[TxMt] Re: No proper forum

[Walter Lee Davis]

On Sep 19, 2011, at 4:44 AM, Luke Daley wrote:

> We ended up settling with GetSatisfaction which, although not perfect, solves many of our problems and importantly is focussed around getting answers to questions and solutions to problems. I think this list has similar kind of content.

That's an interesting idea, but I've always had the sort of odd reaction to Get Satisfaction in general. While it's all very cool and Web 2.0, it seems, from its name on down, to encourage something other than self-serve help requests -- it's more of a mental model of You Owe Me Immediate Answers, and I have seen plenty of whinge-fests played out in its trendy Ajax-loaded pages.

Part of the core -- the ethos -- of Textmate is that it is a developer's tool, and it is deliberately aimed at the deep end of the IQ pool. It is destined to be used by the sorts of people who, in another age, would have taken a piece of raw tool steel and used it to make a factory for churning out toasters (like my grandfather, the tool-and-die maker, did for Sunbeam). 

Stick around long enough on this or any other mailing list, and you'll see the "Ask Smarter Questions" link getting passed back to repeat offenders who don't follow the precepts of "Try first, then tell us where and how you got stuck". Maybe it's just me, but the Get Satisfaction model seems to be, "I tried, it *didn't work*, it must be your fault." Maybe the better model would be something like Stack Overflow, where you have to show your work in order to get any (lower-case) satisfaction.

So endeth the morning rant...

Walter