About pure programming threads

[michiguel]

We decided after some discussion to have a poll in which the options are somehow plain and not biased to mockery. Hopefully, there will be some useful information coming out of the thread. We may not be that interested in the number of votes, but the comments may provide something.

If there are complaints, or insults towards mods (NOT OTHER MEMBERS) please make them here, and not in any other threads. Let's keep the forum organized. We may clean up other messy ones, probably locking some to attract the discussion to this one.

Mod. Team.

EDIT: There are currently two live threads dealing with this. This one and "Let us programmers...". Please do NOT open more.

[michiguel]

What we have said in another thread, so we can remove those two posts and bring them here.

[MODERATION]
I suggested that people show a bit of restrain, possibly starting to wrap this up in a couple of days. At the same time, I suggested that it would have been a good idea if the people that were annoyed tolerated this a bit. You did not, and started another complaining thread with a lot posts in it, despite that I asked not to reply because that is what it would have happened. You are not helping. We are trying to do our job, please do not try to pressure the mod team with this things.

Miguel

[moderation]
To precise Miguel's post, here is the position the moderators came to after having (extensively) discussed the matter :
1- those threads are interesting to most users, obviously. And they're not CC-unrelated, because the matter they discuss can be very important to find nasty bugs when you don't understand a strange behavior in your program.
2- Spam is something that has three characteristics : 1) it is unsolicited (could also be read as : only one poster involved), 2) it overwhelms a place (ok, could fit, here), 3) it interests nobody. Obviously many people are interested, here, or there wouldn't be such long threads. So it's definitely not spam.
3- If you're not interested, you don't read them and/or you don't participate.

[Ryan Benitez]

I think we could have 24 page discussions on AREX.

[hgm]

I voted assumng that 'non-proliferation control' means a more restrictive moderation policy than normally applies with respect to confining the number of threads on the same subject.

[Henk]

[I only have problems with long threads because they have a more complicated structure and are not easy to read. ]

I also have problems with reading source code of languages I don't know much about or incomplete code fragments with undefined symbols.

[Sometimes you are only partly interested and then it gets complicated too. Then you start to think you are wasting your time. ]

[wgarvin]

I voted assumng that 'non-proliferation control' means a more restrictive moderation policy than normally applies with respect to confining the number of threads on the same subject.

That's how I interpreted it too. It seems reasonable to me that an "almost off topic" discussion might be policed more closely than a clearly-on-topic one, even if the participants are behaving themselves. And spawning new chess-related sub threads is fine, but it seems reasonable to try and discourage the spawning of lots of not-obviously-chess-related threads if there's no clear benefit.

[sedicla]

I don't see a big deal with long discussions. I think the non-proliferation is already in place for everything.
I sometimes follow those threads because i learn something and when they got too crazy I stop following.
The moderation team is doing a good job in my opinion.

[Giorgio Medeot]

I think an occasional thread about more or less strictly programming topics can do no harm, and can teach something on the tools we use to build our chess programs. We all are chess enthusiasts, so that in every debate it's likely to see examples of how what is being discussed can impact chess programming, even when the starting point was far from chess.
I myself learnt something useful, buried into those lengthy threads.

While IMHO it is rather difficult to limit the length of the threads, I second the opportunity to limit the number of them, when they are obvious duplicates (the occasional spin off is ok).

Cheers,

• Giorgio

[mvk]

I think an occasional thread about more or less strictly programming topics can do no harm, and can teach something on the tools we use to build our chess programs. We all are chess enthusiasts, so that in every debate it's likely to see examples of how what is being discussed can impact chess programming, even when the starting point was far from chess.
I myself learnt something useful, buried into those lengthy threads.

While IMHO it is rather difficult to limit the length of the threads, I second the opportunity to limit the number of them, when they are obvious duplicates (the occasional spin off is ok).

Cheers,

• Giorgio

It would help a lot if there is a throttle on how many posts per hour a user can create. And something to limit one-liners.

[Rebel]

I think the opponents of the strcpy debate don't mind the topic itself but the length. A suggestion to the mod-team might be that the moment they feel such a thread is running in circles they invite each of the key debaters a one more time all-inclusive post that explains their position in detail, then lock the thread.