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Date:      Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:12:55 +1300
From:      "Dan Langille" <dan@langille.org>
To:        Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: OT: silence as an answer? (was: how to test out cron.c changes?)
Message-ID:  <200101022012.JAA13573@ducky.nz.freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <20010102125247.U253@speedy.gsinet>
References:  <3A513799.75EAB470@FreeBSD.org>; from DougB@FreeBSD.org on Mon, Jan 01, 2001 at 06:06:17PM -0800

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In this message I use the pronoun "you" quite a lot.  It does not refer to 
anyone specifically.  It's generic.

On 2 Jan 2001, at 12:52, Gerhard Sittig wrote:

> Silence as I see it is just
> a sign for "nobody answered", without a reason to see why.  

You are not alone in this regard.  Silence is neither consent nor 
disagreement.  But in my experience, people are more vocal if they 
disagree with you than if they disagree (i.e. if you're made a 
fundamental mistake or error in your proposal)

> Getting ignored is definitely a fine way
> of discouraging future contributions.

For people new to the project, this is definitely a major disappointment.  
But more experienced people will realise that repeating a proposal after 
a couple of week of silence is sometimes necessary.  Sometimes, the 
message is just missed in the traffic and the one or two people which 
might be crucial to your proposal may have simply not seen your 
original post.

> The experience will make me think twice next time if I'm in the
> mood of spending my resources in the will to help and contribute
> just to find myself sitting there ignored.  Would I really feel
> like having this kind of conversation, I could as well open my
> fridge and talk to it ... :-|

Gerhard: like you said, it's the holidays.  Wait a bit.  Many people may 
have unsubscribed or will simply delete the messages waiting for them 
when they return.  In either case, it's worth trying again.  Someone out 
there has an interest in what you're doing.

--
Dan Langille
The FreeBSD Diary - http://freebsddiary.org/
       FreshPorts - http://freshports.org/
     NZ Broadband - http://unixathome.org/broadband/


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