[gmx-developers] Ideologically biased quotes

[Justin Lemkul]

On 12/7/16 7:40 AM, Berk Hess wrote:
> On 12/07/2016 01:27 PM, David van der Spoel wrote:
>> On 07/12/16 13:19, Erik Lindahl wrote:
>>> ... and a couple of other things I've thought about, but not acted on yet:
>>>
>>> 1) Should we remove all non-English quotes (Maybe German/French is OK
>>> too)? Gromacs has become a large and international project, and since I
>>> don't think it would be very productive to add quotes in another ~20
>>> small languages, maybe we shouldn't have any Swedish ones either.
>>>
>>> 2)  Avoid jokes that depend too much on context (i.e., having been at
>>> the talk) such as dropping a letter. While it might be fun to remember
>>> for the few who were there, most other users probably won't understand
>>> why it's fun.
>>>
>>> 3) We have some historical quotes from rock music that I think we should
>>> keep, but for new ones I'd suggest we hold them to the same standard as
>>> other quotes - i.e., they should be related to
>>> science/engineering/programming.
>>>
>>
>> As said let's not reiterate the whole discussion again. Maybe the time for
>> quotes is over in the post-factual world and we can just remove them altogether.
> Isn't the post-factual world all about quotes?
>
> I like the quotes, since they often make me laugh, so I (and several colleagues
> I know of) would not like to see them go. I don't know about the community at
> large though.
> I don't have strong opinions on rules, apart from avoiding self-censorship.
> Erik's suggestions sound reasonable to me.
>

I agree.  I like them, and I know several people that certainly find them funny 
and make using GROMACS enjoyable and unique.

The move from binary to plain text was motivated, in part, due to the previous 
discussion on charged quotes - people can edit out anything they don't like 
(yay, flexibility!) and we got rid of a few that consensus dictated were perhaps 
poorly received.  The fact that the quotes are now in a source file, requiring 
the user to completely re-compile the code rather than edit a simple text file 
has somewhat raised that barrier.  Obviously good from a software perspective, 
perhaps not so good from a user perspective.

-Justin

> Cheers,
>
> Berk
>
>> Someone that is interested can make a wikipedia page listing gromacs quotes to
>> document them for posterity.
>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Erik
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Erik Lindahl <erik.lindahl at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:erik.lindahl at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Hi Vedran,
>>>
>>>     Partly agree. There are a couple of recent purely political quotes
>>>     that should probably go; I have no particular interest in staying
>>>     'neutral', but I think it's a reasonable requirement that there
>>>     should be a direct connection to science/engineering/programming -
>>>     otherwise we might soon end up with a torrent of quotes that are
>>>     completely unrelated to what we do, and that would be a shame.
>>>
>>>     On the other hand, I don't want us to be too touchy either, but in
>>>     particular when it comes to contentious topics it's probably a good
>>>     idea to consider adding a couple of jokes from both points-of-view
>>>     rather than pushing your own ideas. Personally I think it would be
>>>     pretty fun to have a couple of pro-religion jokes about science, but
>>>     I haven't been very good at finding them :-)
>>>
>>>     Cheers,
>>>
>>>     Erik
>>>
>>>
>>>     Cheers,
>>>
>>>     Erik
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 12:37 PM, Vedran Miletić <vedran at miletic.net
>>>     <mailto:vedran at miletic.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>         Hello,
>>>
>>>         I say the following in a very calm voice, just as a suggestion,
>>>         since I
>>>         expect it to be a charged topic.
>>>
>>>         Could we in the future avoid including ideologically biased quotes
>>>         promoting either side of whatever is the current (or eternal)
>>>         debate in
>>>         society? I would much prefer if GROMACS was neutral on all issues
>>>         unrelated to science and software development.
>>>
>>>         Thanks in advance.
>>>
>>>         Vedran
>>>
>>>         --
>>>         Vedran Miletić
>>>         vedran.miletic.net <http://vedran.miletic.net>
>>>         --
>>>         Gromacs Developers mailing list
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     --
>>>     --
>>>     Erik Lindahl <erik.lindahl at gmail.com <mailto:erik.lindahl at gmail.com>>
>>>     Professor of Biophysics, Dept. Biochemistry & Biophysics, Stockholm
>>>     University
>>>     Science for Life Laboratory, Box 1031, 17121 Solna, Sweden
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> --
>>> Erik Lindahl <erik.lindahl at gmail.com <mailto:erik.lindahl at gmail.com>>
>>> Professor of Biophysics, Dept. Biochemistry & Biophysics, Stockholm
>>> University
>>> Science for Life Laboratory, Box 1031, 17121 Solna, Sweden
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
==================================================

Justin A. Lemkul, Ph.D.
Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
School of Pharmacy
Health Sciences Facility II, Room 629
University of Maryland, Baltimore
20 Penn St.
Baltimore, MD 21201

jalemkul at outerbanks.umaryland.edu | (410) 706-7441
http://mackerell.umaryland.edu/~jalemkul

==================================================