Monday 1 April 2013

Integrating CF ORM into FW/1 and Stackoverflow bullying (mostly the latter)

G'day:
OK, so I sound a bit like a broken record with Stackoverflow, but they've rankled me even more than usual today. Someone's raised a pretty poorly-worded question (I am moderately confident English is not their first language though, so this can't be helped), but it was decipherable and one of the ColdFusion community's chief stalwart's - Scott Stroz - was helping the person out with his problems. Scott had posted an answer, and they were working back & forth to clarify the requirement, and making good headway.

And then one of the Stackoverflow moderators took it upon themselves to both close the question, as also delete Scott's answer.


This is not f***in' acceptable. I get the whole thing about closing questions which aren't up to snuff... I disagree with the process: it's not helpful, and is pretty much just bullying, but to delete someone's work is just shit.

Anyway, to salvage the work, I asked Scott if I could reproduce it here, and he's agreed.

Stop Press
Sigh. Now the entire question has been completely deleted.

The question was as follows:

 how to use ORM with coldfusion framework fw1. please give code snippet of ORM configuration with fw1 and its exmaple.
OK, so not something James Joyce would be proud of (hmmm... perhaps the use of punctuation might get a nod from him ;-), but one can see what the person wants.

I'd tidied up the wording a bit in the hope we could get the question re-opened, but I've lost that wording now thanks to the question being deleted. I got that original question from Google (bless it!)

Second Stop Press
I still had a browser window open of the state of the question before it was deleted, so have been able to pull out my rewording & a note to rique. replicated below.

(Again, for Google), my update to the question to make the English more clear:
How does one configure ColdFusion ORM and Framework 1 to work with each other. It would be helpful if someone could provide an example of ORM / FW/1 configuration to get them to work with each other.
Trying to help rique with the framing of their question:

the people at Stackoverflow seem to think there's not enough detail in your question for it to be answered, and have blocked it. I understand what you're asking and have an answer lined up, but you might need to improve your wording a bit so the moderators leave you alone. I've tried to improve the wording without changing the intent of what you ask, but you might need to give more information like where you're stuck and what you've tried. I have touched base with the moderators to ask them to let us help you, instead of just arbitrarily close the question. Let's see what they do

(well we know the answer to that now).

Anyway, Scott was having some back & forth with the poster:


(I'll reproduce the text here, so Google can index it)

Scott:
It is no different using ORM with FW/1 as it is using ORM with any other application or framework.

Here is a link to how you enable and configure ORM - http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSED380324-6CBE-47cb-9E5E-26B66ACA9E81.html

You just need to do the same type of things in Application.cfc.

rique:
I know application.cfc configuration. but still want to know coding on ORM.

Scott:
help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/… That should help you get started. Also, check out coldfusionormbook.com it is a fantastic resource. If you have a question about a specific problem with ORM, you will need to re-word your question. Seems like you are asking 'How do I do ORM?' which is way too vague for SO.

And that's where the plug got pulled by the moderator at Stackoverflow. They deleted this exchange, and closed the question. And have now - as I said above - deleted it completely.

What officious, bullying tossers (the moderator(s) involved, not stackoverflow.com itself). I hasten to add that the original moderator did not have any experience with ColdFusion at all, so simply could not tell whether it was a reasonable question or not (the intent of the question, if not the wording).

Now I agree that rique's question was poorly worded, but it was a legit question: I've had trouble getting my head around how to integrate CF's ORM into an existing framework... which config file to put stuff in and the like, so it's not like it's absolutely not a valid question. And I think given Scott was prepared to answer it (and I had enlisted Sean Corfield's help too... I mean he knows all about FW/1 ;-), demonstrates it is a question. If we didn't think it was a question worth answering, we'd simply opt not to help (and possibly vote it down)! That is all the moderation needed here.

rique did also go on to ask a far too nebulous question - as Scott points out "How do I do ORM?"  is too vague - but even that was in hand too.

Stackoverflow is really being let down by allowing this bullying to carry on. How disappointing.

Aaah... how cathartic. A nice grumble to start the day.

Righto.

--
Adam