If you have a page which isn’t strictly related to Cocoa development, but you feel is of interest to the community at large, you can add it here by adding “\%\%BEGINENTRY\%\%OffTopic\%\%ENDENTRY\%\%” to the top of your page. Please keep these pages to a minimum, because there are very few topics not related to Cocoa development which are of interest to the community at large.
[Topic]
Discussion
How about “evaluation of individual cases, none of the nonexistent standards”. Note exactly how often anything actually gets deleted from the DeleteMe page. The problem with SouthEugeneHighSchool and such was that the creator was showing a pattern of useless distracting stuff, and that it seemed like he was actually bringing down the information density of the site (or at least the RecentChanges page).
Yes, but then again, everybody is quick to wipe out the contents and replace it with ‘DeleteMe’. Perhaps I should start doing the same for every topic I don’t approve of … (Also, there was nothing wrong with this comment. If you don’t agree, say so, but don’t delete others’ comments.) (That was an edit collision, not an intentional delete)
I think we need to distinguish between pages which are OffTopic and pages which are CompletelyUseless. The former have a place here; the latter don’t.
Programmers are, by and large, gamers. All work and no play make CocoaDevUsers dull boys and girls… I’m a programmer and do not play games. I come to this site to learn / discuss / solve problems relating to Cocoa. This isn’t a “programmer’s club house” nor is it a gamer’s forum (check out xboxscene.com if you want an example of gamer’s forums and ask yourself if we need that kind of crowd here). This is about cocoa development. Quite inarguably.
In any case, as always, the community decides. This page has eluded DeleteMe, and has seen other members contribute to it. If the general consensus was that it was unwelcome, that wouldn’t have happened.
Perhaps DeleteMe should have been called TrashCan, a la a MacOS Trash which is never emptied.
…everybody is quick to wipe out the contents and replace it with ‘DeleteMe’. Perhaps I should start doing the same for every topic I don’t approve of …
I’m not quite sure which direction your point goes in, but I, um, agree? Wiping out page contents and replacing them with DeleteMe is applied way too liberally.
This page has eluded DeleteMe, and has seen other members contribute to it. If the general consensus was that it was unwelcome, that wouldn’t have happened.
Actually, it did get DeleteMe ‘d, I removed the mark.
Well, that reinforces my point, actually - it was there, but someone thought it didn’t belong there, and took it out.
This is the principle of DeleteOnceRestoreOnce
All this discussion would be nonexistant if this whole site was a forum instead of a wiki.
So you think it should be a forum instead? Personally, I like this way better than a forum. Though I do think that we need a “discussion” page associated to each page so that the main pages can stay full of info and not conversation. why? what constitutes info and what is conversation? “info” as I meant it is distilled, free of excess verbiage. It’s easier to read and to the point. Conversation and questions are important too, but ideally they get distilled into info. It’s especially important to trim out the misinformation that may have been introduced on route. Such conversations are informative and useful, but much more so if you’re participating in the conversation than if you’re reading it later. We can already do this (see?) Just create a separate page [PageName]Discussion and cross link it.
Whole heartedly. It would be easier to search, maintain, organize, etc. There could be separate areas for off-topic discussions, and all you would need is a few moderators (which there are plenty of unofficial ones here). It would work perfectly.
Disagree absolutely. There are plenty of forums around, and none of them are a quarter as useful as this site. There was a Cocoa-dedicated phpBB at www.cocoabb.com at one point, but it’s apparently gone now.
WikiWikiWeb is not an alternative to a bbs; it’s something different entirely. Don’t think of this site as just a forum to ask questions and get answers; it’s more like we’re all co-authoring and editing some really great and sorely-needed Cocoa documentation.
I view CocoaDev as a big ol’ collaborative thing. If this were a code project, it’d be like we were all using SubEthaEdit on our source files– but if this were a code project, chances are good that there’d be a little more direction overall. This isn’t a code project. It’s freeform, and I know I can’t say what this site is and isn’t supposed to be because I’m only one voice in a growing number of CocoaDevUsers. I do not have the right to bend this site to my will. I think we can agree that there are things which have absolutely no place here… for instance, just because programmers use computers and computers can access the internet and the internet can be used to access pornography does not mean that this site is a good place to discuss all the best places to download porn.
Where should the line be drawn? Incrementally– you decide for yourself, and act based on that. If there were any overall guideline I could suggest, it would be to be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you pass on– but that is inherent in this being a collection of people, and people being fairly ambiguous in their definition.
Just my thoughts of the moment. – RobRix