🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <WEX.91Jan21134145@dali.pws.bull.com> wex@dali.pws.bull.com (Der Grouch) writes:
>To pick one fairly large nit, Nick has his blinders on again...

"Again"?  Wonderful ad hominem attack without examples.  Except that
it provides a good example of counter-productive use of emotions in 
groupware.  Perhaps if you would take my advice, cut out the negative 
emotions and stick to facts, we could make some progress.


>In article <20966@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
>   E-mail and netnews are the only forms of 
>   groupware that carry emotion, and even those are more useful for 
>   technical information.
>
>Patently false.  Most meeting-support tools carry some kind(s) of
>emotion-level indicators.  Gibbs et al (project NICK at MCC/STP) even went
>so far as to include explicit iconic emoticons for things like "I'm pleased"
>and "I'm bored."

OK, I should have said "widely used groupware".  You are talking 
about experiments, I am talking about real tools in real 
organizations.   Did these experiments examine the impact of such
emotional iconics on the productivity of real projects?  Also,
it is trivially easy to say "cool!" and "yawn...." with flat text.
The reason this is not done very often in technical discussions is 
because it is usually counterproductive: the technical validity of
something has little to do with whether it is pleasing or boring.


>...
>And as for the relative utility of email/netnews for technical information,
>all I can say is that Nick is reading different enews than I.  Even in good
>groups such as this one, I find few nuggets of technical information.  

No wonder you hate news, if you think this is a "good" newsgroup!  Try 
comp.lang.perl, which is the largest forum anywhere for discussion of that 
language.  Perl is now widely used in the Unix community.  It was 
distributed and taught mainly through that newsgroup (the first book is 
only now being published).  The technical discussions, code examples, etc. 
are quite extensive.  

Try comp.sys.* groups for major computer manufacturers.  Try comp.mail.* 
for discussion of the most widely used form of groupware.  There are
dozens of other comp.* newsgroups extensively used for real work.

Try sci.military for reports on weapons and strategy being used in Iraq.
Try sci.astro for astronomy.  

The international technical exchange occuring in the Unix field over
netnews is unprecedented.  Groupware is rapidly spreading new technical
information around the planet.


>more is contained in media which can carry multiple messages (such as tech
>reports with text/pictures, demonstration videos with text/animation/
>pictures/sound, etc.)

I agree that technical graphics can be useful, and in some limited 
circumstances animation, sound, and video have their place if the
bandwidth is available.  But in most cases the bandwidth is *not*
avaiable, and sound and video are superfluous or even counterproductive 
to the technical communications task at hand.


-- 
Nick Szabo			szabo@sequent.com
Embrace Change...  Keep the Values...  Hold Dear the Laughter...