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  21. <h1>Boost Discussion Policy</h1>
  22. <p>Email discussion is the tie that binds boost members together into a community.
  23. If the discussion is stimulating and effective, the community thrives. If
  24. the discussion degenerates into name calling and ill will, the community withers
  25. and dies.</p>
  26. <h2>Contents</h2>
  27. <dl>
  28. <dt><a href="#acceptable">Acceptable Topics</a><dd>
  29. <dt><a href="#unacceptable">Unacceptable Topics</a><dd>
  30. <dt><a href="#quoting">Effective Posting</a><dd>
  31. <dt><a href="#behavior">Prohibited Behavior</a><dd>
  32. <dt><a href="#culture">Culture</a><dd>
  33. </dl>
  34. <h2><a name="acceptable"></a>Acceptable topics</h2>
  35. <ul>
  36. <li>Queries to determine interest in a possible library submission.</li>
  37. <li>Technical discussions about a proposed or existing library, including bug
  38. reports and requests for help.</li>
  39. <li>Formal Reviews of proposed libraries.</li>
  40. <li>Reports of user experiences with Boost libraries.</li>
  41. <li>Boost administration or policies.</li>
  42. <li>Compiler specific workarounds as applied to Boost libraries.</li>
  43. </ul>
  44. <p>Other topics related to boost development may be acceptable, at the discretion of moderators. If unsure, go ahead and post. The moderators
  45. will let you know.</p>
  46. <h2><a name="unacceptable"></a>Unacceptable topics</h2>
  47. <ul>
  48. <li>Advertisements for commercial products.</li>
  49. <li>Requests for help getting non-boost code to compile with your compiler.
  50. Try the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup instead.</li>
  51. <li>Requests for help interpreting the C++ standard. Try the comp.std.c++
  52. newsgroup instead.</li>
  53. <li>Job offers.</li>
  54. <li>Requests for solutions to homework assignments.</ul>
  55. <h2><a name="quoting"></a>Effective Posting</h2>
  56. <p>Please <b>prune extraneous quoted text</b> from replies so that
  57. only the relevant parts are included. Some people have to pay for, or
  58. wait for, each byte that they download from the list. More
  59. importantly, it will save time and make your post more valuable when
  60. readers do not have to find out which exact part of a previous message
  61. you are responding to.
  62. <p>A common and very useful approach is to cite the small fractions of
  63. the message you are actually responding to and to put your response
  64. directly beneath each citation, with a blank line separating them for
  65. readability:
  66. <blockquote>
  67. <pre>
  68. &gt; Some part of a paragraph that you wish to reply to goes
  69. &gt; here; there may be several lines.
  70. Your response to that part of the message goes here. There may,
  71. of course, be several lines.
  72. &gt; The second part of the paragraph that is relevant to your
  73. &gt; reply goes here; agiain there may be several lines.
  74. Your response to the second part of the message goes here.
  75. ...
  76. </pre>
  77. </blockquote>
  78. For more information about effective use of quotation in posts, see <a
  79. href="http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html">this helpful
  80. guide</a>.
  81. <p>A summary of the foregoing thread is only needed after a long
  82. discussion, especially when the topic is drifting or a result has been
  83. achieved in a discussion. The mail system will do the tracking that
  84. is needed to enable mail readers to display message threads (and every
  85. decent mail reader supports that).
  86. <p>If you ever have to refer to single message earlier in a thread or
  87. in a different thread then you can use a URL to the <a
  88. href="mailing_lists.htm#archive">message archives</a>. To help to
  89. keep those URLs short, you can use <a
  90. href="http://www.tinyurl.com">tinyurl.com</a>. Citing the relevant
  91. portion of a message you link to is often helpful (if the citation is
  92. small).
  93. <p>Don't forget, you're a single writer but there are many readers,
  94. and you want them to stay interested in what you're saying. Saving
  95. your readers a little time and effort is usually worth the extra time
  96. you spend when writing a message. Also, boost discussions are saved
  97. for posterity, as rationales and history of the work we do. A post's
  98. usefulness in the future is determined by its readability.
  99. <p>The mailing list software automatically limits message and
  100. attachment size to a reasonable amount, typically 75K, which is
  101. adjusted from time-to-time by the moderators.. This limit is a
  102. courtesy to those who rely on dial-up Internet access.
  103. </p>
  104. <p><b>When starting a new topic, always send a fresh message</b>,
  105. rather than beginning a reply to some other message and replacing the
  106. subject and body. Many mailers are able to detect the thread you
  107. started with and will show the new message as part of the original
  108. thread, which probably isn't what you intended. Follow this guideline
  109. for your own sake as well as for others'. Often, people scanning for
  110. relevant messages will decide they're done with a topic and hide or
  111. kill the entire thread: your message will be missed, and you won't get
  112. the response you're looking for.
  113. <p><b>Do not reply to digests</b> if you are a digest delivery
  114. subscriber. Your reply will not be properly threaded and will
  115. probably have the wrong subject line. Instead, you can reply through
  116. the <a href="http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel">GMane
  117. web interface</a>.
  118. <h2><a name="behavior"></a>Prohibited behavior</h2>
  119. <p>Prohibited behavior will not be tolerated. The moderators will ban
  120. postings by abusers.</p>
  121. <h3>Flame wars</h3>
  122. <p>Personal insults, argument for the sake of argument, and all the other
  123. behaviors which fall into the &quot;flame war&quot; category are
  124. prohibited. Discussions should focus on technical arguments, not the
  125. personality traits or motives of participants.</p>
  126. <h3>Third-party attacks</h3>
  127. <p>Attacks on third parties such as software vendors, hardware vendors, or any
  128. other organizations, are prohibited. Boost exists to unite and serve the
  129. entire C++ community, not to disparage the work of others.</p>
  130. <p>Does this mean that we ban the occasional complaint or wry remark about a
  131. troublesome compiler? No, but be wary of overdoing it.</p>
  132. <h3>Off-topic posts</h3>
  133. <p>Discussions which stray from the acceptable topics are strongly discouraged.
  134. While off-topic posts are often well meaning and not as individually corrosive
  135. as other abuses, cumulatively the distraction damages the effectiveness of
  136. discussion.</p>
  137. <h2><a name="culture"></a>Culture</h2>
  138. <p>In addition to technical skills, Boost members value collaboration,
  139. acknowledgement of the help of others, and a certain level of politeness. Boost
  140. membership is very international, and ranges widely in age and other
  141. characteristics. Think of discussion as occurring among colleagues in a widely read forum, rather
  142. than among a few close friends.</p>
  143. <p>Always remember that the cumulative effort spent by people reading
  144. your contribution scales with the (already large) number of boost
  145. members. Thus, do invest time and effort to make your message as
  146. readable as possible. Adhere to English syntax and grammar rules such
  147. as proper capitalization. Avoid copious informalism, colloquial
  148. language, or abbreviations, they may not be understood by all readers.
  149. Re-read your message before submitting it.</p>
  150. <h2>Guidelines for effective discussions</h2>
  151. <p>Apply social engineering to prevent heated technical discussion from
  152. degenerating into a shouting match, and to actively encourage the cooperation
  153. upon which Boost depends.</p>
  154. <ul>
  155. <li>Questions help. If someone suggests something that you don't think
  156. will work, then replying with a question like &quot;will that compile?&quot;
  157. or &quot;won't that fail to compile, or am I missing something?&quot; is a
  158. lot smoother than &quot;That's really stupid - it won't compile.&quot;&nbsp;
  159. Saying &quot;that fails to compile for me, and seems to violate section
  160. n.n.n of the standard&quot; would be yet another way to be firm without
  161. being abrasive.</li>
  162. <li>If most of the discussion has been code-free generalities, posting a bit
  163. of sample code can focus people on the practical issues.</li>
  164. <li>If most of the discussion has been in terms of specific code, try to talk
  165. a bit about hidden assumptions and generalities that may be preventing
  166. discussion closure.</li>
  167. <li>Taking a time-out is often effective. Just say: &quot;Let me think
  168. about that for a day or two. Let's take a time-out to digest the
  169. discussion so far.&quot;</li>
  170. </ul>
  171. <p>Avoid Parkinson's Bicycle Shed. Parkinson described a committee formed
  172. to oversee design of an early nuclear power plant. There were three agenda
  173. items - when to have tea, where to put the bicycle shed, and how to
  174. ensure nuclear safety. Tea was disposed of quickly as trivial.&nbsp;&nbsp;
  175. Nuclear safety was discussed for only
  176. an hour - it was so complex, scary, and technical that even
  177. among experts few felt comfortable with the issues. Endless days were then
  178. spent discussing where to put the bicycle shed (the parking lot would
  179. be a modern equivalent) because everyone
  180. understood the issues and felt comfortable discussing them.&nbsp;</p>
  181. <hr>
  182. <p>Revised <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%d %B, %Y" startspan -->02 October, 2003<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" i-checksum="38549" endspan -->
  183. </p>
  184. <p>© Beman Dawes 2000</p>
  185. <p> Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
  186. (See accompanying file <a href="../LICENSE_1_0.txt">LICENSE_1_0.txt</a> or
  187. copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt">www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>)
  188. </p>
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