announcements regarding tools

On Tuesday 19. July 2011 18.44.46 Scott Ribe wrote:

I'm not sure to whom this specifically should be addressed, but something
that's been bugging me for a while: announcements like this morning's
"AnySQL Maestro 11.7 released", where the announcement mentions nothing
about platform support. And it's not just the lack of that info in
announcements; on many web sites you have to dig for a while to find info
about platform support, and I do not enjoy finding what looks like a nice
tool, only to have to spend 5-10 minutes to figure out that it is Windows
only.

My suggestion: all such announcements should include information about
supported platforms. Any announcement submitted without that info should
be rejected, and the vendor instructed to add it before re-submission.

I totally agree. In particular, Windows users seems to think that everybody
else is using their platform, much as right-handers seem to unconsciously deny
the existence of left-handers.

The corollary being that if the announcement doesn't explicitly say otherwise,
you can assume with about 99% confidence that the touted product is Windoze
only.

regards, Leif

Leif Biberg Kristensen wrote:

On Tuesday 19. July 2011 18.44.46 Scott Ribe wrote:

I'm not sure to whom this specifically should be addressed, but something
that's been bugging me for a while: announcements like this morning's
"AnySQL Maestro 11.7 released", where the announcement mentions nothing
about platform support. And it's not just the lack of that info in
announcements; on many web sites you have to dig for a while to find info
about platform support, and I do not enjoy finding what looks like a nice
tool, only to have to spend 5-10 minutes to figure out that it is Windows
only.

My suggestion: all such announcements should include information about
supported platforms. Any announcement submitted without that info should
be rejected, and the vendor instructed to add it before re-submission.

I totally agree. In particular, Windows users seems to think that everybody
else is using their platform, much as right-handers seem to unconsciously deny
the existence of left-handers.

The corollary being that if the announcement doesn't explicitly say otherwise,
you can assume with about 99% confidence that the touted product is Windoze
only.

We have the same problem with people posting to pgsql-jobs where they
don't mention the location of the job. I usually email the people
privately about this.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +

On 07/19/2011 09:00 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

We have the same problem with people posting to pgsql-jobs where they
don't mention the location of the job. I usually email the people
privately about this.

Used to have. pgsql-jobs is now moderated because the junk posts were
starting to outnumber the real ones. I just ejected an off-topic J2EE
job posting earlier today that would have made it through until this
recent change. Jobs that are too vague on details to be useful should
get similarly bounced back to the poster, to be reworked before they'll
be accepted.

It's impractical to do the same thing for something as complicated as
platform support, at least using negative reinforcement, on the more
controversial and popular announce list. The list of rules at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/NewsEventsApproval is already too big
for moderators to be expected to enforce them all correctly in every
case; adding more isn't likely to do anything useful. The best I think
we could do here is update that page to encourage people to list this
information for their own benefit, and then have some regular announcers
lead by example, by including the sort of info Scott is asking for into
their messages.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg@2ndQuadrant.com Baltimore, MD

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Scott Ribe
<scott_ribe@elevated-dev.com> wrote:

My suggestion: all such announcements should include information about supported platforms. Any announcement submitted without that info should be rejected, and the vendor instructed to add it before re-submission.

And describe *what* the product does. Not everyone knows what a
product is by its name, especially when the name is some marketing
term and not descriptive.

On 07/20/11 12:04 PM, Vick Khera wrote:

And describe*what* the product does. Not everyone knows what a
product is by its name, especially when the name is some marketing
term and not descriptive.

I love seeing literature and websites for product XYZ that make it sound
like it mills the wheat, bakes the bread, AND butters the toast, without
EVER saying anything about what the product actually consists of or
does, and all the actual technical info is behind a support paywall.

--
john r pierce N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca mid-left coast

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 12:17 PM, John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> wrote:

On 07/20/11 12:04 PM, Vick Khera wrote:

And describe*what*  the product does.  Not everyone knows what a
product is by its name, especially when the name is some marketing
term and not descriptive.

I love seeing literature and websites for product XYZ that make it sound
like it mills the wheat, bakes the bread, AND butters the toast, without
EVER saying anything about what the product actually consists of or does,
and all the actual technical info is behind a support paywall.

You know, I'd post a joke here about announcing PG Farm And Kitchen
(TM) 8.7.0 (Now including a Kitchen Sink!) but last time I made a joke
on a mailing list people were asking me seriously about it years
later.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers