SUO: Re: Topic :> Blithe And Barely Examined Laws
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Topic :> BABEL 3. <JA, 07 Dec 2002, 06>
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JA = Jon Awbrey
PJ = Philip Jackson
JA: i cannot get a straight answer
to a direct question out of
matthew west --
I asked for his consideration, especially since the number of my
postings was now limited, to let me know if I was wasting my time
working throught the Criticism versus Complaint issue that we had
at one point discussed as being a valid issue, and which time would
clearly be wasted if there was no real intention to respect my input.
The way I see it, consideration is a two-way street.
That's not a definition. It's only a travel advisory.
PJ: Actually Matthew asked you a direct question, and apparently
you have not provided a straight answer to it. The question
was, will you limit your postings to 5 per day? (Assuming
this limit applies to everyone.)
It is to Jim's credit that he has not asked me this.
Of course, he probably has bigger plans, but then, don't
we all? A first year psychology student can tell you that
human beings often use humor to defend against strong emotions,
for instance, severe disappointment. I was frankly embarrassed
for Matthew that he attempted to renegotiate the deal after it
was done. Furthermore, given the limit on my postings, I have
to exercise increased discretion about what I spend my precious
e-tickets on. Answering insults, responding to frivolous remarks,
off-topic discussions, snappy comebacks, and so on, are of course
a constant temptation, but I will increasingly ignore them with
no sense of obligation to the people that incite them.
JA: i had already offered to limit my postings to 10, and jim
accepted the offer. then suddenly that was not good enough.
matthew's attempt to reneg was an insult.
PJ: Matthew and Jim accepted your "offer" to limit your postings
to 10 per day thinking that it would be a reduction in volume.
However, in fact 10 per day would be an increase in volume.
Matthew was not attempting to "reneg", but to see if you were
sincere in offering to reduce volume. Your not replying to his
direct question indicates you were not sincere in offering to
reduce volume.
Remarks that show no evidence of acquaintance with the facts are
remarks that border on the frivolous. Please read my initial note.
This was proposed as Temporary Solution_2 after an exhausting week
of discussion on the Gmane Newsgroup proposal, which I still think
would solve the Volume problem if the Group is really serious about
doing that, at least until better GroupWare comes along, any day now.
I proposed a solution that could have been implemented by the end of
the day. Somewhat too late, I realized that Matthew had not afforded
my researches the consideration of a reading, or a following of links
to where the pertinent information was given in the Holy Writ of HTML.
I proposed 10 per day, for the month of December, for these reasons:
(1) Out of consideration for the needs of "hot pursuit" dialogues --
I truly believe that 5 per day would block inquiry and cramp the
natural pace of discussion far too severely for all participants
on this list. (2) I had hopes of getting past the more annoying
initialization process of my informal lexical tree by that time.
(3) It's an upper bound. If you want to take week averages or
something, that might make more sense, and it would of course
give people with nothing better to do with their time a bit
of diversion to compute the running means, post sadistics,
etc. (4) I haven't yet met my quota of 10, sorry, and if
I cannot find better diversions toward the last half of
December, I promise that I'll seek professional help.
JA: please try to understand, my posts to the suo list are
by and large intended to advance the state of the work
toward the goal in the par. so i do not feel bad about
trying to do as much work as possible toward this goal.
if you think that my attempts fail by and large to do
this, the say so on list, give reasons why, what you
think would work better, trying of course to propose
things that have not already been tried and failed,
and so on. i have said repeatedly that i will work
under whatever rules the group achieves consensus
about, but that is real consensus, not just what
nobody is around to object to on a thanksgiving
weekend, jim's usual method of assessing consent.
JA: no more off list -- i really do have a life --
and i have just said exactly the same thing
to 3 off-listers already. copy this in full
and respond on list if you wish to continue.
yes, the dialogue will be a bit cramped on
my part, since i am the only person who has
so far volunteered to limit postings.
PJ: Per your request, I am posting the correspondence below to
the main list. This gives your explanation for why you did
not respond to Matthew's direct request to reduce the volume
of postings to 5 per day.
PJ: I've previously posted a message summarizing
my thoughts thus far on your postings. Viz.
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11925.html
PJ: Beyond this, I agree with others (e.g. Matthew West and
John Sowa) that simply reducing the volume of postings
per day would be helpful. During November, you posted
an average of 8.3 messages per day. So, your offer to
"limit" postings to 10 per day would not reduce volume.
I agree with Matthew and John that it would be helpful
to limit everyone to 5 postings per day.
PJ: I take you at your word that you are sincerely trying
to help the group make progress. I would agree that
the group needs to develop a common dictionary for
certain important, technical terms. However, I doubt
that your posting of so many pro forma entries for new
words per day is really helping the group make progress.
The initial entries are nominal. I tried to make them amusing,
thought-provoking, or just plain provocative. I see I succeeded.
PJ: Many of the terms you are posting are politically oriented rather
than technically oriented, and your postings on these seem fairly
silly and/or polemical ... E.g. your recent pro form postings on
"Definition of Leadership", "Definition of Respect", "Definition
of Authority", "Definition of Merger", etc.
I started with the Procedure Document and the discussion that
developed around it. My strategy was to make a note of words
that: (1) got repeated several times, (2) appeared to serve
some significant function in the document/discussion, even
when they did not appear to be especially important as far
as their ostensible substance went, (3) prompted me to ask
myself something to the effect: "Gee, I wonder if X means
the same thing as Y means by that" or "Huh, I wonder if X
has any sort of operational definition at all for that".
PJ: I do not think the group needs to spend time defining
such terms, at this point -- if necessary we can use
the definitions that are already available in Webster's
or WordNet, or we can refer to Robert's Rules of Order.
I have pointed out many times how useful it is to consult
dictionaries of standard and technical usage, frequently
taking the trouble to record the results in the Archive.
I have pointed out many times that dictionary entries
afford but the first step in a process of discovering
practical, operational, testable definitions of terms.
We have a Craft that makes it its daily bread business
to find and implement practical, operational, testable
definitions of the concepts that might conceivably fall
to its purview, to wit -- well, let's leave that as an
Exercise for the Riddler. And I find it just a bit odd,
if not downright shocking, that we do not make more use
of what Craft we have learned in this Craft, if only by
way of analogical guide, to resolve more practically the
issues of these definitions. Don't you?
PJ: On the other hand, I would agree that it could be relevant
to have a technical discussion about how such terms might
eventually be captured within an ontological framework.
There we agree.
Jon Awbrey
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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