There has been a bit of chatter on roottalk recently about "bandwidth
concerns" or "list flooding" concerning posts to roottalk that are "too
large".
I would like to weigh in on the subject, as I am concerned that this
flavor of chatter will be harmful to roottalk. The opinions expressed
below are mine alone, but my opinions may be shared by others, so I
would like to ask the roottalk list maintainer(s) to address these
issues.
The reason I am bringing this up is that someone posted a ROOT code
example a week or so ago that I found while rooting around the roottalk
list archives. Finding this code example was very helpful for me.
However, someone else had posted to this particular thread that the code
example was too large for their taste, and that the author should have
supplied a ftp URL reference instead.
This is poppycock. Roottalk list members suggesting to other roottalk
list members that their posts are "too large" discourages the free flow
of ideas. It would be sad if people learned to be afraid of submitting
something to roottalk.
Our roottalk mailing list maintainer(s) controls what is too large via a
majordomo parameter. If you send something to roottalk that is "too
large" it will simply bounce, and you will get a friendly e-mail from
the roottalk maintainer about it. This has happened to me a time or
two, and my roottalk list maintainer simply asked me if I could make my
post a bit smaller, which I gladly obliged.
We, as members of the roottalk list, shouldn't be assuming this
responsibility. If a roottalk list member feels like the roottalk
volume is too high, then they can just press their e-mail client's
"Delete" button quietly or unsubscribe from the roottalk list
altogether.
This doesn't mean that people who post to roottalk shouldn't exercise
some judgment about what they post, but I believe it is more important
to err on the side of posting too much than too little. The roottalk
list is a *long* ways away from having to worry about resource problems
that are solved by discouraging posts to roottalk.
Here our some guidelines for roottalk usage which I would like to see
encouraged as a roottalk list member. Perhaps the roottalk list
maintainer(s) would comment on these. Whether they agree or disagree
with them is fine by me, but at least we will know how we should be
making use of our list.
1) When in doubt, post. If you have a code example which makes the
body of your e-mail clearer, then attach it.
Appreciate the value of the roottalk mailing list archives at
http://root.cern.ch/root/roottalk/AboutRootTalk.html. Once
something is posted to roottalk, it is there forever. The best
part of the roottalk mailing list for me is the archives, not the
mail I get in my inbox. Browsing the shared ROOT experiences of
all of us is extremely valuable.
Do your part to add to this knowledge base. What you post will
help others long after it has been deleted from their inbox.
2) Use attachments if you can (as opposed to dumping everything in the
body of your e-mail).
a) This allows other roottalk list members who may be on the
other end of a slow 28.8k PPP link (for example) to quickly
download the body of your e-mail, while leaving the "larger"
attachments on their mail server. If they want to download
your attachments, then they have the option of doing so.
b) Although our roottalk list maintainer(s) don't currently use
this feature, they have the option of serving the roottalk
archives with references to attachments, as opposed to
concatenating all of the attachments together into one web
page. I suspect they aren't using this feature because they
(rightly) haven't seen a need for it yet.
The point of this guideline is that getting information into the
roottalk archives is valuable, and there are easy ways
(e.g. attachments) of dealing with posts that are "too large" if
and when they become a problem.
3) If you have a contribution to the ROOT community which you are
actively maintaining, and for which you make periodic releases,
then, and only then, consider setting up a web page where the ROOT
community can go to download your package. If you do this,
however, make frequent posts to roottalk telling us when something
has changed, when you make new release, etc.
Our roottalk list maintainer(s) have made it clear that they will
supply web resources for such ROOT related projects if you need
them.
In short, everyone should be encouraged to post code examples to
roottalk whenever they think that there is the slightest chance that it
might be useful. Having too many contributions to ROOT would be a
wonderful problem to have to deal with, be we are no way near there yet.
--
Matthew D. Langston
SLD, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
langston@SLAC.Stanford.EDU
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 04 2000 - 00:43:35 MET