Re: emacs stackexchange beta site

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Udyant Wig <udyantw@gmail.com> writes:

> "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:
> | In principle, because they are centralized services, therefore single
> | points of failure, or worse, of control (spying, censuring).
>
>  I can accept that they are single points of failure.
>
>  The point about spying could be applied to any forum, e.g., this very
>  newsgroup: any agency could be monitoring it.  Did I misread the last
>  point?

The spying is not done on what goes on the channel. It's done on the
meta data around it.  Google and others gather information not about
newsgroups, but about YOU, cross referencing your phone number, your
postal address (your GPS coordinates), all your searches (and the page
you visit thru clicking on search results), your friends (circles), all
your emails (gmail), and so on.  This is this data that you don't want
spying agencies to have access to, but that is centralized in google's
data centers.

  
> | Also, they're not present a unique (or a small number of) interfaces,
> | but each web site has it's own interfaces (user interface or API).
> | Therefore they are very hard to use, compared to NNTP API to which
> | each user can apply consitenly the user interface he chooses.
> |
> | Also, sociologically, the fact that it's easy to find error messages
> | or other help on Google/SX makes system authors LESS motivated to
> | provide working and documented systems in the first place.
> |
> | This is not a good thing.
>
>  I can accept both of these as well.
>  
> | Notably, it only works for popular systems.  And error messages are
> | not discriminating of the various situations: often I have an error
> | message and find on SX ten different situations where it was issued,
> | and none matching mine.  In the end, I still have to debug by myself.
>
>  I have faced this many times, too.
>
> | Google/SX, it's the blind leading the blinds.
>
>  Now, given that Emacs has (fine) manuals, comes with sources, has a
>  community spread over many newsgroups and mailing lists, has the Emacs
>  Wiki, and has a presence on IRC, how then is the announcement to be
>  viewed?  Positively, negatively, or neutrally?

Given that despite all those inconvenient, unwashed masses use
google/SX, it may be a good thing to do some publicity there, to attract
new users and teach them about emacs and a more independant and free
computing.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to
keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk