On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 2:12 AM, Timothy Clemans <timothy.clem...@gmail.com> wrote: > 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.
+1 > > 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. It's a very good idea. In fact, it's been suggested to me a few times in the last two months, most recently when I gave a talk to a bunch of undergrad applied math majors at UW. They just *expected* it to be possible to edit Sage over the web, like one can edit Wikipedia, and were surprised when I said it wasn't yet implemented. I really hope we can figure out how to do this, this year. What are the other *software* projects out there that can be dynamically edited through the web? -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.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
