Flaming

Fluks, H.W. H.W.Fluks at kpn.com
Mon Feb 12 10:08:34 CET 2001


With all the people discussing what I should or should not have said, things
become quite complicated. In everyone's posting, there are many things I
agree with. And also in every mail is at least one thing I disagree with.

As Daniël wrote (more or less 8-), everyone wants to have the final word.
That includes me, so I'll give it a try:

Teemu (welcome, and thanks for your introducktion) wrote to someone:

> And what comes to the understandability of mails I had no 
> problem reading Kenneth's mail even though my own english
> is not all that wonderful. So
> I don't understand how could you have a problem with it?

*My* problem was that the writer clearly did no effort to write readable
English. Sure, with some extra effort you can read what he means. But I
think that extra effort should have come from the writer. I *know* he is a
native English-speaker (we makes the mistakes that only native
English-speakers would make). I'm not complaining about the English of our
Italian, Finnish, or South-American members. I know they put a lot of effort
in writing their messages.

Per-Erik wrote:

> There was nothing wrong with the attitude in Kenneth's 
> first message to this list.

Right, it was his *second* mail that annoyed me.

> If you think a guy is well-dressed you say so, and if 
> you dislike his taste in clothes you keep quiet.

I could have easily ignored his clothes. But we were *invited* for a dress
show. To visit a place and enjoy the beautiful clothes. When I saw that the
show wasn't even ready for a "dress rehearsal" yet, I felt the need to warn
the List.


To summarise my motives: there were 3 things that made me write my message:
1. The annoying tone of Kenneth's second message;
2. The apparent disinterest in writing messages in a way that people can
read them easily;
3. The website that was in a stadium that you could hardly call it a website
yet.

As I wrote before, point 3 has improved a lot. Also, I understand that
Kenneth now uses a spell checker (!) to improve on point 2. Re-reading the
message before sending it would be even better.

Now all we need is an improvement on point 1! 8-)

--Harry.



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