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)