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24
25<h1>Boost Discussion Policy</h1>
26<p>Email discussion is the tie that binds boost members together into a community.
27If the discussion is stimulating and effective, the community thrives. If
28the discussion degenerates into name calling and ill will, the community withers
29and dies.</p>
30
31<h2>Contents</h2>
32<dl>
33  <dt><a href="#acceptable">Acceptable Topics</a><dd>
34      <dt><a href="#unacceptable">Unacceptable Topics</a><dd>
35          <dt><a href="#effective">Effective Posting</a><dd>
36              <dt><a href="#behavior">Prohibited Behavior</a><dd>
37                  <dt><a href="#culture">Culture</a><dd>
38                  <dt><a href="#lib_names">Library Names</a><dd>
39                      </dl>
40
41<h2><a name="acceptable"></a>Acceptable topics</h2>
42<ul>
43  <li>Queries to determine interest in a possible library submission.</li>
44  <li>Technical discussions about a proposed or existing library, including bug
45    reports and requests for help.</li>
46  <li>Formal Reviews of proposed libraries.</li>
47  <li>Reports of user experiences with Boost libraries.</li>
48  <li>Boost administration or policies.</li>
49  <li>Compiler specific workarounds as applied to Boost libraries.</li>
50</ul>
51<p>Other topics related to boost development may be acceptable, at the discretion of moderators. If unsure, go ahead and post. The moderators
52will let you know.</p>
53<h2><a name="unacceptable"></a>Unacceptable Topics</h2>
54<ul>
55  <li>Advertisements for commercial products.</li>
56  <li>Requests for help getting non-boost code to compile with your compiler.
57    Try the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup instead.</li>
58  <li>Requests for help interpreting the C++ standard. Try the comp.std.c++
59    newsgroup instead.</li>
60  <li>Job offers.</li>
61  <li>Requests for solutions to homework assignments.</ul>
62
63<h2><a name="effective"></a>Effective Posting</h2>
64
65<p>Most Boost mailing lists host a great deal of traffic, so your post
66is usually competing for attention with many other communications.
67This section describes how to make sure it has the desired impact.
68
69<h3>Well-Crafted Posting is Worth the Effort</h3>
70
71<p>Don't forget, you're a single writer but there are many readers,
72and you want them to stay interested in what you're saying.  Saving
73your readers a little time and effort is usually worth the extra time
74you spend when writing a message.  Also, boost discussions are saved
75for posterity, as rationales and history of the work we do.  A post's
76usefulness in the future is determined by its readability.
77
78<h3>Put the Library Name in the Subject Line</h3>
79
80<p>When your post is related to a particular Boost library, it's
81helpful to put the library name in square brackets at the beginning of
82the subject line, e.g.
83
84<blockquote>
85  Subject: [Regex] Why doesn't this pattern match?
86</blockquote>
87
88The Boost developers' list is a high-volume mailing list, and most
89maintainers don't have time to read every message.  A tag on the
90subject line will help ensure the right people see your post.
91
92<p><a name="quoting"></a>
93
94<h3>Don't Overquote</h3>
95Please <b>prune extraneous quoted text</b> from replies so that
96only the relevant parts are included. Some people have to pay for, or
97wait for, each byte that they download from the list.  More
98importantly, it will save time and make your post more valuable when
99readers do not have to find out which exact part of a previous message
100you are responding to.
101
102<h3>Use a Readable Quotation Style</h3>
103<p>A common and very useful approach is to cite the small fractions of
104the message you are actually responding to and to put your response
105directly beneath each citation, with a blank line separating them for
106readability:
107
108<blockquote>
109<pre>
110
111<i>Person-you're-replying-to</i> wrote:
112
113&gt; Some part of a paragraph that you wish to reply to goes
114&gt; here; there may be several lines.
115
116Your response to that part of the message goes here.  There may,
117of course, be several lines.
118
119&gt; The second part of the  paragraph that is relevant to your
120&gt; reply goes here; agiain there may be several lines.
121
122Your response to the second part of the message goes here.
123...
124
125</pre>
126</blockquote>
127
128For more information about effective use of quotation in posts, see <a
129href="http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html">this helpful
130guide</a>.
131
132<h3>Keep the Formatting of Quotations Consistent</h3>
133<p>
134Some email and news clients use poor word wrapping algorithms that
135leave successive lines from the same quotation with differing numbers
136of leading &quot;<tt>&gt;</tt>&quot; characters. <b>Microsoft
137Outlook</b> and <b>Outlook Express</b>, and some web clients, are
138especially bad about this.  If your client offends in this way, please
139take the effort to clean up the mess it makes in quoted text.
140Remember, even if you didn't write the original text, it's <i>your</i>
141posting; whether you get your point across depends on its readability.
142<p>
143The Microsoft clients also create an unusually verbose header at the
144beginning of the original message text and leave the cursor at the
145beginning of the message, which encourages users to write their
146replies before all of the quoted text rather than putting the reply in
147context.  Outlook Express users can fix all of these problems
148automatically by installing
149<a href="http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/">OE
150QuoteFix</a>.  Unfortunately there's no similar utility for Outlook
151Users; they will have to clean up their posts manually.
152
153<h3>Summarizing and Referring to Earlier Messages</h3>
154
155<p>A summary of the foregoing thread is only needed after a long
156discussion, especially when the topic is drifting or a result has been
157achieved in a discussion.  The mail system will do the tracking that
158is needed to enable mail readers to display message threads (and every
159decent mail reader supports that).
160
161<p>If you ever have to refer to single message earlier in a thread or
162in a different thread then you can use a URL to the <a
163href="mailing_lists.htm#archive">message archives</a>.  To help to
164keep those URLs short, you can use <a
165href="http://www.tinyurl.com">tinyurl.com</a>. Citing the relevant
166portion of a message you link to is often helpful (if the citation is
167small).
168
169<h3>Maintain the Integrity of Discussion Threads</h3>
170
171<p><b>When starting a new topic, always send a fresh message</b>,
172rather than beginning a reply to some other message and replacing the
173subject and body.  Many mailers are able to detect the thread you
174started with and will show the new message as part of the original
175thread, which probably isn't what you intended. Follow this guideline
176for your own sake as well as for others'.  Often, people scanning for
177relevant messages will decide they're done with a topic and hide or
178kill the entire thread: your message will be missed, and you won't get
179the response you're looking for.
180
181<p>By the same token, <b>When replying to an existing message, use
182your mailer's &quot;Reply&quot; function</b>, so that the reply shows
183up as part of the same discussion thread.
184
185<p><b>Do not reply to digests</b> if you are a digest delivery
186subscriber.  Your reply will not be properly threaded and will
187probably have the wrong subject line.  Instead, you can reply through
188the <a href="http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel">GMane
189web interface</a>.
190
191
192<h3>Keep The Size of Your Posting Manageable</h3>
193
194<p>The mailing list software automatically limits message and
195attachment size to a reasonable amount, typically 75K, which is
196adjusted from time-to-time by the moderators. This limit is a
197courtesy to those who rely on dial-up Internet access.
198</p>
199
200<h2><a name="behavior"></a>Prohibited Behavior</h2>
201<p>Prohibited behavior will not be tolerated. The moderators will ban
202postings by abusers.</p>
203<h3>Flame wars</h3>
204<p>Personal insults, argument for the sake of argument, and all the other
205behaviors which fall into the &quot;flame war&quot; category are
206prohibited. Discussions should focus on technical arguments, not the
207personality traits or motives of participants.</p>
208<h3>Third-party attacks</h3>
209<p>Attacks on third parties such as software vendors, hardware vendors, or any
210other organizations, are prohibited. Boost exists to unite and serve the
211entire C++ community, not to disparage the work of others.</p>
212<p>Does this mean that we ban the occasional complaint or wry remark about a
213troublesome compiler? No, but be wary of overdoing it.</p>
214<h3>Off-topic posts</h3>
215<p>Discussions which stray from the acceptable topics are strongly discouraged.
216While off-topic posts are often well meaning and not as individually corrosive
217as other abuses, cumulatively the distraction damages the effectiveness of
218discussion.</p>
219<h2><a name="culture"></a>Culture</h2>
220<p>In addition to technical skills, Boost members value collaboration,
221acknowledgement of the help of others, and a certain level of politeness. Boost
222membership is very international, and ranges widely in age and other
223characteristics. Think of discussion as occurring among colleagues in a widely read forum, rather
224than among a few close friends.</p>
225
226<p>Always remember that the cumulative effort spent by people reading
227your contribution scales with the (already large) number of boost
228members.  Thus, do invest time and effort to make your message as
229readable as possible.  Adhere to English syntax and grammar rules such
230as proper capitalization.  Avoid copious informalism, colloquial
231language, or abbreviations, they may not be understood by all readers.
232Re-read your message before submitting it.</p>
233
234<h2>Guidelines for Effective Discussions</h2>
235<p>Apply social engineering to prevent heated technical discussion from
236degenerating into a shouting match, and to actively encourage the cooperation
237upon which Boost depends.</p>
238<ul>
239  <li>Questions help. If someone suggests something that you don't think
240    will work, then replying with a question like &quot;will that compile?&quot;
241    or &quot;won't that fail to compile, or am I missing something?&quot; is a
242    lot smoother than &quot;That's really stupid - it won't compile.&quot;&nbsp;
243    Saying &quot;that fails to compile for me, and seems to violate section
244    n.n.n of the standard&quot; would be yet another way to be firm without
245    being abrasive.</li>
246  <li>If most of the discussion has been code-free generalities, posting a bit
247    of sample code can focus people on the practical issues.</li>
248  <li>If most of the discussion has been in terms of specific code, try to talk
249    a bit about hidden assumptions and generalities that may be preventing
250    discussion closure.</li>
251  <li>Taking a time-out is often effective. Just say: &quot;Let me think
252    about that for a day or two. Let's take a time-out to digest the
253    discussion so far.&quot;</li>
254</ul>
255<p>Avoid Parkinson's Bicycle Shed. Parkinson described a committee formed
256to oversee design of an early nuclear power plant. There were three agenda
257items - when to have tea, where to put the bicycle shed, and how to
258ensure nuclear safety. Tea was disposed of quickly as trivial.&nbsp;&nbsp;
259Nuclear safety was discussed for only
260an hour - it was so complex, scary, and technical that even
261among experts few felt comfortable with the issues. Endless days were then
262spent discussing where to put the bicycle shed (the parking lot would
263be a modern equivalent) because everyone
264understood the issues and felt comfortable discussing them.&nbsp;</p>
265
266<h2><a name="lib_names"></a>Library Names</h2>
267
268<p>In order to ensure a uniform presentation in books and articles, we
269have adopted a convention for referring to Boost libraries.  Library
270names can either be written in a compact form with a dot, as
271&quot;Boost.<i>Name</i>&quot;, or in a long form as &quot;the
272Boost <i>Name</i> library.&quot;  For example:
273<blockquote>
274<b>Boost.Python</b> serves a very different purpose from <b>the Boost Graph library</b>.
275</blockquote>
276Note that the word &quot;library&quot; is not part of the name, and as such isn't capitalized.
277
278<p>Please take care to avoid confusion in discussions between
279libraries that have been accepted into Boost and those that have not.
280Acceptance as a Boost library indicates that the code and design have
281passed through our peer-review process; failing to make the
282distinction devalues the hard work of library authors who've gone
283through that process.  Here are some suggested ways to describe
284potential Boost libraries:
285<ul>
286  <li>the proposed Boost <i>Name</i> library</li>
287  <li>the Boost.<i>Name</i> candidate</li>
288  <li>the <i>Name</i> library</i> (probably the best choice where applicable)</li>
289</ul>
290<p>Note that this policy only applies to discussions, not to the
291documentation, directory structure, or even identifiers in the
292code of potential Boost libraries.
293
294<hr>
295<p>Revised <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%d %B, %Y" startspan -->28 May, 2005<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" i-checksum="38549" endspan -->
296</p>
297<p>© Beman Dawes, Rob Stewart, and David Abrahams 2000-2005</p>
298<p> Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
299(See accompanying file <a href="../LICENSE_1_0.txt">LICENSE_1_0.txt</a> or
300copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt">www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>)
301</p>
302
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