes that point the >> way or teach us a lesson.
This is Sage's number one strength IMHO. I'm unskilled and give up quickly. However because of the culture and ease of building source and editing it I was able to create the Notebook's registration page. I think the key reason for encouraging unskilled contributors like myself is you get important contributions like the Notebook registration page that I doubt you would get otherwise. Heck Wikipedia changed the world because it encourages ANYONE to edit it. In my opinion making the Sage development process even easier could go a long way. I've often recently thought that people should be able to develop sage via the notebook without ever having to download Sage. I don't have what it takes to successful extend the notebook to do that. But it's at least an idea. Maybe a key goal should be to get at one commit of a patch written by a quarter of students taking a class on Sage. Make Sage even more like Wikipedia. > > I almost agree. You are certainly right about my grandma. But I met > people who have substantial errors in their work and have a self- > esteem that would not allow them to acknowledge that there was > anything wrong at all. I don't mind the errors - it is the ignorance > that I can't stand. It is tempting to try and teach such person, but > the effort is wasted. > > One could argue that "such person drags other people down". But, > convinced by what Emil and William said, I think one should better say > that "some other people let themselves be dragged down". I guess there > are ways of self-defense that allow one to keep a positive attitude, > and that's better than to repulse someone. > > Cheers, > Simon > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
