On Thu, 9 May 1996, Daniel C. Cotey wrote:
> On Thu, 9 May 1996, Goose wrote:
> > That way people who want to ignore newbie questions will know which
> > messages to skip over.
> >
> > Watcha think?
>
> Newbies are only ones who wont use this, so its kinda pointless
Actually, it's not pointless because they will quickly learn to use
them. My concerns are whether people will use the correctly. NEWBIE and
CODE will probably overlap a lot, especially in the mind of a newbie.
I don't think many newbies are taking the highly suggested "learning"
period of being silent observers on the list. This is one of the things
that I believe is in the netettiquite docs. Having a FAQ of some sort
about the purpose of the list would help as well.
So what is the purpose of this list, anyway? I have never thought of
it as a help list. I see it as an idea, code, and information exchange
tool. As far as being a help list, I don't get too mad when someone asks
for a hand with a seg faulting bad pointer deref (i.e. can't find where
they muffed up the pointer) or other non-trivial things. How questions
*about algorithms* (*not* C) you can bring here.
I do mind when it's a trivial C programming question, as being a C
programmer is prerequisite to being an implementor on a mud. If you are
not a C programmer, then I do not feel that you have any business on this
list talking about code related things. Just use your judgement out there
and have a manual, please. If you don't know C, learn it. If you do know
C and don't know circle, wear your fire-proof clothes and ask at your own
risk... just keep in mind that there are other ways to learn the mud. You
can learn it the way I make new implementors I work with learn it. I say
to them, "Here is the code. Add these spells, these skills, and these
lord commands. Any questions about the best way to implement it in the
code? Look at do_stat_char() in act.wizard.c for ideas on that. Any
other questions? Good, get to it." Some of them do it and some of them
quit.
--
Michael Buselli
m-buselli@uchicago.edu
http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/mhbusell/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/18/00 PST