bogus bogotuning

[Stroller]

On Jan 29, 2004, at 12:38 am, Jason A. Smith wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-01-28 at 19:12, Greg Louis wrote:
>> As I've written before, most people would assume that an option would
>> not be implemented unless it were in some way worth using.  Some would
>> say the fun of experimenting with something I know is useless is worth
>> badgering me about, obviously.  I disagree, obviously.  Writing code 
>> to
>> implement an option and then writing a warning that says "doing this 
>> is
>> useless" doesn't appeal to me.  It doesn't even make sense to me.
>
> You are assuming what others will assume by the presence of this
> option.  Do you remember the old saying associated with ass-u-me?
> Perhaps you should also try to assume what the user might think when
> they see the warning.

And you're also assuming that, should the official version of 
Bogofilter contain your feature request, that no other problems or 
feedback will plague the maintainers or this list. You're assuming that 
people will see the warning message, and say, "Golly gosh, I'm glad I 
saw that, I won't use these worthless results now".

What would actually happen is that the users will ignore the warning 
message, set inappropriate values based on these figures, and then 
hassle the mailing list for fixes, or even worse bitch to their friends 
that Bogofilter's lame, "and even after I tuned it, it got worse" 
without realising why. Because users are VERY good at ignoring warnings 
when they want to be.

I find your suggestions that the maintainers of & contributers to this 
project, "everyone", in fact "is being stubborn and closed-minded" 
quite irksome.

You advocate that philosophy of Linux / open-source is of "freedom not 
to have your hand-held" to prevent you b0rking your system. This is not 
quite the case; the 4 freedoms of so-called Free Software are listed at 
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>, and none of them mention 
a requirement for others to implement your changes for you, or to 
redistribute them if they don't use them themselves. They allow YOU the 
freedom to improve the program and adapt it to your needs, but not to 
impose your views on others.

Stroller.