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Re: [OFF TOPIC] Re: Will someone rid me of this troublesome priest!?
On Mon, 13 May 1996, Omer Zak wrote:
> I apologize for my lack of fluency in Latin, which forces me to resort to
> more primitive and blunt words.
I shall never find fault with bluntness, even if its effect is blunted by
a lack of creative verbiage.
A general comment first - I find myself, for the first time on this list,
in agreement with Omer Zak. This is indeed a welcome development.
[snip]
> Eventually, the more sensitive people will leave and the others will
> continue to live, and live also with that smelly part of life.
>
> (Yeechhhh!)
Well said, Omer. The question remains - what smells worse :-)?
> 5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases
> dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people
> start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens
> to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet
> topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten
> up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than
> is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).
No, with this I disagree, at least partially. It is not a question of
discomfort with diversity per se but with laziness and incompetence. Many
new users asking more or less intelligent questions, writing sheer
claptrap and spewing their ignorance AFTER having read documentation will
get a snide remark and an ANSWER.
Those like M. Lurie who mail anything WITHOUT having read documentation
(or, in M. Lurie's case, after possibly having read documentation but
without the benefit of a decent dictionary which amount to more or less
the same thing) must be told off and instructed to read first and speak
after.
There seems to be a general misunderstanding of my behaviour. The most
pungent reaction came from T. Beker who stated that I am losing my
composure. This is incorrect - I flame without passion, for the
(subjective) good of the flamee. This may or may not be as effective as
another modus operandi, but it is a modus operandi that fits me.
> 6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks
I suspect that Linux-il is already in 6a, where it will remain. The 6b of
the list (or, rather, the 6a[ii] od the list) is done on a personal
acquaintance level, via the telephone.
---MAV (finger for PGP signature block)
Marc A. Volovic (marc@cs.huji.ac.il)
Linguists do it cunningly
References: