On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:27:00 +1300 (NZDT) Derek Smithies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nick, > > I dispute that, I think people get flamed (on this list anyway) when > > they are rude or behave inappropriately. We get many newbie questions > > and as long as they make a reasonable effort to be polite and to modify > > their behaviour when people point out how things could be done better, > > they usually have little problems. > > On this list, people don't get flamed. Yes, we do have flaming exceptions. > However, from reading my initial email on this topic, and examining ones > behaviour with a)company paper, b)at a conference, c)at a fix up night, it > should be obvious that it is never never never acceptable to flame. Maybe > you can explain why it is acceptable to flame the irritating person. I can only speak for myself and everyone is different, so these are my own thoughts, and not a rule for general societal behaviour. Frankly if someone annoys me i generally tell them, whether at the office, at a conference, on a mailing list, at the pub, wherever. If they annoy me *enough* I might be reduced to telling them so rudely (ie flame them). I try not to, it doesn't make for good relationships, but then again I might not want an ongoing relationship with someone who i regard as a total plonker. generally though people have to provoke me pretty determinedly in order for me to flame them, either in person or online. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and, in the online context, to show them that there is a right way and a wrong way [1] to deal with technical problems. Part way through typing this I see derek's latest post with the mechanic's analogy. to take the analogy further, if you fail to take the mechanic's advise, then its rude to come back and ask the same question over and over again, and to accuse the mechanic of being part of a conspiracy to convert everyone back to horses and carts, and to abuse the mechanic because the car is now inoperable as a result of you fiddling with it yourself. In short I will call an idiot an idiot if they are patently, repeatedly and annoyingly an idiot. i frequently tell clients who fail to take my advice and come unstuck that they are silly. Of course for me and the mechanic, the clients who do not take advice are a great source of further work, because someone has to undo the customer's idiocy :-) There is therefore a lower annoyance factor. On a free mailing list you don't get any benefit from an obvious and repeated idiot, and therefore the annoyance factor is higher. In short, and as a secondary summary, rudeness/flaming is probably never appropriate, but we do not live in an ideal world, so patience can and sometimes does wear thin. [1] perhaps a "right' spectrum of behaviour and a "wrong" spectrum of behaviour, where the spectra intermingle in the middle, ie there is a grey area in the middle where the behaviour is acceptable to some and not to others. I'm not at the point where i regard myself as some final arbiter of taste. PS i am not sure if which group we are putting top posters in today :-) (please note the smiley in that last sentence!) -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
