Names for small functions - Time for codified community principles?

[Robert Marlow]

I empathise with what you're saying, John, but I think it will fall upon
deaf ears unless the community agrees that your points support one of
the goals of the Haskell libraries project.

I wrote some notes on formal consensus for free software projects a
while ago ( http://bobstopper.livejournal.com/22939.html ) and I think
one of my points is applicable here: without codified community
principles, it's difficult to identify what is and isn't relevant
discussion for the project. Clearly you consider the discussion relevent
while many others don't.

I think your points would carry much more weight if you didn't have to
argue your case every time you raised them. For this, having a set of
principles which the community adheres to would be a boon: it could
clearly articulate whether the community as a whole is ultimately
concerned with the proliferation of names for small functions thus
ensuring that such proposals in future are judged in a consistent way
without the need for superfluous discussion.

I'd suggest this community write up a simple set of principles with
measures to allow future proposals to ammend the principles. Start with
the smaller, more obvious principles and later move to add principles
that deal with the issues such as Jon is raising.


On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 18:52 +0000, Jon Fairbairn wrote:
> I simply don't have the stamina to follow up to all the
> objections to my messages. I'm posting this here in the
> thread because it's a convenient point, not because Robert's
> message troubles me particularly.

-- 
Robert Marlow <bobstopper at bobturf.org>