in reply to Help me understand...

I rarely vote myself -- I feel that votes should be reserved for exceptional cases, and not simply "vote 'em if you got 'em". I think I'm in the minority, though.

I use different criteria for the different sections... I'll vote an obfuscation up if it is really clever, like the Big One, or informative, like japhy's Obfuscation Review. I'll vote a Discussion up if, like this one, it brings up an interesting thought-provoking topic to discuss. I'll rarely vote a SoPW up, but replies that are well-written, generalizable, and informative will get ++. And so forth.

To get a -- vote from me usually requires extreme off-topicness, outright flaming, major lossage, or incredible stupidity on the part of the poster. I'll not give any examples, as I don't want to piss anybody off.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: RE: Help me understand...
by footpad (Abbot) on Oct 18, 2000 at 21:16 UTC
    Blaise,

    A follow-up, if I may? What's "major lossage?"

[reply]
      The jargon file defines lossage as:
      lossage /los'*j/ n. very common The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a mass or collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are nearly synonymous. The former is slightly more particular to the speaker's present circumstances; the latter implies a continuing lose of which the speaker is currently a victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss, but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious lossage.
      To me, a posting would have lossage if it was buggy, inaccurate, or suggested stupid or dangerous things (ex. suggesting that -T should be avoided in CGI scripts run as root because of the performance hit caused by tracing all the data movement). Major lossage is that ever so much more so.

      You could also take it to mean that the poster was suffering from a bug or other malfunction that caused him/her to post such a post.

[reply]

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