Kier <vallon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Depends on what they're looking for. When I arrived here some years ago,
> it was filled with rants by flatfish. If that didn't put me off, chances
> are others won't run away just because Roy posts a lot of NEWS.
Exactly. Roy's posts are certainly more on topic then the endless
trolling and flame wars that otherwise dominate here. From where I
stand, they've only improved the signal to noise ratio, whatever
their shortcomings.
If one comes here just for Linux news and doesn't care about anything
happening in MS land, then certainly some of his posts can be considered
off topic. Just for grins I decided to quantify things a bit. Taking
a random sampling of 150 of Roy's posts marked with the [News] tag I
grouped them into four categories.
1) Pertaining only to Linux or Open source ======== 93
2) Pertaining only to Windows or Microsoft ======== 43
3) Comparing or involving both Linux and Windows == 6
4) Having nothing to do with any of the above. ==== 8
For the sake of argument, lets declare the sum of categories 1 and 3
as 'on topic' and the sum of 3 and 4 as 'off topic'. One might
argue that a post about MS is on topic if their actions impact Linux
or Open Source in some significant way. Microsoft's involvement with
standards bodies could qualify (I saw several posts like that), but
for the sake of this experiment, lets keep the count to more easily
verified totals. That puts it at:
On Topic = 99 (66%)
Off Topic = 51 (34%)
So Roy is on topic at least two thirds of the time. If we are a bit
more generous with our interpretation and count the MS articles that
could impact the OSS/Linux world (i.e. poor Vista reception opening
an opportunity for Linux), then it jumps to something more like 90%
on topic.
I don't have a problem with those ratios, but I can understand if
some people want to see fewer MS related posts. By all means lets
have a discussion about that... but a discussion about posting
guidelines, not the personal character of the posters.
Thoughts?
Thad
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