Len,

>Can I just say that I agree with your opinion, an explanation should have been given. Craig was not so "impossibly busy" to respond, so should have taken the time to explain his response. It should not be up to someone else to add the explanation.

Yep, I agree this is a problem here. I've bumbed in a few cases where if found myself up and against the GURU. Generally you can't convince they're wrong (might it have to do with ego ?). On the other hand it's quite understandable. It is a group that knows every other person quite well; most have met them in private also. Undoubtly, (like all sort of groups), they've got a tight community of their own in which they listen and protect eachother (to a certain point).

>I do disagree on one point though - I think you'll find that this isn't a community, rather a small clique of self-appointed experts who tolerate outsiders looking in, as long as they don't express opinions at variance with their own. The "inner sanctum" do not have to give explanations for their opinions, they are holy truths.

See above. I agree there are others who visit this community less often have more value the the VFP community than the avarage GURU here. For example, take Bela Bodecs, who has written some excellent activeX controls for VFP exclusively, or PAT boens who has put a whole lot of effort in constructing the Focus.fll (far underrated if you'd ask me) with about 1800 functions in it (a lot are really very usefull if you want more power and avoid using APIs).

>The whole group has the air of a fanatical religious sect, blindly worshipping Foxpro, with a small group of high priests, whose proclaimations must be accepted as god-given truths & questioning those words is tantamount to blasphemy.

I don't think it's true that we blindly worshipping FoxPro. A lot of us are aware that we must look outside of the VFP box for our software development. OTOH, I think that its true that the majority of our community is convinced that VFP is far underated in the software development world.

In each community you'll have some leaders with some more knowledge than others. And in each community there are people who are not knowledgeble or capable to question the proclamations of the GURU (leads to worshipping). Those who dare, are ingnored. It seems that nothing new is under the sun. This is the main reason I jump in messages that are not correct or inclompete or are bluntly rude. It does not make me popular, but I don't care; We have to get rid of this behaviour.


Walter,