Re: Some Stats

My response earlier was meant to be funny, mostly, but I did also intend to convey some of the same things Rasmus said. The only person who wants to participate in a conversation where someone is hogging the floor is the person doing the talking. > Yeah one of the problems that really frustrates the hell out of me is that, > after I've answered a question or responded to an objection, somebody new > jumps in and raises the exact same issue. When I tell them to read earlier > in the thread for my answer, they tend to get hostile and will often just > keep re-repeating the criticism until I finally get fed-up and just repeat > the response I'd posted earlier. Rinse and repeat. In my opinion, the main reason this happens is because of your "natural verbosity" (as you put it). People are busy—especially smart people. You want the smart people to be able to read the important bits of your proposals/ideas, but most of them are unwilling and unable to sift through hundreds of messages. This is why they ask questions that have already been answered. Ignoring entire threads is a horrible thing for PHP's most valuable contributors to be doing, but I bet very few of the main committers in the list Rasmus posted have actually read all of the messages in all of the threads, lately. There's just too much posting, and as you can see from the stats, the distribution of posts is way out of balance (the #1 poster should never have more than twice as many posts as the #3 poster in a functional community). PHP has functioned as some sort of meritocracy since I've been a part of the community (and I'm sure that it was this way before then, too). If you want your opinions and comments to have weight, here, it's important to do more than talk. [1] Please, for the sake of people reading this list, adjust your posting habits accordingly. S [1] Before I get more whiny emails from more whiny people calling me some sort of hypocrite: while I have been mostly dormant (including posts to this list), lately, I've also put in hundreds of hours contributing to many parts of PHP over the years—I say this not to seek a pat on the back; I'm just looking for some understanding from new(ish) people. I have stepped back for many reasons, but one of those is definitely the unreasonably low signal to noise ratio on this list.