[seul-edu] redundancy: Summing up our discussion so far

["David M. Bucknell" <david@members.iteachnet.com>]

Chiming in here (I hope not redundantly) on redundancy.

One of the reasons I am here is that I hate to see genuine volunteer 
hours go to waste. That's what happens when gzillions of people, each on 
his or her own site, works toward a supposed common cause. On the one 
hand I love the way the GPL makes it impossible for anyone to corner a 
market. But outside of "market" thinking, it's a shame when people who 
believe in helping don't help each other.

That's why I'm for the coalition and for working _toward_ less needless and 
wasted (fewer people see/learn from/contribute to/benefit from the) effort.

David

Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> said:

> Ok, I'll take the bait. I agree with your conclusion, but I disagree
> with everything leading up to it. ;)
> 
> On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 07:23:51AM -0700, Prevett, Larry wrote:
> > I was thinking about this, too, but I finally came to the conclusion
> > that redundancy is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing.
> > I realize this runs counter to everyone else's thinking, so I'd like to 
> > explain, and see what people think.
> 
> When two sites do the same thing well, I think that's great. I can send
> people to either of them and they will get a good answer. But if one
> site does it well and one site does it poorly, then I will want to send
> people to the one that does it well. In this sense, redundancy is bad --
> I want to emphasize the one that does it well and deemphasize the other.
> 
> If the good one isn't well-known, and people only know bad ones, people
> will unnecessarily start new projects to make a good one. Their efforts
> might be better spent elsewhere.
> 
> Redundancy can sometimes be a good thing, but we need to find at least one
> good site in each category and publicize it so people know "the current
> best solution". They can then choose to make a better one --- that's fine
> too. Having all the information and choosing to be redundant anyway is
> great; being redundant because you don't even realize it is bad.
> 
> > When people see something repeated over and over again it's more
> > likely to stick in their minds as something important.
> 
> Very true. But if they go to a site that claims to have the answer to
> their question and it gives the wrong one, and they go away thinking
> they've got the answer, that's really no good. Perhaps more commonly,
> a site that purports to be "The Linux in Education site" but doesn't
> answer that question might lead the reader to believe that nobody in
> the community has addressed his question yet.
> 
> Or from another angle, if people see conflicting answers everywhere they
> look, they may quickly get frustrated and want to drop the whole thing.
------Major snippage------- 
David M. Bucknell
http://members.iteachnet.org/~david
http://www.OpenSourceSchools.org
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Fax: (US) 775-244-0803