[Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

[Andrea Rossato]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 12:11:58PM +1000, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:
> As we sit here riding the Haskell wave:
> 
>     http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/tmp/cafe.png
> 
[..]
> That is, to help people progress from newbie, to intermediate, to
> expert, and thus ensure the culture is maintained (avoiding `Eternal
> September'). This graphic[1] sums the main issue up nicely, in my view:
> 
>     http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/buildingausercommunity.jpg

I feel somehow in the Nothing area and I feel somehow ashamed for
that: I used to ask a lot when I was a newbie, but now I'm not
answering very much. I ask some questions sometimes, and that's it.

At first, when I was learning, I tried to help others who seemed even
more novice then I was, but usually the experts used to jump in, and
show, with their wonderfully conceived examples, how basically
ridiculous my code was and how many better ways there are to do
things. I did not want to sound clever, and, moreover, I was just
trying to make my code as simple as clear as I, newbie, I would have
wanted to see. Nevertheless it's not very rewarding to publicly face
your ignorance at ever single message you dare to send. So you just
quit.

Now, I'm telling this because I believe that the expert ones are in
part responsible for the gap the picture shows. But only when I'll be
an expert I'll be able to prove that. In the meanwhile I'd better shut
up!
;-)

Just my 2 cents.

all the best,
andrea