Re: PHP Purpose (PHPP) -- largest thread ever

From: Mudge (mark1822_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 06/23/04 

Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:54:37 GMT

Five Cats wrote:

> In message <BI6Cc.78191$Hg2.30110@attbi_s04>, Mudge
> <mark1822@hotmail.com> writes
>>This thread is hereby dubbed PHP Purpose, or PHPP.
>>
>>It has the following purposes:
>>
>>1. To bring together PHPers and programmers around the world to become
>>organized.
>>
>>2. To dicuss purposes of programmers as relates to motives for
>>programming.
>>
>>3. To dicuss purposes of PHP itself and related technologies.
>>
>>4. To discuss programming in general and PHP in particular.
>>
>>5. To become the largest and most used thread in the history of Usenet.
>
> The thing is that the largest / most used thread in the history of
> Usenet is actually going to be pretty useless for points 2-4 above - a
> bit like a large book without an index.
>
> If you want to build a community IMHO you need a better vehicle than a
> vast sprawling single thread. You could (for example) setup a Yahoo!
> group where threads remain separate. But I do not believe this large
> thread thing is the way.
>
> If you want to see an example of a newsgroup which is more than just
> discussion about the obvious on-topic subject, which does have a sense
> of community, lurk here for a while:
>
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=uk.business.agriculture&ie=UTF-8&hl=en
>
> BTW they are not easily impressed folks...
>
> <snip>
>
>>I am still fairly new to PHP, but I've decided that it's going to be my
>>main server-side language. I am going to use HTML, Javascript, MySQL and
>>PHP to build a Web site that I have in mind. I'm doing this all on my own
>>steam -- not for anybody else and I'm not getting paid for it. I'm going
>>to attempt to get my Web site to pay for itself once it is built.  My site
>>will feature political news and other things of interest to people.
>
> Remember that in political sites, content is King. If you don't have
> the content you will never get a site like that to pay for itself. How
> are you on politics?
>
> <snip>
>>
>>Also, does anybody know what the longest thread has been in this current
>>newsgroup
>>(comp.lang.php)?  That would be the first target to beat. Then
>>maybe we can beat the others one by one.
>
> If you really want to know the answer, Google might be your friend
> again:
>
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.php&ie=UTF-8&hl=en
>
> But - I'm starting to think that the most useful thing for you would be
> finding out more ways of finding information other than just asking
> people e.g. start to look it up. Also, unless you get your critical
> facilities in gear you will come unstuck sooner or later. You need to
> know how to evaluate how good the information you are receiving is, and
> part of this is being able to find critiques and alternative versions
> for yourself.
>
> This competitive thing is starting to hack me off. Communities are
> about co-operation, not competition. Just because a thread is long
> doesn't mean it's useful - probably just that it's entertaining. Of
> course I'm not knocking entertainment (far from it), but I've given up
> with all threads that have got large as it just gets too hard to follow
> them. Like trying to listen to 20 conversations in the same room at the
> same time.
>
> <snip>
>
>>Nick Mudge
>
> I'm intrigued that your email addy suggests your name is 'Mark' but you
> are 'Nick'.
 
Cats, thank you for your input. I see what you are saying and I think that
this is good information. This may not be the best place to do this, as per
what you said. I'll check out Yahoo groups and look around. But I'm still
gonna see how far this goes, maybe it will a last until next week.

As for how I am on politics: I am a news editor for the Web site
www.govtech.net (number one Web site for state and local IT news in the
U.S.) -- that's my full time job. I also put together their main
e-newsletter "Government Technology Executive News" and the newsletter "The
Homeland Report"

The company I work for publishes a national magazine on how information
technology can improve government -- my news that I put on www.govtech is
all about that. I've done it long enough and happened to figure out how to
put together a good political Web site. At least I really believe that what
I want to do has a good chance.

Welcome to PHP.

I also have prior experience as a c programmer in college and BASIC in
school before that, and happen to like programming. So here I am. I am
running SUSE linux on my home computer with broadband, with my Apache and
MySQL, PHP all nicely installed and working good. Everyday writing more of
my Web site -- though I really just started writing my Web site about a
week ago.

What about you Cats, what do you do? and what does programming have to do
with you?

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