discussion_policy.htm 12 KB

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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. <dt><a href="#lib_names">Library Names</a><dd>
  34. </dl>
  35. <h2><a name="acceptable"></a>Acceptable topics</h2>
  36. <ul>
  37. <li>Queries to determine interest in a possible library submission.</li>
  38. <li>Technical discussions about a proposed or existing library, including bug
  39. reports and requests for help.</li>
  40. <li>Formal Reviews of proposed libraries.</li>
  41. <li>Reports of user experiences with Boost libraries.</li>
  42. <li>Boost administration or policies.</li>
  43. <li>Compiler specific workarounds as applied to Boost libraries.</li>
  44. </ul>
  45. <p>Other topics related to boost development may be acceptable, at the discretion of moderators. If unsure, go ahead and post. The moderators
  46. will let you know.</p>
  47. <h2><a name="unacceptable"></a>Unacceptable Topics</h2>
  48. <ul>
  49. <li>Advertisements for commercial products.</li>
  50. <li>Requests for help getting non-boost code to compile with your compiler.
  51. Try the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup instead.</li>
  52. <li>Requests for help interpreting the C++ standard. Try the comp.std.c++
  53. newsgroup instead.</li>
  54. <li>Job offers.</li>
  55. <li>Requests for solutions to homework assignments.</ul>
  56. <h2><a name="quoting"></a>Effective Posting</h2>
  57. <p>Please <b>prune extraneous quoted text</b> from replies so that
  58. only the relevant parts are included. Some people have to pay for, or
  59. wait for, each byte that they download from the list. More
  60. importantly, it will save time and make your post more valuable when
  61. readers do not have to find out which exact part of a previous message
  62. you are responding to.
  63. <p>A common and very useful approach is to cite the small fractions of
  64. the message you are actually responding to and to put your response
  65. directly beneath each citation, with a blank line separating them for
  66. readability:
  67. <blockquote>
  68. <pre>
  69. &gt; Some part of a paragraph that you wish to reply to goes
  70. &gt; here; there may be several lines.
  71. Your response to that part of the message goes here. There may,
  72. of course, be several lines.
  73. &gt; The second part of the paragraph that is relevant to your
  74. &gt; reply goes here; agiain there may be several lines.
  75. Your response to the second part of the message goes here.
  76. ...
  77. </pre>
  78. </blockquote>
  79. For more information about effective use of quotation in posts, see <a
  80. href="http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html">this helpful
  81. guide</a>.
  82. <p>A summary of the foregoing thread is only needed after a long
  83. discussion, especially when the topic is drifting or a result has been
  84. achieved in a discussion. The mail system will do the tracking that
  85. is needed to enable mail readers to display message threads (and every
  86. decent mail reader supports that).
  87. <p>If you ever have to refer to single message earlier in a thread or
  88. in a different thread then you can use a URL to the <a
  89. href="mailing_lists.htm#archive">message archives</a>. To help to
  90. keep those URLs short, you can use <a
  91. href="http://www.tinyurl.com">tinyurl.com</a>. Citing the relevant
  92. portion of a message you link to is often helpful (if the citation is
  93. small).
  94. <p>Don't forget, you're a single writer but there are many readers,
  95. and you want them to stay interested in what you're saying. Saving
  96. your readers a little time and effort is usually worth the extra time
  97. you spend when writing a message. Also, boost discussions are saved
  98. for posterity, as rationales and history of the work we do. A post's
  99. usefulness in the future is determined by its readability.
  100. <p>The mailing list software automatically limits message and
  101. attachment size to a reasonable amount, typically 75K, which is
  102. adjusted from time-to-time by the moderators.. This limit is a
  103. courtesy to those who rely on dial-up Internet access.
  104. </p>
  105. <p><b>When starting a new topic, always send a fresh message</b>,
  106. rather than beginning a reply to some other message and replacing the
  107. subject and body. Many mailers are able to detect the thread you
  108. started with and will show the new message as part of the original
  109. thread, which probably isn't what you intended. Follow this guideline
  110. for your own sake as well as for others'. Often, people scanning for
  111. relevant messages will decide they're done with a topic and hide or
  112. kill the entire thread: your message will be missed, and you won't get
  113. the response you're looking for.
  114. <p><b>Do not reply to digests</b> if you are a digest delivery
  115. subscriber. Your reply will not be properly threaded and will
  116. probably have the wrong subject line. Instead, you can reply through
  117. the <a href="http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel">GMane
  118. web interface</a>.
  119. <h2><a name="behavior"></a>Prohibited Behavior</h2>
  120. <p>Prohibited behavior will not be tolerated. The moderators will ban
  121. postings by abusers.</p>
  122. <h3>Flame wars</h3>
  123. <p>Personal insults, argument for the sake of argument, and all the other
  124. behaviors which fall into the &quot;flame war&quot; category are
  125. prohibited. Discussions should focus on technical arguments, not the
  126. personality traits or motives of participants.</p>
  127. <h3>Third-party attacks</h3>
  128. <p>Attacks on third parties such as software vendors, hardware vendors, or any
  129. other organizations, are prohibited. Boost exists to unite and serve the
  130. entire C++ community, not to disparage the work of others.</p>
  131. <p>Does this mean that we ban the occasional complaint or wry remark about a
  132. troublesome compiler? No, but be wary of overdoing it.</p>
  133. <h3>Off-topic posts</h3>
  134. <p>Discussions which stray from the acceptable topics are strongly discouraged.
  135. While off-topic posts are often well meaning and not as individually corrosive
  136. as other abuses, cumulatively the distraction damages the effectiveness of
  137. discussion.</p>
  138. <h2><a name="culture"></a>Culture</h2>
  139. <p>In addition to technical skills, Boost members value collaboration,
  140. acknowledgement of the help of others, and a certain level of politeness. Boost
  141. membership is very international, and ranges widely in age and other
  142. characteristics. Think of discussion as occurring among colleagues in a widely read forum, rather
  143. than among a few close friends.</p>
  144. <p>Always remember that the cumulative effort spent by people reading
  145. your contribution scales with the (already large) number of boost
  146. members. Thus, do invest time and effort to make your message as
  147. readable as possible. Adhere to English syntax and grammar rules such
  148. as proper capitalization. Avoid copious informalism, colloquial
  149. language, or abbreviations, they may not be understood by all readers.
  150. Re-read your message before submitting it.</p>
  151. <h2>Guidelines for Effective Discussions</h2>
  152. <p>Apply social engineering to prevent heated technical discussion from
  153. degenerating into a shouting match, and to actively encourage the cooperation
  154. upon which Boost depends.</p>
  155. <ul>
  156. <li>Questions help. If someone suggests something that you don't think
  157. will work, then replying with a question like &quot;will that compile?&quot;
  158. or &quot;won't that fail to compile, or am I missing something?&quot; is a
  159. lot smoother than &quot;That's really stupid - it won't compile.&quot;&nbsp;
  160. Saying &quot;that fails to compile for me, and seems to violate section
  161. n.n.n of the standard&quot; would be yet another way to be firm without
  162. being abrasive.</li>
  163. <li>If most of the discussion has been code-free generalities, posting a bit
  164. of sample code can focus people on the practical issues.</li>
  165. <li>If most of the discussion has been in terms of specific code, try to talk
  166. a bit about hidden assumptions and generalities that may be preventing
  167. discussion closure.</li>
  168. <li>Taking a time-out is often effective. Just say: &quot;Let me think
  169. about that for a day or two. Let's take a time-out to digest the
  170. discussion so far.&quot;</li>
  171. </ul>
  172. <p>Avoid Parkinson's Bicycle Shed. Parkinson described a committee formed
  173. to oversee design of an early nuclear power plant. There were three agenda
  174. items - when to have tea, where to put the bicycle shed, and how to
  175. ensure nuclear safety. Tea was disposed of quickly as trivial.&nbsp;&nbsp;
  176. Nuclear safety was discussed for only
  177. an hour - it was so complex, scary, and technical that even
  178. among experts few felt comfortable with the issues. Endless days were then
  179. spent discussing where to put the bicycle shed (the parking lot would
  180. be a modern equivalent) because everyone
  181. understood the issues and felt comfortable discussing them.&nbsp;</p>
  182. <h2><a name="lib_names"></a>Library Names</h2>
  183. <p>In order to ensure a uniform presentation in books and articles, we
  184. have adopted a convention for referring to Boost libraries. Library
  185. names can either be written in a compact form with a dot, as
  186. &quot;Boost.<i>Name</i>&quot;, or in a long form as &quot;the
  187. Boost <i>Name</i> library.&quot; For example:
  188. <blockquote>
  189. <b>Boost.Python</b> serves a very different purpose from <b>the Boost Graph library</b>.
  190. </blockquote>
  191. Note that the word &quot;library&quot; is not part of the name, and as such isn't capitalized.
  192. <p>Please take care to avoid confusion in discussions between
  193. libraries that have been accepted into Boost and those that have not.
  194. Acceptance as a Boost library indicates that the code and design have
  195. passed through our peer-review process; failing to make the
  196. distinction devalues the hard work of library authors who've gone
  197. through that process. Here are some suggested ways to describe
  198. potential Boost libraries:
  199. <ul>
  200. <li>the proposed Boost <i>Name</i> library</li>
  201. <li>the Boost.<i>Name</i> candidate</li>
  202. <li>the <i>Name</i> library</i> (probably the best choice where applicable)</li>
  203. </ul>
  204. <p>Note that this policy only applies to discussions, not to the
  205. documentation, directory structure, or even identifiers in the
  206. code of potential Boost libraries.
  207. <hr>
  208. <p>Revised <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%d %B, %Y" startspan -->24 March, 2005<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" i-checksum="38549" endspan -->
  209. </p>
  210. <p>© Beman Dawes, Rob Stewart, and David Abrahams 2000-2005</p>
  211. <p> Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
  212. (See accompanying file <a href="../LICENSE_1_0.txt">LICENSE_1_0.txt</a> or
  213. copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt">www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>)
  214. </p>
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