Re: [boost] [1.33.0]: Some Moderation Please.

From: Victor A. Wagner Jr. (vawjr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-08 15:50:54

At Tuesday 2005-03-08 09:59, you wrote:
>>Hi Dave, thank's for the kind lesson in political correctness.
>>I'll give it all the attention I give all "PC" edicts.
>
>><hostile>
>>Here's a lesson in using your brain.
>
>Victor, apart from the fact that your message was offensive (and has 
>caused the moderators to receive complaints), you will very likely get a 
>better response if you moderate your tone: please remember that everyone 
>around here is a volunteer.

I never forget that this is a volunteer organization.  And I _hope_ what I 
put in the <hostile>...</hostile> was offensive, it was intended to 
be.  I'd hate to think that I'm accidently offensive but can't be when I 
want to.

Now, since you also quoted my snide comment about "PC" I'm going to have to 
infer that some thought/think that comment was ill conceived.  Would a 
"Yes, massah." have been more appropriate?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if some people took offense by my 
use of the word "damned", then some people need to reconsider that the 
standard phrase "take offense" implies action on the part of the newly 
offended one.  I live in a free (well mostly) country where people are free 
to do many things, including taking offense at whatever strikes their 
fancy.  Their choices to so do, does not, and can not impose any burden on 
me.  I applaud their exercise of their rights and will fight to the death 
to defend such rights.  They _still_ cannot bind me to issue only 
comments/statements at which _they_ will not "take offense".  I grant that 
the word is considered vulgar (people ought to look up what that word 
really means, and where it came from), and I accept that I'm likely a 
vulgar person.  I'll try to clean up my act.

What "set me off" (and I'm free to do that just as people are free to take 
offense) was being unfairly accused of submitting an incomplete bug 
report.  That the report might not be clear to everyone wasn't the issue 
here,  I suspect that everyone involved in the regression testing 
understood what I'd said.
It seemed somewhat out of place to publicly criticize my choice of emphatic 
(a word I use to refer to a method of emphasizing something: italics, 
underlining, throwing in a "swear word", etc.) Then apparently not be able 
to finish reading the entire sentence before complaining that there is 
insufficient information.  I suppose a private response would be considered 
by most to be more appropriate, and indeed if it had been made privately, I 
would have responded thusly.

>Be assured that we do appreciate you using your computers time for running 
>the regression tests, and accept that you have raised some valid points;

if it were just the computer time, I probably wouldn't have reacted.  Other 
than trying to verify OGR in the idle time, the machine can easily afford 
it.  It's the personal time also (I'm a volunteer, too).  I see it as my 
responsibility, since I've said I'd run the tests, to keep up to date on 
the boost-testing EMail echo and to verify that my tests are running 
correctly.  Since I seem to be the only person running tests on VC8.0, I 
also look at all the failures to see if there's something that can easily 
be fixed in _any_ of the tests or the boost libraries which show up as 
failures only  for VC8.0.  I'd chosen, Thursday night...about an hour 
before my next test run, to try to fix some exceptions which were being 
generated in the date_time tests.  For those who don't know, VC8.0 (in 
debug code generation) has a library that checks iterators pretty 
thoroughly, and it will find (and has found in the past) problems that just 
don't show up elsewhere.  So I chased down the ones I could find (and fixed 
the relevant libraries....after running several local tests, of course) and 
checked them in.

Now I'm operating in two modes, tester, and library author/maintainer (no, 
I'm not any of the primary authors of the date_time stuff), so I'm doubly 
interested in the results of the complete regression (I can only test 
flavors of VC++).  It's _possible_ that I've fixed things for VC++8.0 and 
killed some other compiler/runtime (given the nature of the fixes it's 
_staggeringly_ unlikely, but.... that's why we have regression tests).  So, 
it's in this frame that someone mentions to me (irc, efnet, #boost) that 
someone has suggested we release 1.33 by April 15.  I figure someone ought 
to say, ummm, wait a minute. It was also _very_ important that anyone 
volunteering to manage a release _UNDERSTAND_ that there is a showstopper 
problem with the regression testing.   Hence, the original message.  The 
follow up you've clearly seen.

>  however, if you want another volunteer to spend their time on these, 
> haranguing them is certainly not the best way to go.

who did I harangue?

>It is unfortunate that the MetaCom test result site started failing just 
>prior to the weekend, but remember it was fixed on Monday, and with a 
>great deal of good grace on Misha's part as well.

Agreed, and I have no animosity towards meta-comm (nor anyone for that 
matter...well some (we'll leave them unnamed) politicians, lol).

>Boost only functions by cooperation, I trust that all involved will 
>continue that into the future.

Likewise, I believe the success of C++ is directly tied to how well boost 
seduces (boost reacts faster than the committee).

>Yours in "Moderator Mode",
>
>John Maddock.
>
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Yours in "only mode I've got"

Victor A. Wagner Jr.      http://rudbek.com
The five most dangerous words in the English language:
               "There oughta be a law"