Re: date of question
Re: date of question
- Subject: Re: date of question
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 22:46:14 -0400
On 10/13/05,
Gary (Lists) <
email@hidden> wrote:
I'll take "realist" teaching over your top-posting, any day. ;)
The enforcement of a community's standards can not be undertaken by those
who, by their continued action, refuse to adopt the community's standards.
Ow! See, that's what I call "harsh". :)
It took years for my workplace to hammer this top-posting thing
into me, but the tools we use make it not only easier to send email
that way, but easier to navigate mail that has been sent that way, and
virtually everyone I work with prefers it. So I finally caved.
I really do try not to let it spill over into my personal email,
but gmail shares the same bias as Exchange/Outlook and I sometimes
forget to correct. I do apologize.
Being a realist is not a bad thing.
Agreed,
You can not program in a language you don't know.
Agreed, although you can sometimes fake it pretty well by copying what other people have done and putting their efforts
together in novel ways without fully understanding the inner workings of what you're copying...
You must do something to learn. A book is a good idea.
Agreed.
(Would you propose that new AS programmers NOT read a book, or just that no
one should tell to to do so?)
Of course not. But the advice is not what I was objecting to,
it's the tone. I know tone is a very ephemeral thing in a text
medium, but phrases like "suggesting you actually learn AppleScript
instead of thinking it's Just Like English and hoping for the best" are
undeniably rude. Saying "You can't really do AppleScript at all
without knowing that" seems to be skirting insult territory. I
mean, sure, there are things that you simply need to know, but saying
"Don't even bother trying if you haven't figured out concept X yet" is
not helping anybody.
There is a natural and long-standing social tension between "open lists" and
the cry of "RTFM".
The cry of "RTFM" is simple rudeness, and tends to go along with a smug
elitism; it is never called for. There is always a more
polite way to suggest that someone do more research on his or her own
and then come back with a more appropriate question,. If you
can't bring yourself to be that polite - perhaps because a particular
"offender" has ignored such politesse in the past and continued to
demonstrate what now seems to be willful ignorance - perhaps it's best
if you don't reply at all.
Mark, you're very new around here,
Stipulated.
and I think your contribution has been excellent in content.
Thank you.
However, your read of the social dynamic might be a bit off.
I admit to ignorance concerning the particular history of interactions
between specific individuals; I gather that Robert and Paul have a
lengthy association, for instance. Nevertheless, I maintain that
the guidelines for polite social interaction in all but the most
specialized of environments are pretty universal..
Those posts you cited are not "harsh" in a disparaging way, from this
reader's perspective.
I'm afraid we simply disagree on that point. Perhaps we should
ask those who were directly addressed by the posts in question
whether or not they perceived any harshness? Their opinion would
seem to be more relevant than either yours or mine.
--
Mark J. Reed <
email@hidden>
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