2008/12/11 Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com:
Michel wrote:
Diffs or it didn't happen! :)
I see the smiley, so perhaps I shouldn't come back with a serious response, but this interests me.
It is very, very difficult to discuss a general issue on this list. If you (1) provide a specific example, people immediately dive in on the specifics of the example, and conclude either that it wasn't a problem after all, or that you (who brought it up) were overly emotionally involved and need to take a step back. But if you (2) try to leave the specific example out, to force the discussion to remain on the more interesting general issue, people don't want to think about it at all, except to insist on a specific example, at which point goto (1).
The problem is in defining what the general issue is, often people create issues where there are none by selectively describing one specific example (even if they refused to say what that example is). Without analysing the example yourself you can't work out a) if there is a general issue or b) what the general issue is. In fact, you generally need a few examples for that, one doesn't help much.