[Dylan16807]

> The topic is literally

...yes we agree.

> It would even be actively unuseful. Because this is a cage on wheels

You can go argue with eitland if you want, but their intent was a phrase that could signal "a car, a truck, a trailer with a power generator, etc."

As in a phrase that's vague but correct. I'd rather know something vague than know nothing.

I agree that being misleading is bad. But the LAMP comment wasn't misleading.

By the way, do you ever care if programs are web apps? If no, that's crazy, it matters a lot to how you can use it. If yes, then what is the difference between the situations you care and someone explaining phabricator?

If someone explained what you do with phabricator, but left it ambiguous whether you run it on your desktop or on a webserver, wouldn't you feel like that explanation was missing something?

-

Let's say someone had a list of facts about Phabricator to provide context:

1. It's software.

2. It's a web app. This also implies 1.

3. It's used for code and task management.

4. It uses linux, apache, mysql, php. This also implies 2.

When I go in knowing nothing, most of these facts are useful.

It's possible to guess from the article that it's software, but saying fact 1 is still good in making that clear.

Saying 1+2 gives even more info and makes it easier to understand the situation.

Saying 3 is also useful to understanding.

Saying 1+2+3 combines to give a great picture.

Once you've said all those, adding 4 doesn't help much.

But if someone didn't already know the previous facts, saying 4 also implies 1+2. Which is way better than nothing.

[dmitriid]

> I agree that being misleading is bad.

How it started: "I do see at least some information about what Phabricator is" and " vague description is much better than nothing."

How it's going: "I agree that being misleading is bad."

Number of times I said or implied anything about information being misleading: 0. Number of times I said the comment provided zero useful information: many.

> By the way, do you ever care if programs are web apps

> If someone explained what you do with phabricator, but left it ambiguous

> Let's say someone had a list of facts about Phabricator to provide context

Too many words that are as useful or as pertinent to the discussion as the original comment: not at all.

[Dylan16807]

> Number of times I said or implied anything about information being misleading: 0.

Here, I will quote what you said about misleading information: "And if you asked "What the hell is Camry?", and the answer was "a cage of wheels", that answer would still have no usefulness whatsoever. It would even be actively unuseful. Because this is a cage on wheels:"

> Too many words that are as useful or as pertinent to the discussion as the original comment: not at all.

Either you're badly misreading me and/or skipping half of what I said, in which case I give up, or you think it's not even useful to know that phabricator is software, in which case you are ridiculous and I give up.

[dmitriid]

> it's not even useful to know that phabricator is software

For some unknown reason you seem to assume that any and all information, however useless, is "better than nothing". Go enjoy your cage on wheels.

[Dylan16807]

When the topic is a company stopping making a thing, it's useful to know what the thing is.

[dmitriid]

Indeed. And the original comment provided exactly zero useful info on what the thing is.

Let's say someone doesn't know what Phabricator is. After the insightful comment that is "better than nothing" that someone will no exactly the same amount about what Phabricator is: zero. And will have to Google or rely on other comments to understand what it is.

The fact that "it's a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) application" has exactly zero value or use to anyone who wants to what Phabricator is.

Here's an actual useful comment that would actually provide actual useful context:

"For those who don't know, Phabricator is a collection of tools for collaborating on software (for example, code reviews). It's gained some popularity and Facebook is even running a custom fork of it. Fun trivia: it runs on a LAMP stack."

[Dylan16807]

If you ask some friends to order the following statements in terms of usefulness:

A: X company is shutting down development on their web software product.

B: X company is shutting down development on something.

C: X company is shutting down development on their web software product, which is used for collaborating on software development.

Then I bet that if your friends find any difference at all, they will rank C better than A better than B.

The headline alone tells us B, and the headline plus the LAMP comment tells us A.