Karoly Please allow me to respond. On 1/3/07, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:

Apparently it is more important to write mails that make people feel welcome here than to develop and I am actually advised not to read the list or at least parts of it.

It is important (not more important, just important) to welcome and encourage new comers. Correcting their mistakes in a non-confrontational, non-frictional way would most likely cause us to gain one more developer, as well as a better sense of community as a whole, not to mention the community reputation. So, I unsubscribe now and stuck to places where actual development

happens: the issue queue and the channel. Yesterday a totally new guy proposed an interesting idea on #drupal and in private and today the patch is submitted. I like this.

Karoly, IRC is a valuable collaboration tool, but not for everybody. Others, including myself, find the "everyone talking to everyone" distracting, and just aggravates the ADD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention-deficit_hyperactivity_disorder) factor. Moreover, IRC is transient. One cannot go back and check what has been discussed, or what drawbacks a certain approach has, ..etc.. Dries has repeatedly stated that IRC is not an official communication channel because of the above reasons. We've also seen some "surprise" decisions for the rest of the community when a small group discusses/decides on IRC and then things are implemented without proper notification to the rest of the community. So, by all means, use it for collaboration and whatever you find useful, but don't make it the sole conduit for everyone else.