Very bluntly: Incivility towards [very bad typists] illiterates

[Gary c Tesser]

The thread, this latest, is this:

(darn, I just wanted to copy the URL, not pull in the animated titles and dancing girls)

I'm short of time.  I just will say that, in the thread, my response nominally was to Mr Merritt, but it was less to him than to the position he was landing on.

(Pace, Mr. or Ms. McCand -- if I have the spelling right )

[Shmuel Gerber]

5 hours ago, Gary c Tesser said:

The thread, this latest, is this:

(darn, I just wanted to copy the URL, not pull in the animated titles and dancing girls)

I'm short of time.  I just will say that, in the thread, my response nominally was to Mr Merritt, but it was less to him than to the position he was landing on.

(Pace, Mr. or Ms. McCand -- if I have the spelling right )

Aside from comparing (sort of) posting an inscrutable message to going on a killing rampage, I don't think the responses were unduly uncivil. This online community prefers helping those who demonstrate at least a certain minimum effort toward helping us help them. Yes, every so often we'll get a post from a grade-schooler helping his blind grandmother ask a question about parliamentary procedure, or from a non-native-English-speaker, or perhaps from a desperate board member marooned on a desert isle with only his fellow board members and an old Palm Pilot with some keys missing, but I think it's fair to assume that most of the sloppiness we see is due to, um, sloppiness.

You can blame the latest brouhaha on the camera people. Or you can blame it on the camera, people. Or more likely the iPhone changing "can people" to "camera people".

In any event, is it really so bad if guests are made to know that we like our nonsense to be posted in full sentences (or at least full clauses, or at least clauses of some type), with proper capitalization and punctuation? (Animated titles and dancing girls optional not needed.)

Edited December 14, 2016 at 05:45 AM by Shmuel Gerber

[Gary c Tesser]

No, this is just wrong.  Time is still short -- which is why I have taken a couple weeks to get back to this.  More later.

[Gary c Tesser]

From the thread, "Meeting leaders", Richard Brown said, "I guess, though, that a couple of you are so perfect that you have never made such mistakes and that you certainly won't make any in this forum in the future. ? "

What is so exasperating is that this says it so perfectly.  But pointed 180 degrees off.

On 12/13/2016 at 9:41 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

I don't think the responses were unduly uncivil.

O Shmuel, our first quarrel.  Guest Who's had it exactly right.  I think I did a disservice to Weldon, because, strictly speaking, what he said was not unjust, unkind, or inaccurate; and addressed itself strictly to the undeniable incomprehensibility of the Orignal post; I put him on the other side for appearing to agree unconditionally with Kim.  Kinda the same with Richard.  (Of course Nancy N. can do no wrong.  Dan says so.)

But Kim's was simply mocking and intended (obviously, unless you think he failed to convey what he intended to convey; I don't) to humiliate, or at least embarrass, the OP.

On 12/13/2016 at 9:41 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

I think it's fair to assume that most of the sloppiness we see is due to, um, sloppiness.

That's the issue, then:  I think it is monstrously unfair.

 

On 12/13/2016 at 9:41 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

those who demonstrate at least a certain minimum effort toward helping us help them.

You think they're just being lazy (or sloppy).  I not only don't think so, I find it inconceivable.  I'm rather convinced that a large number of them do not recognize -- and have not been able to recognize, from the third grade on, what difference it makes, or that it makes a difference.  Come to think of it, I'll bet a large number of them would be completely oblivious to the point of Kim's post.

From another point of view, consider (adapting a principle I think of as Jefferson's, but that goes back to Greece) that it would be better that a hundred lazy boors and sloppy, um, slobs slide without calling them on their discourtesy, than to risk humiliating one person -- remember, there was indeed an almost-blind, arthritically-knucked grandmother assisted by her granddaughter who had Downs syndrome -- who has likely already had more than enough of that.

[Gary c Tesser]

On 12/13/2016 at 9:41 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

In any event, is it really so bad if guests are made to know that we like our nonsense to be posted [in good English] ... ?

That is so, so, so, not the point; it is so ... perfectly ... oblivious to the point.

[Gary c Tesser]

To make it clear, my original topic title was "Bluntly: incivility towards illiterates."  I decided to change it, so as not to insult the people described; but in changing to "very bad typists," which I intended to be flagrantly a euphemism, I should have, in parallel, removed "Bluntly," because the title was no longer blunt.  But apparently bluntness on this subject is overdue.