Well we've begun a new page^[1]. Shall we start over?

I shouldn't really have spoken for everyone there. That was my opinion only.

And I don't want to ban anyone. Unless they're just out to troll f**k people. I just want things to be civil and not turn into giant one sided arguments that one can never win in their eyes. And then be constantly reminded of it.

I think bam's got a lot of intelligent thoughts. But sometimes he just pushes his ideas on people, whether they want it or not, whether they asked for it or not. This is a forum. Not a ring side seat at Madison Square Garden where you get thrown into the ring whether you like it or not. The idea that people can just 'stay out of the off-topic forums' if they don't want to participate in knock down drag out fisticuffs arguing over why GUI's are so infinitely inferior and that *NIX rules and WinDoze drools and blah blah the GPL is there to protect you (from yourself making a living off your software apparently) blah blah there's no way God created the world in 7 days because duh we know the universe is 13 billion years old, or at least that's as far away as our farthest telescopes can see. Taking Genesis a little too literally are we? And then being such an insensitive jerk when it comes to matters of women and feminist ideas. It all adds up.

And speaking of feminism, is there a need for it? Are women sufficiently enabled that we should not look upon them with an eye for inequitable treatment among the sexes? I'm taking a Judaism class right now, and I've learned a lot of interesting things. Recently we learned about the roles of feminists in Judaism. In the Bible and in the history of the Jewish people, there is a massively one-sided domination of the female sex by men. They are a patrilineal society with power and authority resting in the male side of the families. Only men could be rabbis for the longest time until the 20th century in the late 70's or so when women came to be able to be ordained as rabbis as well in the Conservative and Reform movements of modern Judaism. Orthodox branches of Judaism do not allow the ordination of women as rabbis, but that may change relatively soon due to pressure from outside and from within. The Bible is written in strictly male language and speaks directly to men, such as when Moses addressed the people before Sinai and told the men not to touch a woman for three days. The role of women is largely marginalized and minimized but is still present and the presence of women in the Bible like Sarah, Rachel, and Leah is usually neglected. This is changing in modern liturgy that reflects the new sentiment to include women in the language and teaching of the Bible. Women are also not allowed to count in the quorum and minyan (a prayer group), so they are not allowed to say or lead prayers or teach Torah in the Temple, but also this is changing. Women must take on the obligation to pray before they count towards a prayer group and if they neglect their duties to perform daily prayers then they are counted as committing sin, whereas men are rarely chastised for not fulfilling all obligations of daily prayer. Women can also have a very difficult time getting a divorce in Judaism, as the husband must be the one to issue a 'get' (a written document of divorce) and in many cases they simply refuse, but measures such as coercion, group exclusion and fining the offending husband have given the women some legal recourse and modern day marriage contracts (ketubba) builds in measures like what happens in the case of a divorce just like a prenuptial agreement does.

tl;dr;
Feminism is not always such an unjustified thing.

"It takes two to tango".

Nobody is "throwing" anyone "into the ring". You either climb in or you don't -- or, put another way, you either voice your opinion or you don't.

It is quite clear from your post that you have an opinion on the matters of feminism, religion, etc. Quite frankly, I don't give a damn about any of that. Just because I don't believe in something doesn't mean I have to argue with them. I can observe and make my own judgement about whether I want to believe something or hold a certain position.

Yesterday -- and this is a 100% true story that I've told a couple times now already -- I was walking down the street carrying an amp and my new electric acoustic ukulele, going to my favourite coffee shop. I was only about 10 steps away and a middle aged balding man wandered across the street towards me. I noticed he had his eye on me but I just walked passed him, but then he turned and followed me a few steps and asked "Excuse me sir, has anyone told you that the lord loves you and that you can be saved?" (slight paraphrasing)

I turned, smiled, got excited, and said "Yes, they have! People will wander right across the street and ask me things like that sometimes, it's very bizarre. I think they're recruiting or something."

He was completely lost for words, I paused and watched him take a couple backward steps from me. He was clearly bothered by my response. Then I said "Have a great day" and turned walked into the coffee shop.

I said hello to everyone when I got inside, grabbed a coffee, sat down and started playing around on my uke. The same guy came in, saw me, got a coffee and left the street corner without saying anything or approaching anyone else.

I wish he would have sat down. I would have played Hallelujah.

Now that's not really the way it has been around here though. Be realistic. Something as simple as someone presenting a view that someone else didn't agree with was often turned into fight. Not a debate, and often someone was just out to prove themself right. Did the first person ask for it? Not really. The person who attacked them has the right to remain silent as well. Why do we allow people to force their opinions on others when they are the ones who should have simply let a differing viewpoint stand as what it was, just a simple opinion, and not an invitation for a fight.

That's fine you don't have to give a shit. I don't care if people believe what I believe or not. That's your own choice. And that's not even really my opinion above, that's merely what I learned from my studies. Agree with it or don't I don't care.

Thank you for proving my point. This is what bamccaig usually does, argues until someone can't take his junk anymore and who then decides to leave.

See above.

Edit
Whatever. I'm just a looser with no onion.

I think you're being idealistic, not realistic. Post enough shit, and you make it hell for others. I don't believe people should put up with bullshit. If all you do is hide your head in the sand, absolutely nothing will change, or if it does, its for the worse (see current political bullshit in canada).

"Can't do anything about it, so i might as well not" <--- bull! you can and should.

The real curse is that we waste time debating such issues in stead of actually contributing to the development of Allegro. If you have time to argue here about the amount of Allegro forum visitors that will fit on the top of a thread, then you have time to contribute. So get going, everyone here!

That's The Curse of the Programmer. Spot on.

This thread has enough lines to get a basic mind control addon working

There's all sorts of people in most programming communities. Look at how Linus runs kernel development by "Management by perkele". As long as the focus is on software development and not on other unrelated issues, this actually works rather well...

You do not know that, unfortunately. The people coming in and leaving because someone else in the project is oh so horrible most likely would never have stayed anyway. And the people storming out loudly because they hate someone so much probably would have left otherwise as well. In both cases it's just an excuse.

I'd say to the contrary, if you look any successful open source or private project some of the key people usually hate each other and one of them will leave during or before completion. Or the whole thing is run by an asshole who never tolerates any critics at all like Steve Jobs. It's just human nature

Perhaps a.cc should be split off. A forum dedicated to programming, contribution, and the such, where discussions must stay civil, fair etc, and we have https://www.opinions.allegro.cc/forums where members can say and do whatever the f*** they want. We actually really do have a bad reputation because of these forums. I have read it in many other forums, and it really does tarnish an otherwise great library.

We lost Trent a while back and like him or not, he was pretty helpful and contributed a lot. He left because of the community, not because of the library. A while back we lost Peter Wang; a pretty big loss. Once again, I don't think he left because of the library...

We really do need to be a harmonious, welcoming community that's about teaching, contributing, growing, etc. The OT section should really be in a subdomain. Allegro Development Board needs to be a little more welcoming too. It has improved because of some kind and dedicated members, but when I first started contributing, unless Peter Wang read my thread, not much was going to happen.

Telling people that their contribution has to be perfect or it will be rejected isn't very useful. Most of the time, even a novice will produce a half decent patch, and it's up to the more experienced to take some time to refactor it a little.

Builds and binaries will help a lot too. I see some great efforts being made for build automation and that is brilliant!

I have some dependency build scripts for iOS that I plan to clean up and propose at some point. Let's work together and breath some new life into the community!

I believe these occurrences are inconsequential.

Yes.

I believe that this, too, is inconsequential.

The act of employing argumentation is to give reasons for your belief in a given circumstance. How you employ this utility will represent your own merit in whatever it regards.

I don't care if it's gay marriage, or feminism, the existence of planet X or the horrible atrocities that occur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Your words are yours. These words are mine.

[edited for even more extreme liberal effect]

A + or - voting system would be awesome. I would think it would be difficult to incorporate into the existing infrastructure, though. I really like the reddit system of karma, but because we are such a small and unique community in comparison we would need a customized system for it to be an improvement of the current awesome power that is the allegro.cc forum system.

This place is the best. Don't you fucking kid yourselves.