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Haskellbook, Twitter and communication - which is hard #community #haskell

This evening, a series of tweets by @haskellbook appeared in my feed in quick succession:

"We do not take feedback or questions via IRC. Please use the recommended community resources for getting help."

"If something is wrong with the book, use the email feedback info on the website."

"We do not take feedback or questions via Twitter. Please use the recommended community resources for getting help."

Which struck me as odd, why write about all they ways you don't want feedback?

So I did what all stupid Twitter-users do, I posted a sarcastic reply:

"Please, oh, please, let us know all the ways you don't want to communicate. We can't wait to hear them all enumerated. #wat"

Not a nice thing to do.

Both authors immediately responded with a couple of tweets, one of which expressed the notion that I should not join the conversation if I did not have the context, as I tried to explain to the two tired authors how their tweets had looked to me.

This is where my age shows.

I knew I didn't know the context. I just saw what my twitter feed showed me, and responded to that. And I assumed that's how it's supposed to work.

I see now that it is not.

If you read something out of context, and in a crippled medium such as Twitter, it is of course your - the reader's - responsibility to research the context. The author doesn't have to care about this!

I never "understood" Twitter (much preferred usenet), and I think this is one of the reasons - discussions are disjointed and incomprehensible, because of the way the medium works.

That's simply how it is constructed, and apparently how it is supposed to be. And I, for one, am not compatible.

So, unfollow it is.

Funnily this happened just after I transferred the newest editiion of the Haskell Book to my Kindle, and contemplated starting reading it. I guess I will wait a while, until the dust settles.