On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 10:37:24PM -0400, MKow1234@aol.com wrote:
>
> It's funny how my posting, borne out of a desire to see more folks get off
> their @$$e$ to contribute something -- anything -- suddenly is construed by
> other members as a neo-Nazi threat to the bulletin board! Interesting... Oh yes,
> by all means, let's just be a bunch of unorganized people who happen to use
> the same computing device... No sense in actually setting any kind of short or
> long-range objectives for the Community. That would just make it seem like we
> had a sense of direction, and God forbid that we should have an agenda!
It seems to me that the entire concept was fundamentally flawed from the
outset. Talk of 'banning' people and having 'an agenda' (Whose? Yours?)
is bound to annoy people, but the concept of having to contribute something
before you can receive something will kill the Newt faster than anything
I, like many people, monitor this group but don't contribute much for a
reason. I have a Newton, I would rather use it in preference to another
PDA, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert on it. Would it be
beneficial to have people contributing on areas they know little about?
OTOH you can see me on other lists and NGs where I am contributing, on
areas I feel more competent and have more professional expertise. So
while I may be a leech in the context of the Newton, I am sharing my
knowledge in other areas. What's wrong with that?
Finally, what about the newbie? How are they supposed to contribute
before asking their first questions? I recall a discussion years
ago on this issue of sharing knowledge - it's not fair to expect
people to repay the effort you have put into teaching someone, simply
because by the time they have learned more, so have you. The best
thing is to hope that they feed-forward: that is, repay the guesture
by teaching a _future_ newbie what they know. Your proposed system
would not permit this.
-- Andrew Smallshaw andrews@sdf.lonestar.org -- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/Received on Mon Jul 31 15:45:17 2006
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