If I can't read it, I won't!

[MountainMan]

Who makes the decision that a member can or cannot do better?

[Sarge]

I am far more interested in what people have to say than in how they say it. This is, after all, a forum for model railroad hobbyists rather than for English Lit majors, and we are simply posting, not submitting our thesis for evaluation. We are sharing experiences and ideas, not grading each other's essays.

If the posting style is too extreme or difficult, I find that there is usually one simple solution:

????

This forum lacks the head-scratching icon that accompanies that entry elsewhere, but the meaning is quite clear nonetheless.

If the problem persists despite requests for clarification, just don't read it.

In the meantime, enjoy the company of fellow enthusiasts.

I have been avoiding posting on this thread as I do not like to get into these arguments. Somebody always gets their feelings hurt. To include some who did not post but only read.

Just remember, this is a model train forum, not a college english class.

I also take medications that some times will affect me, especially at night. If I do not go to bed right away after taking my sleep meds, I have been known to post things or bid on things :o and not know, or remember that I have done so.

[RailRon]

Now I'm one of the Gauge members whose primary language is NOT English. (My spoken primary language is Swiss-German dialect, in elementary school I first learned classical German, then - as a Swiss - first foreign language was French, about 1/4 of the Swiss speak French!) English only came in high school. I was lucky to have a brilliant English teacher, and I love the English language. Later in my professsion almost all of the technical literature was in English, and then I learned a lot of everyday English (or American! :mrgreen: ) singing Country and Rock 'n Roll songs in a band. And finally, of course, as a model railroader modeling American prototype, nearly all the books I read - by Moody, Beebe & Clegg, Ferrell etc. - were in English, too...

That's why I think I have a certain commandment of the English language. But of course there are still lots of flaws in my posts, let alone typos (typoes? ), and as much as I proofread any post before I send it off, I ALWAYS find some glitches AFTER submitting it.

Now I have been a teacher (retired now), so I am professionally used to look for errors. And of course in almost every single post I am able to find some typos, mix-ups like 'their' - 'there', 'two' - 'too', and so on. And that's where I am returning to the theme of our thread: "If I can't read it, I won't!"

That's exactly what I do.

I won't even elaborate of the SMS-pseudo-language used by many of the young today. A few abbreviations are useful and/or even funny, but if you only have a blurb of random letters and numbers instead of a readable sentence, I quit. Sorry, in my eyes this is simply a mutilation of a language, and in the long run a communication on a certain level will become more and more impossible. (Lots of youngsters today hardly are able to form one single, coherent sentence! hock: )

Let's take normal, everyday English: When, after reading five lines of a ongoing text block of half a page, I'm still asking myself 'What on Earth this guy wants to tell me?', I often drop out and go to the next thread. And heck, this could be a pity, because this modeler really has to tell us all something really interesting. Too bad that he can't articulate himself clear enough. He perhaps never learnt this in his school time - and this probably is a loss to both himself AND to us, the readers of his information. Not everybody is a born writer, so more often than not I try to be patient and reread his post again, until I understand the meaning. We simply can't blame or even belittle somebody who has these problems!

BUT IF I see a post which consists of one single paragraph of 40 plus lines, ALL written in lower case letters, without any punctuation and riddled with SMS-abbreviation-babble, THEN I am throwing the towel without even trying to read that stuff.

IMHO (e.g. this is a well-known abbreviation which would be ok anywhere ) EVERYBODY should be able to take a long text apart into readable pieces. And everybody should be able to use a spell-checking program on his text to get the worst glitches out. This simply has something to do with decency and respect for the fellow Gauge members.

You don't have to be a language guru to do this, but the reader of your post surely appreciates if it has been carefully prepared. When somebody only sketchily jots down a few confuse ideas, it shows. And then it is not a bad idea NOT to read that blurb and go on to more meangingful posts. And luckily our forum has lots of these, I think!

(Well, it also shows that I am and stay an old teacher, so it's time to step down from my soap box, hehehe! End of rant! :mrgreen: )

Ron

[doctorwayne]

Who makes the decision that a member can or cannot do better?

I think that the onus is on the Member him(her)self to decide that. Beyond that, a little one-to-one communication with those who seem to be having problems can often clarify the situation. As Don points out, we had Members at the Gauge who appeared to me to be either blatant troublemakers or lazy s.o.b.s, but, in conversations with Don, I learned of their various disabilities, which altered my perceptions greatly. :oops:
I think that Squidbait's point is valid, and he's also stated his personal solution to the problem. As Mods and Admins, though, it's up to us to learn what we can about things that might affect a Member's ability to post coherently. Let's face it, our hobby attracts people of varying abilities and we want to make sure that they all feel welcome here. I don't find it terribly difficult to look past poor spelling or grammar, but poor punctuation can dramatically alter the meaning of a sentence. And over-use of texting shortforms, to me anyways, calls for a PM. Nobody's saying that you can't use texting shortforms, but I'd certainly not hesitate to point out that doing so may limit the number of people willing to respond. Or, perhaps dozens of texters (textors?) will respond, and I'll be the illiterate one wondering what the heck they're talking about.

Wayne

[BR60103]

Hw abt shrthnd?

I always put both my hands in my shirt.

Railron: What does degenerate German and French look like? (sorry, this thead is long enough, already.)

Anyone remember Removable Eoads?

[ezdays]

...Nobody's saying that you can't use texting shortforms, but I'd certainly not hesitate to point out that doing so may limit the number of people willing to respond. Or, perhaps dozens of texters (textors?) will respond, and I'll be the illiterate one wondering what the heck they're talking about.

Wayne

We watched the movie "Airplane" last night, got the disk at Wal Mart for $5. The one scene where a couple of guys are talking street talk to each other. Hey, even the closed captions couldn't decipher what they were saying.

[Squidbait]

i thought i had better give you guys an example of the kind of post i'm talking about since people seemto be misunderstanding what my original beef was about i think you'll find that trying to read through what i am writing here to be very hard on the eyes given the low-contrast nature of the colour scheme the lack of punctuation and capitalization and not hitting return between ideas. if you think that i'm picking on people because of their personal limitations or disabilities you're very much mistaken unless of course you consider laziness to be a handicap what i am really asking for is people to show some consideration for others when you are composing a post it really is quite a chore to wade through a long rambling block of text with little to no punctuation or capitalization to show where one idea stops and the next begins i thought about making this more elaborate by throwing in a few random lols and rofls and gr8s and stuff but it really was hard enough for me to do this without actually hitting the shift or period or comma key see what i'm talking about now? we all recognize that TYPING A MESSAGE EXCLUSIVELY IN CAPITALS IS SHOUTING AND IS CONSIDERED RUDE BEHAVIOUR so why is the lack of clarity and punctuation considered any less rude?

[TrainNut]

Sorry Squidbait, after the first line or two of your response, I gave up and decided I wasn't going to waste my time trying to muddle my way through. simple as that! J/K (just kidding)!

Let's take normal, everyday English: When, after reading five lines of a ongoing text block of half a page, I'm still asking myself 'What on Earth this guy wants to tell me?'

I certainly hope you weren't referring to that rather lengthy PM I just sent you!

[Cannonball]

Now I'm one of the Gauge members whose primary language is NOT English.

And yet, your post was far easier to read than the many posts made around the internet by what I call "Generation Texters."
If you can make yourself clearly understood, why can't some kid who uses English as his native tongue?
Because so many have gotten used to using abbreviations and shorthand due to texting on cell phones all day instead of paying attention to their lessons in school.

Pretty soon, job resume's will look like:

i thnk it wood b reely gr8 2 wrk hear KTHNXBYE

[nachoman]

I also take medications that some times will affect me, especially at night. If I do not go to bed right away after taking my sleep meds, I have been known to post things or bid on things :o and not know, or remember that I have done so.

HAHA. And I was thinking of taking meds to *stop* this from happening There was once I went sleepwalking, and wound up in a dangerous place Medicine can be weird!

[steinjr]

Let's take normal, everyday English: When, after reading five lines of a ongoing text block of half a page, I'm still asking myself 'What on Earth this guy wants to tell me?', I often drop out and go to the next thread.

Sounds like a sensible algorithm. And it says about the same as the original poster in this thread wrote 50-some posts ago - if a post is written in such a way that it gets overly hard to read and understand, some potential readers will skip it, and the poster will get fewer responses.

A language is a tool. And like with any other tool, some use it very well, most of us eventually learn to use it somewhat adequately, but still have plenty of room for improvement, and some of us have more room for improvement than most people

None of us can control how others will write or act, but each of us can control how we respond or react to posts made by others.

Feel free to just skip posts that annoy you due to incorrect spelling (e.g. using "ie" instead of "ei" in words like "freight"), creative grammar, inability to distinguish between homonyms (like to/too/two, here/hair/heir), lack of punctuation and capitalization, long stream-of-partial-unconsciousness paragraphs or whatever else may "get your goat" or "push your buttons".

And if anybody feel that they just have to comment on how someone else writes, remember the old saying : "Don't criticize anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when they get mad at you, you are a mile away, and you have their shoes ..."

Grin,
Stein

[Ralph]

And if anybody feel that they just have to comment on how someone else writes, remember the old saying : "Don't criticize anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when they get mad at you, you are a mile away, and you have their shoes ..."

Grin,
Stein

I've never heard the last part of that saying before! I like it Stein.

Ralph

[doctorwayne]

Squidbait, your latest post did little to illustrate your point (which I think I "got" the first time around) because your thoughts are arranged in a logical way, and are without distracting spelling errors. I had very little difficulty understanding it, although it did take me a few lines before I realised that you'd omitted the punctuation. I'd therefore give your communicative skills a high rating.

Wayne

[MountainMan]

Who makes the decision that a member can or cannot do better?

I think that the onus is on the Member him(her)self to decide that. Beyond that, a little one-to-one communication with those who seem to be having problems can often clarify the situation. As Don points out, we had Members at the Gauge who appeared to me to be either blatant troublemakers or lazy s.o.b.s, but, in conversations with Don, I learned of their various disabilities, which altered my perceptions greatly. :oops:
I think that Squidbait's point is valid, and he's also stated his personal solution to the problem. As Mods and Admins, though, it's up to us to learn what we can about things that might affect a Member's ability to post coherently. Let's face it, our hobby attracts people of varying abilities and we want to make sure that they all feel welcome here. I don't find it terribly difficult to look past poor spelling or grammar, but poor punctuation can dramatically alter the meaning of a sentence. And over-use of texting shortforms, to me anyways, calls for a PM. Nobody's saying that you can't use texting shortforms, but I'd certainly not hesitate to point out that doing so may limit the number of people willing to respond. Or, perhaps dozens of texters (textors?) will respond, and I'll be the illiterate one wondering what the heck they're talking about.

Wayne

Your response makes no sense. It was clearly stated that the forum members should give the benefit of the doubt until it was decided that the member wasn't competent in posting.

I repeat: Who makes that decision? Clearly it CANNOT be the member himself.

[doctorwayne]

Who makes the decision that a member can or cannot do better?

I think that the onus is on the Member him(her)self to decide that. Beyond that, a little one-to-one communication with those who seem to be having problems can often clarify the situation. As Don points out, we had Members at the Gauge who appeared to me to be either blatant troublemakers or lazy s.o.b.s, but, in conversations with Don, I learned of their various disabilities, which altered my perceptions greatly. :oops:
I think that Squidbait's point is valid, and he's also stated his personal solution to the problem. As Mods and Admins, though, it's up to us to learn what we can about things that might affect a Member's ability to post coherently. Let's face it, our hobby attracts people of varying abilities and we want to make sure that they all feel welcome here. I don't find it terribly difficult to look past poor spelling or grammar, but poor punctuation can dramatically alter the meaning of a sentence. And over-use of texting shortforms, to me anyways, calls for a PM. Nobody's saying that you can't use texting shortforms, but I'd certainly not hesitate to point out that doing so may limit the number of people willing to respond. Or, perhaps dozens of texters (textors?) will respond, and I'll be the illiterate one wondering what the heck they're talking about.

Wayne

Your response makes no sense. It was clearly stated that the forum members should give the benefit of the doubt until it was decided that the member wasn't competent in posting.

I repeat: Who makes that decision? Clearly it CANNOT be the member himself.

Who better to judge? A Moderator or Administrator? You? I stand by my original answer: the Member has to be the one to decide if he's putting adequate effort into his posts. While it is my nature to give others the benefit of the doubt, others have no tolerance for apparent rudeness and react accordingly. As long as it doesn't degenerate into name-calling or arguements, either way will work.
Some with disabilities of some sort probably feel, rightly so, in my opinion, that they are putting forth their utmost effort, while others, with no valid excuse for poor communications skills, may realise that they could do better. Conversely, just as many of these may say "Who cares?", and continue to post in a manner that is unacceptable to some. Then it becomes up to the reader of the post to determine whether that post is worth reading, not whether the Member posting it is competent or not. No one here needs to censure another personally for some perceived inadequacy: simply say nothing - ignore what displeases you or struggle through it if you feel it worth the effort.
In my opinion, Squidbait's point is that he will choose to ignore those posts of which he disapproves, and, by implication, that perhaps many others will, too. A warning shot across the bow, so to speak. Obviously, the topic has hit a nerve, as we're already up to page four.

Wayne