Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: I gotta stop reading MacTutor
Keywords: challenge
Message-ID: <16111@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 13 Oct 89 07:13:04 GMT
References: <30951@news.Think.COM> <16094@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <5097@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Thayer School of Engineering
Lines: 35

In article <5097@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> mikem@uhccux.UUCP
	(Mike Morton) writes:
>earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) writes:
>>Anyone can submit an article to MacTutor.
...
>Seriously, Dave Smith told me a while back that in four years of
>operation, he had rejected only one article, and he believed that
>he would eventually publish everything else, although some of it would
>take a long time.
>
>MacTutor needs a technical review board, perhaps?  Given that many
>articles languish for months before being printed, there seems to be
>plenty of time for such a process.  And while they're at it, they
>might want to start using a spelling checker or even using a human
>proofreader.

This is all true, I am sure.  My point is that one way to get this
sort of thing started is for people who are really good to submit more
articles and source code.  It does not make sense to have a rigorous
technical review board unless you have a glut of articles, and are
forced to reject some because of over-supply.

Anyone who is in a position to complain about the quality of articles
in MacTutor is probably both (a) benefiting from the magazine in some
way, and (b) good enough to write an article which is better than the
object of the complaint.  If you make your living programming the
Macintosh, and consider what you do to be meaningful in any kind of
larger social context, then consider it your duty to support MacTutor
with good articles.

It is probably going against some law of economics to try to drive out
bad merchandise by diluting it with good, but it is certainly worth a
try.

Earle R. Horton