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At 03:08 PM 5/19/97 -0700, Sue Heim wrote:
>Can we please discontinue talking about agencies and markups? And can
>we please stop dis'sing KTI? None of this has any relevance at all any
>more (maybe the first few posts did). Discussions between KTI and
>others who may or may not disagree with the philosophy of doing
>business that they may or may not have had *THREE* years ago
>certainly has nothing to do with writing. And if you want to flame
>me, please feel free to do so. I've wasted enough time and bandwidth
>reading this stuff... (and yes, I do have a [Delete] button)!
>
>Eric, I hope you agree...
>
Sue,
The differing attitudes on tech writing rates and establishing them have
opened my eyes about an area of tech writers' attitudes from which I'm
normally isolated as an independent contractor, and I have found the
discussion as valuable as the helpful responses that came when I asked a
question about what is apparently a bug in Word tables.
I can understand that you might feel otherwise, but rates and how you
arrive at them (not what KTI--which seems to have been unmentioned and
irrelevant for awhile now--may or may not now do), like working conditions,
seem to some people pretty important to our livelihoods and futures.
Hence, while I support your right to voice your disapproval (and you're an
effective writer: I can feel the anger radiating from my screen), I find it
excessive to insist that your view should be the only relevant one (for I
take it that the aside to "Eric" is a call to censor out this discussion).
I've seen plenty of stuff here that doesn't interest me, like whether to
spell out "okay" and nuances of comma rules, or content that initially
interests me and then becomes (for me) as arcane and dull as you find this
"rate" thread, but I just ignore such threads and move to other stuff. One
person's meat, and all that.
I'm puzzled why the alternative to agreeing is to "flame." (I hope this
note isn't a flame.) I speak now not to you, Sue, but to a web cultural
issue. It distresses me to find people on the web, in almost every list
I've joined, so quick to become angry and hostile; it distresses me often
to find the very same reaction in myself, and I have to fight it. For all
the praise of the web for bringing people together, I think this flame
tendency is a flip side--by not sitting in the presence of an interlocutor,
by not sensing and generating feelings that come through body and/or voice
in a conversation, by not personally knowing the person to whom we speak,
we seem to allow ourselves a license of expression we'd never consider in
other contexts. And I mean "license," not "freedom." I suppose that web
intercourse, still so new, is going to have to evolve its own civil norms.
Peace.
Richard Yanowitz, NYC
ryanowitz -at- bigfoot -dot- com
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