discuss: the good the bad and the ugly
Subject:
Re: the good the bad and the ugly
From:
Martin WHEELER ####@####.####
Date:
21 Nov 2003 22:17:32 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0311212112250.5549-100000@caxton.startext.demon.co.uk>
On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> I dont know if this is sarcasm, anger or humour.
All three.
You should know that I'm a native North Briton. (Brigantes tribe).
We're noted for our frank and forthright speech habits; untrammelled use
of four-letter Anglo-Saxon vocabulary; and bawdy sense of humour.
But above all, we are ferociously egalitarian.
Thus anything we interpret as unwarranted and presumptuous implied
superiority (or arrogance) on the part of someone else gets a pretty
rapid put-down; and in no uncertain terms. It's a cultural thing.
In grandly informing me from on high how to manage my own writing, you
managed to press all the right buttons. (And then some.)
> It is a good piece of work but
> unfortunately wouldnt sustain itself without the distributors themselves
> taking care to inform you that their distro is being updated.
... I'm beginning to wonder if you read what I wrote last week in
giving my reasons for the doc. to be pulled ...
> Take a look at distrowatch.com and
> check the amount of changes that you will have to make to the howto to keep
> it updated. It just cannot be sustained as a static howto.
<breathes heavily>
You're making a habit of this, you know that? You just don't read what
people write. (There are also about a dozen other sites doing the same
thing, in a variety of languages, which you don't mention, btw.)
Grandly re-stating what I've already said in my own mails as if it
were your own contribution to the debate isn't earning you any brownie
points at this end.
Nor is it doing my blood-pressure any good.
> This was accepted by you in our last discussion in this list.
Now, *that* is a beautiful example of just how severely you can (probably
unwittingly) piss people with my degree of language sensibility off.
You manage in the one short sweet sentence to imply that *your*
arguments (which you never made in the first place), are somehow
superior to *my* statements on the matter -- which were the first
mention of it in the first place.
Touchy?
Yeah.
Nit-picking precision in the use of language?
You bet.
> You can use your valuable time to work on some other docs which would be more
> feasible.
<grovels; tugs forelock>
Thank 'ee kindly, good sir.
(Given my age and snow-white hair, I'm assuming I was writing tech. doc
long before you were even born.)
No further comment.
> Btw i couldnt find the linux dictionary to edit in the wiki. Did you take it
> off too?
Maybe that's because it isn't (and never was) there?
What made you think it was?
Or is that just one of your own unwarranted expectations that I'm
somehow supposed to cater for?
(The wiki is for people other than the dictionary editors to *add* their
own text for consideration for inclusion in the dictionary -- the
dictionary database itself is edited directly from the website search
pages; NOT from the wiki. By pre-appointed dictionary editors, who have
appropriate passwords to access the database.)
This actually shows up one of the drawbacks of using wikis -- you have
to specifically structure them to cater for all the expectations of
different categories of reader; otherwise the very people who are
supposed to be contributing to or developing the text arrive at the
site, find nothing to contribute to, and rather than start or add
anything themselves, wander off complaining that there is nothing to see
or do.
And of course, if you put a full text there for them to play with, they
won't edit it, for fear of spoiling something that manifestly already
exists, or that they can't stamp their own style on.
You can't win.
--
Martin Wheeler - StarTEXT / AVALONIX - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
####@####.#### http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/
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