Netiquette
Didn't you ever learn that it is fundamentally rude to start off a lecture on (n)etiquette by speculating "you seem to be a young adult who..."? You then proceed to recommend that I read something, but you can't quite seem to figure out what exactly it is that you want me to read, except that you seem to think that it should be something about (n)etiquette. Perhaps you should follow your own advice. If you would like an itemized response to the rest of this Bill of ParticularsI have no problem providing it to you, but it is 2:30 PM on a Friday and I have both business and social events on my calendar. I don't know how they do things in C.R. but on this side of the pond we put LOW PRIORITY nit-picking like these items you are so concerned about over to the next business day.
Pending a further detailed response to your summons and complaint, you may wish to ponder the following quotes,loosely translated, which have the advantage of being available,in the original, in the Czech language. Perhaps you can correct the translations with nuances not available to myself. When it comes to Czech, it's Greek to me.
These quotes were selected and ordered by myself and they proceed to a definite point regarding all the static and drama going on here lately: VH
"The attempt to devote oneself to word craft alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is language that suffers for it." VH
"There's always something suspect about an intellectual asserting himself triumphant and his opponent vanquished." VH
There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side. VH
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought VH
Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. ~VH
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
~VH
Your editing style is pretty unique for a new editor, don't get many new editors who after less than 24 hours are writing draft policies. See WT:BOLD. I admire your boldness, but if I went on a wiki I didn't know and started changing a load of stuff I'd be fully prepared to be criticised. Gotta face the consequences of your actions, and if you can't don't act in the first place. Be a man about it.
What's the problem you don't here me whining. I've got plenty of hope in my back pocket and more where that came from. Nonetheless, there is a lot of hypocrisy going on and less attention to the merits of my definitions than to this putatively outrageous hubris. Aw, well, it's The Week End and I am going to enjoy it.
"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity." Vaclav Havel
Geof Bard 22:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Geof Bard 22:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I do not understand the point of your response. You seem to refer to Czech being my mother tongue, as it that had to do with anything. The purpose of the list of quotations provided by you, presumably by Vaclav Havel, escapes my understanding.
I thought you might respect him as much as most Americans do. Albeit I have met Czechs who don't like him. The point being I am enroute to an engagement and want to parse my contributions to make sure I have not messed anything up. I thought that pointing to the message of hope with which your countryman has dazzled the world might inspire you to ratchet back the impulse to polemicize and we could defer the discussion until Monday. I don't know about you but as far as I am concerned Vaclav Havel has made some awesome good points in comparison to which all of the argumentation and disputation looks quite pointless. Many of the items you are lecturing about have already been covered. I need to get away from this monitor sometime before now and the great day of judgment. Part of the problem is the lack of focus and prioritization. When I address concerns, some of which are not entirely spurious, new ones come in at a faster rate...for instance Mg complains about a question or a suggestion I made on my own sandbox as though it was an attempt to usurp...I think Jeff is indicating by his silence that he, unlike most others, is more concerned with the work of this wiki than the jumping in. And he sees some real quality work in my definitions, such as correction of just the most egregious misinformation at Hinayana, or the omission of legitimate Calvinist idiom, and the dire need of someone to work on this wiki who has at least the ability to do well researched work on Tibetan Buddhist terminology. Which, having done transcription work for probably some of the leading Buddhist scholars in the world, I do possess. But rather than focus on streamlining the learning curve I get an endless succession of hostile challenges accusing me of everything short of blood libel, causing the Tsunami, and disrespecting the Holy Virgin. It just never ends. There have been two or three helpful people, and Jeff K was very cool about things once he could see that I do, in point of fact, usually have at least as good or better idea of what I am talking about than most of the nitpickers. And frankly I think that the message of hope by your countryman V Havel warrant your attention, because you are so caught up with litigiousness that you are putting your capacity to be a visionary in jeopardy. You could probably be a prominent translator if you transcended but you need to be able to latch onto a humanitarian vision rather than a technocratic skill. If you can't do better by a newbie to your boards than this gauntlet run of primarily inflated or unjustified criticism, you are wasting your talent and the world will lose potentially one of its finest interpreters of Havel, perhaps also Jan Huss and others. But no.
I don't want to ruin your weekend so here:
(e) avoid talking about people, pot calling the kettle black where do you get off with that?? This is an entirely spurious charge. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
and talk about the subject matter instead ''I wish you would Again, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
On another note, Wikionary is a descriptivist dictionary. It describes how language is actually used rather than prescribing how it ought to be used.
Yeah I got that. The horse was whipped to shreds regarding respell. What else is new. You are whipping a dead dead horse. Put down the whip and get on with the work.
You are entitled to not liking various words or their forms, but your disliking them has nothing to do with what should be documented in Wiktionary. No kidding? How many times are I going to have to go over that? See WP:STICK WP:HORSEMEAT WP:DEADHORSE WP:LETGO
The only other place where your nit to pick has any possible relevance is
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion#Islamic_fascist
I suggest you argue that point there, not here.
Note that by mounting this multifaceted personal attack and totally ignoring my multiple comments on RFD, it is you, not I, who is ignoring the issue and "talking about persons".
I really think you need to - we both need to - put this discussion on the back burner until Monday. Which is about the third time I have suggested that, but I keep getting these flames in my Inbox now at three o clock on a Friday afternoon.
On yet another note, "show me the policy" is sometimes the right request to be done,
I rest my case.
but more often than not it is pretty meaningless. As a newcomer to a project, you should try to figure out common practices rather than asking for formal policies that codify these practices.
Which is what I do most of the time.
The most important Wiktionary policies are WT:CFI and WT:ELE, in case you are looking for policies, but many practices remain uncodified,
That just shows you are way behind on updating the policies. That now is my fault?All this time spent WT:Biting newbies could be spent writing and updating policies, which is what every other WMF project does. Just because we have a genius at the top of the pyramid doesn't mean that the rest of us can ignore WikiSOP.
hand some points from the mentioned policies suffer from the lack of consensual support, so are in fact invalid.
Well gosh Dan. If the policies lack consensual support, are they the policies or not? whose fault is that? What is the big deal then?
I could have put in several properly formatted new entries or new sense definitions in the time I have spent answering your mostly stale complaints. Consider this: There are thousands and thousands of definitions that sorely need to be re-written. Wiktionary needs new editors who have a good bullshit detector regarding definitions. Wiktionary - specific details can always be taught and learned; a strong sense of the Language cannot be taught in a year or a decade. Some of us have got the goods and some of us do not.
I might not be 100% up to the wiktionary netiquette which you admit is not properly documented, but I have skills in the language. Yes, I completely fumbled one lousy edit, respell, mainly because I inadvertantly clicked the link to the User's page and not the +respell google. But I ate crow and provided the requisite mea culpa. Nobody is perfect. You continually bring that up as proof that I am not so competent in the English language as you think I think I am but all it really proves is that (1) I am capable of error in clicking around the web because I actually read books more than I surf the web and (2) that my writer's sense sometimes, but only sometimes, conflicts with my lexicographic duties. The language has ALWAYS had tiers of class, region and quality of usage. Probably if you went to Gutenberg press and compared different writers you would find that some detest certain words as I detest(ed) respell. Find it in Chaucer. Find it in Conrad. Etc. I get that this point is not relevant to descriptive lexicography. It would have been clear to you that I took that point had you read through some of my other posts where I did own up to that one cruddly little mistake which apparently has now become some sort of idolatrous proof piece in your prosecutorial presentations.
Just because someone has taste and a defined writing style in their language does not mean that their lexicographic potential is permanently impaired. Good writers can actually make good wiktionarians, despite the apparent preference for people who don't have a clue how to put together a proper definition. To the contrary.
There ARE a few good writers out there who would make excellent wiktionarians. Summing up: Probably only 1-3% of my definition revisions have been even challenged, at all, and most of my revisions were upheld. You are diverting focus from the work by whipping a dead horse.
This completes the line by line reply you seem to prefer to my nod to Mr Havel. I hope that over the weekend you do ponder them because quite frankly I think they are a hell of a lot more interesting than all of these petty quarrels. Geof Bard 00:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)