Subject: Re: bug#61325: 30.0.50; Jokes in GNUS manual

From: Ihor Radchenko <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2023 13:01:14 +0000

Po Lu <[email-masked]> writes:

>> May you please elaborate which joke you are referring to?
>
> This one:
>
> 3.16 Group Topics
>
>     If you read lots and lots of groups, it might be convenient to group
>     them hierarchically according to topics.  You put your Emacs groups over
>     here, your sex groups over there, and the rest (what, two groups or so?)
>     you put in some misc section that you never bother with anyway.  You can
>     even group the Emacs sex groups as a sub-topic to either the Emacs
>     groups or the sex groups—or both!  Go wild!

Thanks.
I also partially understand the joke.
My main problem is the last sentence, which I am not sure if it is
technical or still part of the joke.

    You can even group the Emacs sex groups as a sub-topic to either the
    Emacs groups or the sex groups—or both!

The paragraph structure is basically:

 <technical description><joke><half joke, half technical description>

Such structure is difficult to understand, especially if the joke itself
is not understood.

To summarize, my problem is not a joke and not that I understand it or
not. My problem is that I do not fully understand technical descriptions
in this paragraph.

> I do understand the rest as well.

Ok. I am especially confused about the Note: part in 3.15 Exiting Gnus
has. I fail to see a joke there. (this is not important in the context
of this bug, I am just curious)

>> Agree. My other points remain. In particular, about joking on sex topic,
>> which is present in the same paragraph.
>
> There are such newsgroups on the Usenet, so why would cracking jokes
> about them be any different from cracking jokes about any other
> newsgroup?
>
> Seriously, anyone who finds that joke offensive needs to grow up and get
> a life!

While I do agree that people should ideally understand that jokes are
not aiming to offend them, even if the topic is not acceptable in
someone's culture, it is not practically the case for all the users.

In particular, topics sensitive within whole cultures (sex, race,
female bullying) are likely to distract (or worse) a significant
fraction of Emacs users from acquiring the technical context of the
manual. The fact that another fraction of the Emacs users find such
jokes pleasing does not change this fact.

I would also like to point out that GNUS is well-known to be
hard-to-grasp. A manual loaded with large amount of culture-specific
jokes does not help in this regard. In particular, I do find "3.16 Group
Topics" section of the manual difficult to understand precisely because
it is overloaded with jokes.

>> Also, note that Gnus is also email client. Are people who intend to use
>> GNUS for email supposed to understand Newsgroup terminology in order to
>> use GNUS?
>
> No, but they are not expected to understand the jokes in the manual for
> a _newsreader_ either.

Not when the jokes stay on the way of understanding the technical parts.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
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