neshura said: Yes, style counts. Please be more kind with your own words.
Yikes!
My winkie was apparently not enough... I was not accusing
merlyn of being a mean-spirited individual, only
suggesting (too obliquely, I'm sure) that if a question
evokes strong feeling in him or his answer, perhaps those of
us with less stellar qualifications should field that
question. If some post makes him want to only respond
with a negative, possibly mis-interpretable, and unhelpful
rant, just skip it. (I have assumed/hoped all along that he
simply forgot to put a smiley or winkie after the "don't
make me have to repeat this" part.)
If some answer is painfully obvious to me, I will usually
not respond to it. This allows others to contribute to our
community, each at his/her own level and helps prevent
anyone from being offended at my own "stylistic
shortcomings," which are all-too-frequent (as seen here).
His response was voted up when I last saw it, and it could
be amusing to those of us who have some understanding of
these issues. But it was not directed at someone who had
exhibited understanding. How else to interpret his words,
then, but as an insult? That's what I was trying to say in
merlyn's defense. He was not trying to be insulting; he was
just trying to make a memorable point.
Perhaps someone will apply that logic to my
insulting attempt to make a memorable point. ;-)
I responded as I did to this thread, because: in the midst of
an otherwise vibrant, helpful and educational series of posts,
merlyn's was simply negative. He did not offer any
solutions to the problem, only criticism of someone else's
idea. Not constructive criticism, just criticism. Other
people said the same thing, but in such a way that readers
could learn something. See
turnstep's answer for
just one example.
Russ
P.S. Just as an aside...a legacy of contributions to a
community does not a compassionate person make. Richard
Stallman has a huge legacy of contributions to the free
software community, but few would accuse him of having kind
and gentle people-skills. :-) | 