I honestly don't care one way or the other what the decision about proofreading guidelines are going to be. I think it's important that people proof their emails in general. Writing messages off list to those who might have stated a particular sentence unclearly may come off as condescending, and again, it's putting an awful lot of work on yourselves.
Personally, I think just a simple guideline asking people to proof their emails would be more than sufficient. Just my 0.02, which may become a dollar with inflation. Meka ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com> To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org> Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 4:28 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Proofreading Guidelines was Blind Gamers Being TakenSeriously? Hi Meka and all, Back when we were discussing the proofreading guidelines for the list we were considering something very basic that most people should be able to follow without too much explanation. For example, let's take punctuation. Now, we know there are some more advanced punctuation rules such as using colons, semi-colons, and dashes that may be unfamiliar to some of our list members. We would be willing to overlook things like that because there are plenty of people who are sighted that aren't sure where to put a colon or where a semi-colon should be used instead of a comma. However, everyone blind or sighted should be able to know where and when to use basic punctuation rules like periods, questions, and exclamation points. We base this on the fact that anyone over 10 years old in the United States should be able to recognize the difference between a declarative sentence, exclamatory sentence, or question. In fact, my son is only seven years old and he can tell you when and where to put a period or question mark. So its not unreasonable to ask list members---who are likely older than seven---to complete sentences with a period or question mark at a bare minimum. As far as spelling goes it is usually pretty obvious when someone doesn't attempt to proofread a message for spelling errors. One or two can be overlooked but if a message is full of several mistakes its going to be rather obvious that the person has not made any effort to proofread the message before sending. Most e-mail clients such as Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Outlook, etc come with spell checkers so there really isn't an excuse not to spell check a document to get a reasonable amount of accuracy on the final draft. The same holds true for grammar. Its a given certain words can be very confusing for a blind user. The English language is full of words that sound alike but have totally different meanings such as: to, too, two, there, their, they're, sale, sail, here, hear, stake, steak, where, and wear.Some spell checkers will catch the grammatical mistake, but some won't. In a case like that a moderator would overlook the mistake as long as the message was otherwise pretty free of errors. Trust me when I say we understand how something like that could be confusing if a person is using speech instead of braille or visual reinforcement. If it is something more obvious like a double negative the moderator could write the person off list suggesting how to restate the sentence so it is more grammatically correct. The purpose wouldn't be to put the person down but merely to instruct them how to improve there language/communication skills. For example, let's assume someone writes, "I didn't find no ammo in Shades of Doom." Some people might not realize that is a double negative, is grammatically incorrect, and might just need a reminder how to restructure that sentence to read, "I didn't find any ammo in Shades of Doom." That doesn't mean we--the moderators---would hound people, but would merely make recommendations and suggestions that would improve their communication skills. I for one can't see it as anything other than being helpful and an improvement for the person. Of course, a lot depends on if the person wants the help, wants to change, or continue to compose poorly written messages. In a case like that if a person continues to write messages that are difficult to read the moderators would then go to the next step by moderating or banning them from the list until the quality of their posts improves. However, we wouldn't take a serious action like banning them without giving them a number of chances to correct the problems first. Cheers! On 12/17/11, Meka White, LMP <m...@melodicmassage.com> wrote: > I would hope that this would be more of a guideline encouraging people to > proofread their emails rather than a hard and fast rule, because where do > you draw the line on coming down on someone? One mispelled word? Two? A > misused comma? > > Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of proofing what you write. > it's > a good, courteous habit to start laying down, but do you really want to > create that much more work for yourselves? > > Warmly, > Meka > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
