Re: Just FYI and Re[2]: Just FYI

[Shmuel Ben-Artzi <sba -at- NETMEDIA -dot- NET -dot- IL>]

Pat,

In the few months that I have been monitoring (and occasionally posting to)
this list, I have seen a number of postings with which I disagreed. A wise
Chinese proverb says that if two people agree on everything, one of them is
unnecessary. But, to the credit of my fellow list members, I have seen
*extremely* few postings here which I found downright offensive. Yours
currently holds the prize in this catagory, and probably (hopefully) will
for some time to come.

Your descent into vindictive personal epithets (especially in the second
paragraph, which I will not reprint here) is totally unwarranted and has no
place in any civilized forum. The total lack of professionalism which your
posting displayed is most certainly unsuited to this list.

Entended, colloidal diatribes? Pseudo-Socratic debates and discussions? You
have the unmitigated chutzpah to use such terms and then to subject us all
to the penultimate paragraph of your posting (which I will also *not*
subject our readers to a second time by reprinting it).

I would have been prepared to accept, even to agree with some of your
reasoning about the subject of this thread. But the totally unprofessional,
vindictive and hypocritical tone of your posting makes it totally impossible
for me to conscientiously do so.

Back into your redoubt, Pat, until you are prepared to accept the
responsibility of comporting yourself like a civilized member of society.

Shmuel Ben-Artzi
sba -at- netmedia -dot- net -dot- il

At 03:41 PM 24/10/96 EST, you wrote:
>I am a veteran lurker, and never thought I would post anything.  I monitor
>this list for information useful to me as a writer, including expertise
>others have concerning "tools of the trade."

>But, after months of putting up with (and  deleting) long-winded, verbal
>exhalations from posters who seem to have nothing better to do in life than
>get on a list so that they can dazzle the rest of us with the superior
>intellect that they so aptly demonstrate by their incessant, pubescent
>electronic d__k-waving, I have to say something.

>I agreed with what Iain said.  And, I thought, "praise the Lord, it's about
>time someone said something that made sense."  Postings that include things
>like source references, or pointers on software used by tech writers are
>useful to me.

>Philosphical meanderings about acceptable error levels are not.  It's a
>given that the goal is none, and also,  that particular circumstances along
>with their particular constraints are an influence on whether the goal is
>attained, or not.

> I expected disagreement to Iain's posting, or I would have thought I
>somehow got derailed onto the wrong list.  But, I guess I've just witnessed
>one extended, colloidal diatribe too many, at this point.

>I may be the only one on the list that is tired of the pseudo-psychoanalytic
>self-help sessions, the pseudo-Socratic debates and discussions, and the
>pseudo-professionalism that is ultimately belied and betrayed by the
>self-consciously cute witticisms that kite-tail so many postings like
>scattered, incidental, wind-bound bits of gnat dung.

> But, I don't think I am the only one that agrees with Iain, even if the
>others don't come out from their off-topic redoubts, where they may stay
>lurking, to say so.