[Zope] comment on posting behavior

Tom Neff tneff@bigfoot.com
Sun, 27 Feb 2000 13:12:07 -0500


J C LAwrence wrote:
> Before we get too hot under the collar about all this, let's step
> back a second and relax.  There's no deliberate sowing of confusion
> going on here.  People aren't deliberately posting bogus data as
> truth, or misrepresenting themselves as the fount of all Zope
> wisdom.

I don't know anything about collar temperatures, but from the standpoint of
a reader taking away some fresh nugget of misinformation from this list, it
really doesn't matter how it got there.  "There's no conspiracy" is not
helpful news.

What I am suggesting is simply that people take a moment to test their
answers before posting them, where possible, and if the answer should be
testable but they don't know how or don't want to test it, don't post a
guess - let someone else take care of it.

Sometimes the particular nature of the question asked, with databases or
complex objects, etc, make testing an answer difficult.  But in a lot of
cases you could just dummy up the query results with ['Tom', 'Neff', '123
Elm St'...] and test the rest of your code in 15 seconds, and if you found a
syntax error or missing parameter, wouldn't you rather fix it before posting
to the world and making dozens of others fix it for you?

When somebody asks "Where is the <dtml-tomato> code?" and you vaguely
remember that it's in ZLegumes.py, I just wish people would CHECK first
before posting.  Don't just make stuff up, like the recent example with
HTML/HEAD "coming from the browser."

Personally, I don't care whether this problem is unique to Zope, or whether
it demonstrates that Zope lacks the buddha nature, or whether a few readers
don't care how many wrong answers appear, etc.  I am not trying to
discourage experienced DTML/Python programmers from making code suggestions,
as long as they warn when it's untested and may need some tweaking.  I am
just trying to encourage people who CAN improve the quality of understanding
here, to do so.

And I think by now that anybody who was going to get my point has got it, so
I'll give it a rest.