Posted by noa on March 30, 2003, at 12:18:55
In reply to Lou's response to fi's post » fi, posted by Lou Pilder on March 28, 2003, at 19:34:25
Lou,
I'd like to share my thoughts with you about your posts asking for clarification from posters, and I hope they will be received in the supportive tone in which I intend them:
Having read a number of your posts that are essentially requests for clarification, I think I understand why a number of posters have reacted negatively to your very detailed requests for clarification.
Frankly, they often read very much like a complicated mutliple choice test. For example:fi,
You wrote,[...it is good to see some familiar names of {wise} posters...].
I was wondering if you meant that:
A. there are [only]posters here that are {wise}?
B. there are wise and unwise posters here?
C. the wise posters are those that are fimiliar?
D. Lou is fimiliar ,so he is wise?
E. none of the above
F. something other than the above which is___
G. some combination of the above
If you could clarify that, then I could have a better understanding of your post and have the opportunity to respond accordingly.
LouThe level of precision you are seeking in asking for clarification is probably higher than most of us tend to use when using language to communicate. Some people are very precise with language, while others are more expressive. Your clarification requests suggest to me that you are someone who prefers a high level of precision in language, but that may not be how others here function.
Being asked to respond to a clarification request (and repeated clarification requests) might be ruffling some feathers around here because such multiple choice style questions seek too much precision for some people. And I imagine that mulitple choice questions conjure up negative experiences for many of us who have had to take too many standardized tests in our lifetimes!
And the level of detail in the multiple choice questions you ask is actually very challenging! It reminds me of the complicated multiple choice questions on higher level tests that require a great deal of concentration to logically isolate one answer to the exclusion of others, or to discern if one or more answers can be true.
It is just too much work. And often, what a poster expresses just cannot be parsed out so intricately as that.
While it is good to clarify before jumping to conclusions, sometimes we don't get to find out through precise analysis exactly what someone means. Sometimes we just have to try to sense it based on our previous impressions of the speaker, the context, how we sort out what our own mood contributes at the moment to our understanding,etc. and other imprecise factors.
And sometimes we are left with a question mark. And that is ok.
poster:noa
thread:213864
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20030221/msgs/214404.html