in reply to Re: Thank you, Bob Geitz
in thread Thank you, Bob Geitz

From the docs: 
Where do I post X?
...
Meditations
    * Epiphanies related to programming and perl in general
This is my personal epiphany about programming. I'm sorry if you feel it's inappropriate.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Thank you, Bob Geitz
by fergal (Chaplain) on Mar 11, 2005 at 11:45 UTC

    I think the point of posting an epiphany is not just to tell everyone you had an epiphany but so other can benefit from your new-found knowledge.

    I'm 50-50 on this but if you'd actually given us a sample or an explanation of why Bob's courses were totally different to any other CS lecturer, something that we could take away and use to make ourselves better communicators and teachers, then I'd be 100% on your side.

[reply]

      Exactly. A post that is of no conceivable benefit to the rest of the PerlMonks community is junk.

      However, it should be mentioned that there is an appropriate place to put such material: on your home node.

[reply]
        A post that is of no conceivable benefit to the rest of the PerlMonks community is junk.
        Now, that is "speaking for everyone" if there ever was. I consider myself a part of the PM community, and the OP is conceivably quite beneficial to me, hence, it is not junk.

        PM is a community. Unless a post is intentionally malicious, demeaning to others, or in violation of the laws of the land on which the servers reside, no one, and I mean NO ONE, be he or she a saint or a scribe, should have any position from which to say that the post is meaningless. And, esp. if it posted on a forum that is "intentionally" designed to receive meditations. AFAIK, the servers have been "generously" provided by Pair.com, and the last I checked, I spent my money accessing them, so the OP has not wasted any one single person's bandwidth or resources with the meditation.

        Not too long ago I was part of another Perl community. For something I said there (completely, purely and totally harmless, non-malicious, benign, and, innocuous) I was severely and publicly chastised by one of the senior citizens of the Perl world. Some defended the public flogging, even praised it. At least one person came to my defence (to him, my eternal cyberfriendship). I left the community, and then I joined PM. The posts from that other bad experience are a matter of public record and archived for posterity by the wonders of Google.

        But I will never forget the experience. I will never forgive the person who chastised me. But, I was "young," not in years, but in the community. I felt scared and humiliated. I felt that I had let down some of my "heroes."

        In retrospect, I realize that life goes on. I have my own experiences, and in many ways I am a saint in my own world (a long way to catch up with vroom though). One more thing, I decided that from then on I will not let anyone put anyone else down in a public forum. It is just not good.

        Everyone is welcome here. That is what makes this worthy of the moniker "monastery." And those with more XP have upon them to treat very gently those with fewer XPs (XPs taken figuratively). It is a serious responsibility.

        Update: All that said, there will be times that a post could be a misfit unintentionally. In that case, msg the poster privately and give that person a reasonable opportunity to respond. If no response comes, consult with a few other senior folks and then take the post down. But, never, NEVER, humiliate the poster, not privately and CERTAINLY NOT publicly. So, a warm and public welcome to Whitehawke from me... here's looking at you kid... .

        --

        when small people start casting long shadows, it is time to go to bed
[reply]
        Perhaps we can all remember a person or persons who influenced our lives wrt programming. Then we could all certainly benefit from such a post, neh? Do we not have a seemingly useless post (Name Space) that simply ended in a question, thus bringing us all into that now-popular thread?

        Update: Removed link to Name Space to cut down on processing time :)
        --------------
        It's sad that a family can be torn apart by such a such a simple thing as a pack of wild dogs
[reply]

In Section Meditations