Re: About.com Guide for Perl [was Fwd: RE: Guide Application for [Perl]]
Hello Joel, sorry for the late response. On Tue, 31 May 2011 11:15:08 -0500 Joel Limardo joel.lima...@forwardphase.com wrote: I was the one who asked for your writing sample. I wanted to see if there was something fairly obvious in your writing that would cause a rejection. After looking at the links you provided, I'm sad to say that I agree with About.com. Well, in my letter I asked if anyone would be willing to volunteer for maintaining the Perl section of About.com, due to the fact that my application was rejected. The fact that my application was rejected was a given and I assumed there was little or nothing I could do about it. Telling me why my writing is lacking, is besides the point of finding someone to maintain the Perl section on About.com, and I didn't request that input. Thanks for passing your commentary on my writing, but it's not going to help with the issue I raised. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Interview with Ben Collins-Sussman - http://shlom.in/sussman Had I not been already insane, I would have long ago driven myself mad. — The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Re: About.com Guide for Perl [was Fwd: RE: Guide Application for [Perl]]
I was trying to say that you should try again. I suppose I could have summarized that in a single statement and then have gone into the details about how your writing examples. My aim was just to give you a picture of what someone sitting on the editor's side of the desk might say. Effective written communication is either going to be a platform for success for an IT professional or a constant impediment. I know all this stuff about writing because at one point I was going to be a professional writer. In H.S. I only had two concentrations -- English and Computer Science. By 4th year it was basically all English because my school ran out of CS classes for me to take! I took Basic, Pascal, all the typing courses I could find and even some computing concepts class that put me to sleep as I remember it. With no other options I elected to concentrate on my other skill, English. It was either that or not graduate. When I hit college I was, naturally, a declared English major in the first year. In my mind there was nothing that could stop me from being a published author. Then reality set in. I realized that there were very few jobs for someone with an English degree outside of teaching and mid-second year I found college impossible to afford. I left for the workforce and menial-job-drudgery that spanned everything from opening boxes of books for a well-known book distributor to digging up death benefit files in a huge storage room for a petroleum company. In short, work sucked. Then one day the powers that be realized I had a knack for computers and I got an assignment providing grunt-work support for a team of IT consultants. They were making some trading system in PowerBuilder as I remember it. Their lead guy sat right next to me and took me under his wing. He basically prepared me for my entire undergraduate career, walking me through which classes would be the most difficult and spoon feeding me tips on what to focus on. I remember quitting that job and marching right into college two weeks later. Four years after that and plenty of college loans later I had a degree in computer science. Now that I've gotten my brief history out of the way you might be wondering what is the point? By themselves my communication skills did not count for much. I couldn't use them to secure a good job sans anything else. However, once I had studied computer science, good communication skills have proved to be INVALUABLE. It has gotten me jobs; kept me in jobs; and put me in a position of helping clients choose solutions. People cannot know what you are capable of if you cannot communicate it to them effectively. The same goes for Perl and that is why this post is good for an advocacy group. Effective communication in the form of writing is critical and more important than any other skill if you want to convince people to use some form of technology. It is like the difference between 'Bada-pa-pa-p...I'm lovin it' for McDonalds and 'Please come and eat some of our burgers and fries...' Good writing makes all the difference. On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 5:33 AM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@iglu.org.il wrote: Hello Joel, sorry for the late response. On Tue, 31 May 2011 11:15:08 -0500 Joel Limardo joel.lima...@forwardphase.com wrote: I was the one who asked for your writing sample. I wanted to see if there was something fairly obvious in your writing that would cause a rejection. After looking at the links you provided, I'm sad to say that I agree with About.com. Well, in my letter I asked if anyone would be willing to volunteer for maintaining the Perl section of About.com, due to the fact that my application was rejected. The fact that my application was rejected was a given and I assumed there was little or nothing I could do about it. Telling me why my writing is lacking, is besides the point of finding someone to maintain the Perl section on About.com, and I didn't request that input. Thanks for passing your commentary on my writing, but it's not going to help with the issue I raised. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Interview with Ben Collins-Sussman - http://shlom.in/sussman Had I not been already insane, I would have long ago driven myself mad. — The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Re: About.com Guide for Perl [was Fwd: RE: Guide Application for [Perl]]
Hi all, On Tuesday 24 May 2011 22:57:27 Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all, Can anyone here volunteer to write about Perl for http://perl.about.com/ ? It's been suffering from a lot of neglect, and my application for a writer there was rejected (see below). Someone asked me (in private - :-( ) what my writing sample looked like, and since this was a form submission and it was a long time ago, I don't recall exactly, but I think they were these: * http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Perl/Newbies/ * http://perl-begin.org/ Regards, Shlomi Fish Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Forwarded Message -- Subject: RE: Guide Application for [Perl] Date: Tuesday 24 May 2011, 18:01:03 From: jm...@about.com To: shlo...@shlomifish.org, shlo...@gmail.com Shlomi, While we thank you for taking the time to apply to be an About.com Guide, we have decided not to accept your application for entry into Prep. A few common reasons why your application was not accepted include: * We are looking for someone with more professional writing experience. * We are looking for someone with more writing experience in the topic. * We are looking for someone with different qualifications. * The writing in the writing sample was not up to our standards or had typographical errors. If you feel that you did not represent yourself to your best advantage in your application and you wish to apply again, you are more than welcome to do so at http://beaguide.about.com. In addition, you may also be interested in applying to be a writer for ConsumerSearch, a member of the About, Inc. group of companies looking for writers to join their teams. If so, we encourage you to apply via the following link: * Consumer Search: http://www.consumersearch.com/www/jobs.html. Thanks again for your application, About.com Recruitment and Training Team - -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ First stop for Perl beginners - http://perl-begin.org/ In Soviet Russia, XSLT codes you. Badly! Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Re: About.com Guide for Perl [was Fwd: RE: Guide Application for [Perl]]
I was the one who asked for your writing sample. I wanted to see if there was something fairly obvious in your writing that would cause a rejection. After looking at the links you provided, I'm sad to say that I agree with About.com. Technical writing and knowledge are as distinct as analyzing and creating films. The latter is the more rigorous and (perhaps) rewarding activity, but it is best to not completely discount the fore as oftentimes this perspective can prove to be insightful. The Internet is fairly new, but successful entities adhere to the same quality requirements/standards of their in-print predecessors that have served them well in the past. In this paradigm, editors are typically responsible for sending out the horrid rejection letters you can receive. Oftentimes the standard can be to send out stock letters full of niceties and emotional fluff when what they meant to say was that your usage was poor, grammar questionable, and thinking appeared muddled. I found all three of these in your writing samples. Examples: - Usage: Programming the Way You Would Love..if I'm not mistaken this is an example of future perfect tense, generally a poor choice for a section title. -Usage #2: Perl code is very succinct and can be written very quickly... The use of the word 'very' should be avoided. You should even add a note in your draft revision process that asks if you really need ANY use of the word. Why? Because it tends to be VERY overused. - Grammar #1: This is useful to automate such web sites... Remove the 'such' and the meaning becomes clear. - Usage #3: Perl was introduced in 1987 (4 years before Linux itself), when the author, Larry Wall, released version 1.000 of it... The addition of 'of it' is needless and verbose. - Usage #4: The reason for its creation was that Wall was unhappy by the functionality... This is awkward and muddled. This can be better written as, Mr. Wall, tired of the inefficiencies in many Unix utilities, sought to create a 'better mousetrap' sporting the very best features awk, sed, ... Absent any other evidence the reader is typically correct in assuming that muddled writing is a sign of muddled thinking. In the Perl community we know better -- you may be simply bad at writing, but the average reader will not be armed with this knowledge. There are many more examples but I've made my point. Every time you write for any form of publication you should be cognizant that the reader is simultaneously analyzing the writing and reading it as well. They are reading the content, but their minds are also analyzing the piece for veracity, succinctness, structure, brevity, and other aspects. You can summarize these in questions: 'is this person telling me the truth?'; 'did the author use the right word for that?'; 'is this person going to waste my time?'; 'am I going to have to reread this ten times to understand it?'; 'where in the hell is the point?'; etc. A good writer asks these questions during a draft; the best writers ask them before even sitting down to write. My recommendation is that you sit down and write a piece specifically for publication in a print magazine (they are better about providing examples of what they expect to see) and use that as a writing sample instead. Revise your piece at least three times before submitting it to anyone. I do not suggest that you find someone else to write these pieces for you. I think you should do this and then try again. On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:29 AM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@iglu.org.il wrote: Hi all, On Tuesday 24 May 2011 22:57:27 Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all, Can anyone here volunteer to write about Perl for http://perl.about.com/? It's been suffering from a lot of neglect, and my application for a writer there was rejected (see below). Someone asked me (in private - :-( ) what my writing sample looked like, and since this was a form submission and it was a long time ago, I don't recall exactly, but I think they were these: * http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Perl/Newbies/ * http://perl-begin.org/ Regards, Shlomi Fish Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Forwarded Message -- Subject: RE: Guide Application for [Perl] Date: Tuesday 24 May 2011, 18:01:03 From: jm...@about.com To: shlo...@shlomifish.org, shlo...@gmail.com Shlomi, While we thank you for taking the time to apply to be an About.com Guide, we have decided not to accept your application for entry into Prep. A few common reasons why your application was not accepted include: * We are looking for someone with more professional writing experience. * We are looking for someone with more writing experience in the topic. * We are looking for someone with different qualifications. * The writing in the writing sample was not up to our standards or had typographical errors. If you feel that you did not represent yourself to your best advantage in your application and you
About.com Guide for Perl [was Fwd: RE: Guide Application for [Perl]]
Hi all, Can anyone here volunteer to write about Perl for http://perl.about.com/ ? It's been suffering from a lot of neglect, and my application for a writer there was rejected (see below). Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Forwarded Message -- Subject: RE: Guide Application for [Perl] Date: Tuesday 24 May 2011, 18:01:03 From: jm...@about.com To: shlo...@shlomifish.org, shlo...@gmail.com Shlomi, While we thank you for taking the time to apply to be an About.com Guide, we have decided not to accept your application for entry into Prep. A few common reasons why your application was not accepted include: * We are looking for someone with more professional writing experience. * We are looking for someone with more writing experience in the topic. * We are looking for someone with different qualifications. * The writing in the writing sample was not up to our standards or had typographical errors. If you feel that you did not represent yourself to your best advantage in your application and you wish to apply again, you are more than welcome to do so at http://beaguide.about.com. In addition, you may also be interested in applying to be a writer for ConsumerSearch, a member of the About, Inc. group of companies looking for writers to join their teams. If so, we encourage you to apply via the following link: * Consumer Search: http://www.consumersearch.com/www/jobs.html. Thanks again for your application, About.com Recruitment and Training Team - -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ First stop for Perl beginners - http://perl-begin.org/ Knuth is not God! Unless you confuse him with Dijkstra. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ My Favourite FOSS - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/ Mastering 'cat' is almost as difficult as herding cats. -- http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/ Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Best Introductory Programming Language - http://shlom.in/intro-lang * Backward compatibility is your worst enemy. * Backward compatibility is your users' best friend. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
About.com Guide for Perl [was Fwd: RE: Guide Application for [Perl]]
Hi all, Can anyone here volunteer to write about Perl for http://perl.about.com/ ? It's been suffering from a lot of neglect, and my application for a writer there was rejected (see below). Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Forwarded Message -- Subject: RE: Guide Application for [Perl] Date: Tuesday 24 May 2011, 18:01:03 From: jm...@about.com To: shlo...@shlomifish.org, shlo...@gmail.com Shlomi, While we thank you for taking the time to apply to be an About.com Guide, we have decided not to accept your application for entry into Prep. A few common reasons why your application was not accepted include: * We are looking for someone with more professional writing experience. * We are looking for someone with more writing experience in the topic. * We are looking for someone with different qualifications. * The writing in the writing sample was not up to our standards or had typographical errors. If you feel that you did not represent yourself to your best advantage in your application and you wish to apply again, you are more than welcome to do so at http://beaguide.about.com. In addition, you may also be interested in applying to be a writer for ConsumerSearch, a member of the About, Inc. group of companies looking for writers to join their teams. If so, we encourage you to apply via the following link: * Consumer Search: http://www.consumersearch.com/www/jobs.html. Thanks again for your application, About.com Recruitment and Training Team - -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ First stop for Perl beginners - http://perl-begin.org/ Knuth is not God! Unless you confuse him with Dijkstra. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
