Re: Is it time for an XSLT-list?

[XSL-List Owner <xsl-list-owner at mulberrytech dot com>]

At 4 Apr 2000 09:04 -0400, Francois Lachance wrote:
 > Maybe a welcome message which invites people to post info at the head of
 > their messages to the list (and a welcome message with URLS to the XPATH
 > and XSLT recos). Even better would be an invitation to use the subject
 > line ... e.g. 
 > 
 > IE5 - "question"

Empirical evidence suggests that many people don't pay any attention
to either the welcome message or the periodic administrivia message,
so it's hard to say that adding something to the welcome message will
do anything.

Despite that, I had already considered adding something to about IE5
to both messages but hadn't yet worked out what to say.  Late at night
in a hotel room isn't the best time or place to do it, so I won't be
changing the messages today.

 > And certainly the false modesty of "dumb" "newbie" or "silly question"
 > should disappear. If people are intelligent enough to access the list,
 > they should be intelligent enough to compose informative and help subject
 > lines.

Part of my empirical evidence is that the welcome message and the
administrivia message both advise against subject lines like "silly
question", but it still occurs.  I also try to get people to trim
their quotes, but quoting of entire messages still occurs.

 > I would hate to banish the IE5 users to another list since this exchange
 > in this forum might get them to act in their collective interest to push
 > for full implementation of the XSLT reco ... which is very much in my
 > self-interest *wink*

It seems to me that no-one really knows what proportion of XSL-List
subscribers are IE5 XSLT users, users of both IE5 and non-IE5 XSLT
implementations, or non-IE5 XSLT users.  There are over 1800 people
subscribed to the XSL-List.  We have not heard from anything close to
1800 different posters, and many posts ask or answer questions that
could be applicable to any XSLT implementation.

There is a role for providing more information up front about the
differences between the IE5 implementation and the XSLT
Recommendation, but the people who need the information most don't
know where to look and, on the face of it, often don't use the
information that is provided to them.

Regards,


Tony Graham
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Tony Graham                            mailto:tgraham@mulberrytech.com
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