SUO: RE: Re: Topic :> Blithe And Barely Examined Laws
Dear Jon,
Some reponses below.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Mobile: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@att.net]
> Sent: 08 December 2003 04:56
> To: SUO
> Subject: 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.
MW: Sorry, I must have missed this. If I miss something again I am
quite happy that you approach me off-list.
MW: If I shoot from the hip on this I would expect a criticism to be
identifying a defect in some artifact, and a complaint to be with
regards to some behaviour perhaps not conforming to some norm.
MW: I'm afraid I see all the looking at definitions in excrutiating
detail as rather a distraction. I think we should be looking at the
big picture of the Procedures, Policy and Code of Practice first, and
only then looking at some of the elements, andonly then when there is
some obvious and statable ambiguity that would come in the form "Do
you mean A or do you mean B?"
MW: The objective here is to have a workable procedure and a policy
and code of practice, not to get precise about some terms when anything
in the broad range of accepted meaning will do.
>
> 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.
MW: Well I was dissappointed that Jim jumped in and accepted your
offer of 10 before I had a chance even to respond to you. When the
numbers came in it seems the number I had thought of was about right.
So I asked you to reconsider. You could have just said no, but by your
actions you seem to have accepted my request, and I'm grateful.
>
> 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.
MW: I did consider it. The volume problem is simply that there is no
point posting more than people can process. You might as well go into
an empty room and deliver a lecture.
>
> 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.
MW: Actually, I think slowing down the pace of discussion so that people
can keep up is precisely a good thing.
>(2) I had hopes of getting past the more annoying
> initialization process of my informal lexical tree by that time.
MW: Annoying is right. I still have no idea where you are going with
that line. I mostly see it as a distraction at best at the moment.
> (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.
MW: I'd be quite happy with an average of 5 if others were. The only
reason for a daily limit was simplicity.
(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".
MW: However, in doing this you got away from developing the
document itself - which is after all the immediate objective. If
you had raised questions of specific potiential ambiguity within
the context of the document, we might ahve made more progress
towards finishing "something" that could give us some purchase to
make further progress. I'm afraid I see rushing off into the bushes
with some terms as a diversion, and a little self indulgent.
>
> 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?
MW: Only when there is evidence of a problem in a particular
context. In which case the problem should be stated first. At
present it would seem that the main purpose of the procedures
document is to unearth some terms that are used so that they
can be examined - heaven forbid that we should actually get
to some procedures we can start to use!
>
> 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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