I spend an inordinate amount of time on IRC. In particular, I spend hours every day providing Apache tech support on #apache on irc.freenode.net. I've often wondered if there's a way to bill for some of this time. ;-)
Well, today in the mail I received a Gerber multi-tool, which I had put on my Amazon.com wish list. There was a short note saying thanks from all the folks I'd helped on #apache. The individual who sent it, who I won't mention by name, as I did not ask his permission to do so, is a true gentleman. I certainly don't expect anyone to compensate me for my contributions - it's part of what I give to the Apache documentation project - but it is enormously gratifying to be appreciated. :-)
On a related note, I ran some simple stats on the #apache log files, and apparently I say 3.4 times as much as the next most prolific person, and more than the next 5 people combined. And one of those 5 is a 'bot, so hardly counts. Obviously I spend *too much* time on IRC.
Indeed you are truly prolific - most of the other helpful folks work primarily by prompting fajita to give the answers.
But what are these logs? does fajita do that for you?
I fear that I might have been the #2 on that list (if the logs weren't from the last month) - but that's about to change to a much lower percentage for me. Unfortunately the channel has taken a turn for the worse with even more idlers than ever before. The base level of idlers has recently moved up to somewhere between 110 and 120 ... that is simply too many IMHO.
It also seems that several of the regulars (other than me) have moved on or are not nearly as active as they were - I think that is a great shame, because it was a nice way to help people and I'm not too happy about having to go looking for some other way of doing that.
All the more power to you for not giving up yet - I'm impressed (and hope to find some time for it again in a few months.)
Fajita keeps logs as part of her learning mechanism. I purge them occasionally, but it appears that it's been a while since the last purge. Actually, the logs that I'm working from start April 9, 2003.
Posted by: DrBacchus on March 30, 2004 06:41 AMquasi: we'll miss you, but it ain't *that* bad!
Posted by: /me on March 30, 2004 01:42 PM