What happened to the code of conduct thread?

[Lost Zergling]

Hi everybody
"Things like speed of light, ether, the universe, encryption ... all discussed" ..Yeah !
"- Be civil and polite
- Keep posts relevant
Do not post any copyrighted material that you do not have a tiny license to distribute.
Do not post any excessive vulgarity or "adult material" of any type.
No spamming.
Do not post any malicious scripts or programs." .. Sure !
=> I agree.

"I will not be a part of it anymore as I see I have nothing in common with other forum members apart having used the language."
=> I disagree, people can make mistakes, and no need to be all same, no importance to spams, disrespect and so on,..
Thus they just show the mistake done by their authors.

I didn't follow the fight, anyway,.. please don't give much importance to silly posts.
BasicCoder2 you Do have the respect of many forum members.

[BasicCoder2]

I should have had a go at the moderators for letting the 'wider audience' drag on.

No having a go at someone is the problem!
CoderJeff has shown emotional maturity in dealing with the issues without getting involved himself.
He is a major contributer to FreeBASIC.
http://www.manmrk.net/tutorials/basic/F ... fxLib.html
http://www.execulink.com/~coder/

In a public forum it is better to keep your opinions about others to yourself otherwise you run the risk of breaking important rules of posting even if you do it unintentionally which are:
Do not insult or flame other forum members.
Do not write posts that will (might?) incite flames from other forum members.

The best course of action is to say nothing.

... we all have something in common: Coding in FreeBASIC.

Which is fine when discussing the language itself. In other respects I have very little or nothing in common with other regular posters who are much more advanced programmers with an interest in the deeper issues of the language and in mathematics.

[deltarho[1859]]

No having a go at someone is the problem!

I would have put forward my best persuasive argument for closing the thread. I rarely contacted the PowerBASIC moderators but when I did my argument was acted upon every time.

A new quip for my collection: Unless you are innately diplomatic employ it stingily, it can be very exhausting.

Said with tongue in cheek, of course. <smile>

[St_W]

In a public forum it is better to keep your opinions about others to yourself otherwise you run the risk of breaking important rules of posting even if you do it unintentionally which are:
Do not insult or flame other forum members.
Do not write posts that will (might?) incite flames from other forum members.
The best course of action is to say nothing.

Self-censorship is a difficult topic - it can be both good and bad depending on a lot of other factors. I don't really agree that just saying nothing is always the best course. Sometimes somebody has to step up and say something. Of course, at other times it's good to not say anything.

[Munair]

I wish all this energy would be used to improve the FB project on all levels. Instead I am being accused of spamming the forum by asking legitimate programming questions. Well, starting 7 threads in 48h isn't enough IMO if that's what it takes to elevate FB to a higher level. Just my two cents.

[deltarho[1859]]

Sometimes somebody has to step up and say something.

If nobody does then whilst it is not a 'white collar crime' it is, in my opinion, in a similar vein committed on a group basis. We can get a situation when X steps up two or three times and then everybody else sits on their hands in future expecting X to step up. I have seen that happen and often used to back X up, or whoever, in the hope that others would follow my secondary lead. Yes, it is a "difficult topic".

[deltarho[1859]]

I am being accused of spamming the forum by asking legitimate programming questions.

That is an extraordinary accusation, in my opinion, because I read all of your questions and, it seems to me, that there are some good ones.

[St_W]

Instead I am being accused of spamming the forum by asking legitimate programming questions. Well, starting 7 threads in 48h isn't enough IMO if that's what it takes to elevate FB to a higher level.

I don't like the situation, but unfortunately there are some forum users that write quite harsh answers sometimes. Typically you should just try to ignore those accusations, but sometimes there's also a grain of truth in it. I probably haven't read all your threads and posts, but as far as I remember the ones I read were legitimate. Note that programming questions may still be considered spam e.g. if they could have been answered by a quick search in the manual or the web.

[jj2007]

starting 7 threads in 48h isn't enough IMO if that's what it takes to elevate FB to a higher level.

Munair, you are doing an excellent job e.g. in the UTF-8 thread, and calling that spamming is simply wrong. But keep in mind that a forum may look messy if every single aspect of a programming problem is discussed in a separate thread. My 2 cents ;-)

[sancho3]

I am being accused of spamming the forum

IMHO this forum is no where near busy enough to worry about the volume of posts from a single source.
If the answer isn't in the docs then the forum is the best place to look for it.
I've read your posts and they all seem interesting and legit to me.
If you haven't heard from site admin. them you are good.

[Munair]

Instead I am being accused of spamming the forum by asking legitimate programming questions. Well, starting 7 threads in 48h isn't enough IMO if that's what it takes to elevate FB to a higher level.

I don't like the situation, but unfortunately there are some forum users that write quite harsh answers sometimes. Typically you should just try to ignore those accusations, but sometimes there's also a grain of truth in it. I probably haven't read all your threads and posts, but as far as I remember the ones I read were legitimate. Note that programming questions may still be considered spam e.g. if they could have been answered by a quick search in the manual or the web.

I do the search in the manual and on the internet most of the time. But when in doubt, like with translating some FreePascal UTF-8 stuff, I don't see why not using the forum. I also provided the community with some valuable functions in the process. Accusations like these, although I don't take them very seriously, are some indication of a world turned upside down with this forum.

I also partake in the Lazarus forum, which is much more active, naturally. But people over there do not engage in pointless discussions as I witnessed here. There are Lazarus newbies who ask more questions than they read documentation, yet most forum members show patience with them, sometimes a lot of patience. This is also because interactive learning is more inspiring I suppose.

Speaking of inspiration, that's what this forum may need to push FreeBASIC to a higher level IMO. The compiler is mature enough to do advanced OOP allowing for complex tools and apps to be written. I would like to see more efforts in that area. There is no reason why FreeBASIC should not have a full-fledged RAD environment like Lazarus. Both compilers are continuations of popular programming languages. But it seems Pascal is for the more serious programmers after all, which I regret, because FreeBASIC deserves the same.

[marcov]

Not long after Bob Zale's death in 2012 PowerBASIC found itself in the doldrums and membership of the forums started to fall dramatically. Several threads were started on how the tide could be turned. They developed in an almost identical fashion to the 'wider audience' thread here. They ended up going in all directions and got a little heated at times. What I saw at both PB and FB was 'too many cooks spoil the broth' which most dictionaries describe as "too many people involved in trying to do the same thing, so that the final result will not be good".

IMHO bad example. Cooks actually do things, and are quite hands on. Such threads are not even that, and will have hardly any influence on the course of the project other than to incite more newbies and other people that don't (yet) contribute to the project to spout their own view of the drivel.

The realities of opensource projects like this are simple, there is no lack of ideas or views on direction. "Brilliant" ideas are a dime a dozen. The lack is in people that execute them.

And as said in the deleted thread the only thread actually about FB project implementation on the forum (aside from some minor header twiggling) is the native RTS thread.

But that is the point of this community, we all have something in common: Coding in FreeBASIC.

But those threads are not about "coding in freebasic", they are about "Coding FreeBasic". Two letters, big difference.

The first step is to change that. Actually having to do stuff makes you more sensitive to realities.

[coderJeff]

Sometimes people talk about FreeBASIC community like it is separate from real life. As if real life doesn't exist here. I don't see it that way. I have made some real friendships here and there are members that have moved on that I really miss. What concerns me is when I see long term grudges developing, what I would be supporting by doing nothing.

I moved the topics, including Code of Coduct, because in my opinion it seemed like it was going to be the start of another long drawn out shouting match. After moving the topics, and yes, no warning or explanation, for a moment, everyone stopped, and took pause. As long time member and one of the care-takers, I can accept the responsibility, right or wrong.

Free speech is good, and conflict can give way to discovery. But if no one is listening to each other, the arguing is utterly pointless.

I hope that explains the OP question.

[speedfixer]

Thank you.

[Tourist Trap]

I would like to add my 2 cents if it's not a little abusive since I'm not quite active those days here. What the inactivity allows me to say however that I could possibly miss if I was in the hot core of the affairs is that the discussions should not be taken too seriously unless they touch hard work and programming effort and so on. For having been visiting other forums, the moderation here is quite liberal, I mean respectful of free speech, we can not deny it. The other boards would not hesitate to lock or remove threads for almost no reason, sometimes just for inactivity or a stamp considered old or outdated (even if it's a stupid way to evaluate a thread).

So let's not take all of this too seriously. The tip and tricks section is where all of us can have as much free speech as desired, but the threads there (requiring programming effort) do not suffer overflow ;)

Ok I have to test fb on my new Christmas computer, a 64bit win10 system... It will be a very big jump for the winXP user I've always been!