Rick wrote:
Although mav seems highly upset that I complained, even getting angry that I actually had the temerity to bring the matter to the mailing list.
If you are going to spread misinformation then please don't make it so obvious (since I already mentioned this in my first reply); I got angry not because you posted this to the mailing list, but because you posted the /same/ question in four different places in quick succession and I was following each and responding to each. That got old real fast.
And we could have solved this all on a single talk page; I said "must" when I shouldn't have after reading a statement on a policy page that said "please". To me "please" on a policy page means that if you don't do it you won't get banned, but you really should do it nonetheless. This is probably an artifact of my very Conservative Christian/"Children should be seen and not heard" upbringing where people in authority often say "please" in order to sound nice but you are still expected to comply as if it were a request (unless the please is highly qualified - weird, I know).
For example, I wouldn't dare say no to my step dad if he asked me to "please" get him a glass of water (or search for the TV remote *he* lost.. er, opps - I'm not bitter ;), or say no to my youth leader who asked us to "please" quiet down or "please" don't make faces at each other and laugh while we should be praying to God to save our pathetic souls (obviously I'm still recovering from the whole experience).
Besides, I wasn't even the person who added that statement to the policy page in the first place! And the person who added it did so by moving the text from the non-policy VfD page; thus he inadvertently changed its relative importance by placing it on a policy page. I simply wasn't aware of that - I just read the statement as it was on the policy page and assumed it was an established policy (it was, in fact, on that page for at least several weeks).
If you had just pointed that out then I would have fixed the error. But instead of assuming good faith on my part or even giving me a chance to respond, you deemed it necessary to post four critical messages in four different places.
Can you see why I might get defensive? So, can we put this to a rest now? The page says "please" and we all know what that means now.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Daniel Mayer wrote:
This is probably an artifact of my very Conservative Christian/"Children should be seen and not heard" upbringing where people in authority often say "please" in order to sound nice but you are still expected to comply as if it were a request (unless the please is highly qualified - weird, I know).
I think this is very common and easy to understand. Particularly in the context of a page that says 'policy' and particularly when other lines nearby describe(d) it as policy.
I'd probably like it best if it said something like "It is generally considered courteous to let people who have worked on the page know that it might be deleted, either by putting a note on their talk page or by putting a note on the page itself that says something like this..."
That makes it clear that it's just a request, and it also explains the reason for the request (courtesy to others).
--Jimbo