m:
As the UA Administrator who banned you I want to make it clear
that you were not banned because of your technical information.
You were banned because the tone of your response showed complete
dis-respect for your (then) fellow member.
In your judgement, which I consider completely wrong. I *was*
disrespectful of his *advice*, but not in any way towards the poster
himself.
What I consider disrespectful is posting an answer that completely
ignores the original poster's requirements, as was the case with the
answer I criticized. I also almost simultaneously posted a response
to the original question with much better advice that was actually
responsive to the OP's problem.
At UA, we believe that respect and
technical expertise should go hand in hand.
Confusing criticism of a post and criticism of a person shows that
you don't really understand "respect." Strong criticism of the
content of someone's post is a sign of *respect*, as it takes them
seriously strongly criticising the content of their advice.
We strive to ensure that
members maintain that respect in each and every post. Many people
turn to UA because they find the tone of at least some of the
content in many newsgroups, including this one, just plain
offensive.
Well, I wish I'd known that about UA on the front end -- it's a
protected environment for those who are fearful and lacking in self
confidence. I doubt I'd have ever spent any time trying to help
people there if I knew it was a "special olympics" kind of forum.
One of our members put it this way <quote> Those links are very
good reminders of why I do NOT search the newsgroups for help any
more. This attitude of "stupid suggestions deserve to be called
stupid" would be easy to write off as another form of "I'm
virtually anonymous online, so I'm going to be rude in ways I
can't be in person". <end quote>
I don't know if what you post is relation to *me*, but I will say
that I am anything but anonymous online. I try very hard to maintain
a single identity across all the online forums in which I
participate. This has caused me much grief a StackOverflow.com, for
instance, where they enforce a ridiculously stupid "no signatures"
policy, so my posts there don't look like my posts in all other
forums on the Internet.
I value my identity.
And I stand by every last word I've ever posted.
When I've been wrong, I've apologized.
But I'm certainly not going to apologize for offering good advice.
And I have no doubt that my advice was good, and that the strong
rejection of the bad advice was the correct approach. We could
quibble over the wording of that strong rejection, but that would
always come down to coddling the easily-offended, in my opinion.
The same member, specifically referring to you, went on to say,
<quote> He may be brilliant, but there are plenty of other equally
brilliant people who know that civility costs nothing. Finally,
the suggestion that UA is just for beginners looking for
beginner-level help is just name-calling - a famous last recourse
for less-than- intelligent people<end quote>
But here's an important point
Nobody else on UA has 12 years of regular experience with Jet
replication. Now, because of this over-sensitivity to strong
language, there is nobody left on UA who has extensive experience
with Jet replication to help those who need help. I don't claim to
know everything (heaven knows, Michael Kaplan has forgotten more
about replication than I ever knew), but the lack of knowledge on
the subject at UA was a crying need when I signed up. The only
reason I ever got involved in UA was to help people using Jet
replication, precisely because there's so little understanding of
the capabilities of the technology and so much misinformation about
it.
Now, UA users won't be getting my help.
This is fine with me -- it frees up my time. But I can't help but
think that the policy of protecting the whiny-assed titty babies
from impolite peoplie like myself is depriving them of useful
information.
That equation seems out of balance to me.
Although it is not easy to do so, I am suggesting that you take a
moment to see yourself as others see you. Consider this remark:
<quote> There's a difference between someone who spends time online
to
HELPING people, and someone who uses their experience/knowlege to
BELITTLE people in the GUISE of providing assistance. <end quote>
I didn't do any such thing, and you know it perfectly well. I
belittled someone's *advice*, not the the person offering the
advice. And by posting that, you are lying about what happened. I'd
appreciate a retraction, or at least a clarification that you agree
that the person who wrote that was completely mischaracterizing the
exchanged that actually happened.
A response in this thread referred to 'calling a spade a spade'
and not being able to do so unless it is sugar-coated. That is not
quite the case. At UA we welcome people to call spades, spades. We
simple insist that they not coat their remarks with layers of
unnecessary and insulting invective.
There was no insulting invective. I said his advice was stupid.
That's all. I then went on to briefly explain why it was stupid. Had
I unsulted him directly I would have apologized.
But that's not what happened, and that's why I refused to apologize.
We do not want the tone of UA's discussions to
degenerate to the level that is all too frequently demonstrated in
unmoderated newsgroups.
You mean like this one? I don't see anything at all wrong with the
level of discourse here. I think you're protecting thin-skinned
people from the real world when you set up a forum that rewards
hair-trigger "I'm offended" mentalities.
I note that there is at least one reply in
this thread that would would immediatly bring a warning and
ultimate banning from UA for the poster in question. We cannot
dictate the language and content of the Internet but we can and do
control the language and content of our forum.
I think that, ultimately, it's probably good this happened. I never
should have been involved with UA, as it's clearly a site based on
premises that I find damaging and unhelpful.
So David, I wish you well in your future endeavours. Your
technical expertise will be missed at UA. Your style of presenting
that expertise will not.
You might consider what it means to your users that you banned me
instead of engaging in dialogue on the subject.
Likewise, that you've now edited content that I posted in a way that
misrepresents what I said. Were I a non-involved UA user, I'd start
being very suspicious of any post marked as having been edited by
anyone but the OP.
I think UA is utterly discredited by everything you've said above.
have an awesome day