Really, honestly, do you think I hadn't already heard that? I'm 15; if
I feel I need to know "new skills" regarding something, I know very
well how to ask and I do. And as a piece of advice to you, many people
- myself included only when the advice is being dumped on me by just
about everybody by the truckload - get upset when you give them advice
they have not asked for explicitly.
While I do appreciate advice, I find it extremely annoying that
everybody seems to think I need heaps and heaps of it. Frankly I am
getting more than a little irritated over that.
Of course I realise that nobody (ok, maybe a couple of people who know
very well who they are but whose names I shall not mention) has
anything but the best intentions when they give advice to me at least
in this situation (and of course in most others), but honestly it is
really being dumped on me, basically the same 7 or so things over and
over, in much larger quantities than I actually need, want, or can
accept graciously even if I try (seriously, to not reply to every
single piece of advice people are giving me now with "Heard it. Now
sht up and leave me alone" is taking quite a bit of effort at this
point in time, not because I have anger management issues but because
this is really getting out of hand).
And back to the main topic, similarly while most of the advice that I
have received has been given with nothing but the best intentions but
is at ths point coming across as rude, patronising, unnessecary and a
waste of my and others time, my actions which are being discussed (and
reprimanded by just about everybody under the sun, often way more than
once by the same person) were taken in nothing but the best of faith,
and it did not occur that they would be received this way or that they
would cause so much trouble and anger and whatnot for others, for had
such occured to me beforehand I would most definitely have not done
what I did.
Of course it's probably very difficult for many to see why I'm
becoming so distraught over what seems like a couple of bits of advice
from a few people on the ML, but it's not just what's here but what's
in #wikipedia, in private e-mail correspondence, in PMs, and teh like.
(I have not yet received any "snail mail" regarding this issue) Of
course not everybody here who has given me advice was aware that I
have been flooded with advice recently, so rather than telling people
they shouldn'tve done something that they did and with only the best
of intentions and rather than screaming and yelling at them about it,
I am telling now anybody else who is perhaps thinking of giving me
some advice, in advance: *please*, no more advice for the next couple
of days, especially if it's regarding this particular issue, unless I
indicate explicitly that I want it.
Thank you.
--node
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:45:11 -0400, Mark Christensen
<mchristensen(a)humantech.com> wrote:
As far as
"very young contributor", I think it is not fair to
judge my actions only by my age...
I think the point Jens Ropers was making is that your age and
inexperience should mitigate the impropriety of your actions.
I would recommend learning two new skills that will make your work with
other wikipedians more rewarding and successful. 1) wait a day before
posting a reply, and 2) always approach other people's posts with an
attitude that says "I understand you have something valuable to say, and
I'm sure I could learn a lot from you." If you do these two things,
I'll bet you'll find that people are much more open to what you have to
say.
Another funny thing about resistance is that the more you push the more
people resist. This cycle can keep going for a long time, but it
requires that both sides keep pushing. If you stop fighting and work on
some problems that both of you care about, you will often find that
resistance melts away.
--Mark Christensen
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l