New user indicators and post counts
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Someone with an extremely high post count has a lot of time on their hands. That's the opposite of expertise, unless they're retired.
Or it could just be a sign that they've been around a long time. There is usually more than one way to explain something in the real world.
Authorities also don't generally need to post 10 or 100 times to communicate effectively, do they?
Depends on how effective they are at communicating, and how good the target is at interpreting the information. I could know everything about thermodynamics, and be a shit communicator. In that case, it might take me 20 posts to explain even the most basic concept of heat transfer. Or, if I were an excellent communicator and an expert in nuclear physics, if the listener has a lot of preconceived notions and doesn't really understand the subject, it could take me 50 posts to educate them on what radiation really is.
It's proof that you have moderators here who are willing to increase the daily like limit to absurdly high levels, presumably for testing in that topic, I guess.
The daily likes limit was raised over a week before that topic even existed. Ergo, the increase in the limit was unrelated to the existence of the thread.
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@codinghorror Take 100 lines: Correlation is not causation.
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Authorities also don't generally need to post 10 or 100 times to communicate effectively, do they?
If they have important stuff to say about 50 or 100 different topics, I certainly wish they do; no matter how effective they are at communication.
If only to enable other people to read/bookmark/like just what they care about.I don't like multi-topical walls of text, no matter how well written they are.
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And of course even if someone is an authority on something, it doesn't necessarily mean they're good at communicating things about it.
I am considered to be an authority on the SMF forum software. Doesn't mean I can explain things about it very well - and you all know by now that I can't talk for shit anyway.
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And of course even if someone is an authority on something, it doesn't necessarily mean they're good at communicating things about it.
@abarker already mentioned this.The point I failed to transmit in my previous post is that even in the best of scenarios (experts with excellent communication skills and literate readers), there may be reasons for the post count to increase.
To put it simple, "People with a lot to say will make more posts", is what I was tried to get at.
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Btw, I like short paragraphs because I believe it increases readability. Apologies if this makes mobile users scroll more.
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With some experience of writing, a paragraph is usually best when it has at least two sentences in it. Sometimes it can be shorter — especially if handling dialogue, admittedly uncommon in technical documentation — but that should be the exception and contrast with the normal flow. A single long sentence with lots of subclauses in a paragraph of its own is
utterly freaking awfulan opportunity for improved readability not yet taken.And don't apologise for making mobile users scroll. The ungrateful gits can just learn to suck it up!
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You have never understood 'a single long sentence with lots of subclauses' until you've read some leases on properties in London.
Imagine a 30 or 40 page document where it is all one sentence because punctuation could affect the meaning therefore there is a big lack of punctuation.
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I still refuse to believe there are longer sentences in existence than the ones this guy wrote:
Had to read that shit in school, and, let me tell you, that man didn't know what a full stop is, it was all commas with him, and he could string together something like 3 lengthy descriptions and 7 lines of dialogue into a single sentence that just outright refused to end, ever, though he was crappy with events, nothing ever happened in his books, and what did happen would fit in a single sentence of summary, and I'm talking regular sentences, not his level of insanity ones.
Filed under: At least I learned how to be an asshole to readers I guess
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Well, it is entirely possible to write excessively long sentences that, despite the very best intentions of all the multitudinous people involved in the preparation of the software and service involved the bringing of the author's words to a truly world-wide audience via the modern miracle of the internet, still continue on for what might be, by someone moderately bereft of the somewhat rare talent of brevity of description in their purple prose, considered to be an excessive amount of prolixosity, under the impression that doing so would, to coin a somewhat over-hackneyed phrase, though that is itself a highly hackneyed expression, so much so that it could be replaced by an Uber-cab-load of leaden metaphors, lead to a more exact phrasing of what is intended by the sentence and result in a reduction of all conceptual and noöspheric barriers to reading by the hoi polloi, under the strict understanding that the use of “the” immediately followed by “hoi” is itself an anachronistic misuse of multiple languages in conjunction, though it is reasonably clear to all right-thinking observers that this fond- though deeply forlorn hope is in fact not borne out by the tribulations of common practice in English comprehension, to the not inconsiderable consternation of pedagogues throughout substantial swathes of the world, with particular mentions in these matters for Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, and the Commonwealth of Australia, though clearly not limited to those locations in the slightest.
I could go on. But I won't. But I could.
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I could go on.
At least you punctuated it sanely.
the use of “the” immediately followed by “hoi” is itself an anachronistic misuse of multiple languages in conjunction
Indeed. «Οἱ»1 is, of course, the masculine and neuter nominative plural form of the definite article2. On the other hand, digressing even further from the nominal topic of this, um, topic, if one were to transliterate it phonetically from Modern Greek, it might be written "ee polee," which does not, at least to me, seem to have quite the same je ne sais quoi.
1 Note the dasia over the iota, thus the "h" in the English transliteration. Both the dasia and the corresponding /h/ sound are omitted in Modern Greek.
2 "The," as opposed to the indefinite article, "a" or "an."
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This made little to no sense I read it yesterday around midnight while half-asleep.
Reading it in the morning again... not much changed.
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1) English as in the language or referring to the continent.
Which continent? "The continent named England" is the empty set, and "The continent where English is spoken" is all the continents.
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Filed Under: [spoiler]Yes, I was typing all of this shit.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Everyone else gave up after I did. End the madness @ http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/poll-shouldnt-the-spoilers-plugin-be-disabled/1254/20 (yes this time the link works).
[/spoiler]
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Well, it is entirely possible to write excessively long sentences that, despite the very best intentions of all the multitudinous people involved in the preparation of the software and service involved the bringing of the author's words to a truly world-wide audience via the modern miracle of the internet, still continue on for what might be, by someone moderately bereft of the somewhat rare talent of brevity of description in their purple prose, considered to be an excessive amount of prolixosity, under the impression that doing so would, to coin a somewhat over-hackneyed phrase, though that is itself a highly hackneyed expression, so much so that it could be replaced by an Uber-cab-load of leaden metaphors, lead to a more exact phrasing of what is intended by the sentence and result in a reduction of all conceptual and noöspheric barriers to reading by the hoi polloi, under the strict understanding that the use of “the” immediately followed by “hoi” is itself an anachronistic misuse of multiple languages in conjunction, though it is reasonably clear to all right-thinking observers that this fond - though deeply forlorn - hope is in fact not borne out by the tribulations of common practice in English comprehension, to the not inconsiderable consternation of pedagogues throughout substantial swathes of the world, with particular mentions in these matters for Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, and the Commonwealth of Australia, though clearly not limited to those locations in the slightest.
I could go on. But I won't. But I could.
FTFY
Filed Under: Let's see how long it takes you to spot the 1 visible character fix.
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Filed Under: Let's see how long it takes you to spot the 1 character fix.
I never read the original, let alone the correction.
Filed Under: BAZINGA!
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Let's see how long it takes you to spot the 1 character fix.
Trick ques... err... statement.
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Okay, so there were 2. But one was whitespace, so I'm not counting it.
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onyx@jarvis:~$ diff dkf abarker 15,16c15,17 < reasonably clear to all right-thinking observers that this fond- though deeply < forlorn hope is in fact not borne out by the tribulations of common practice in --- > reasonably clear to all right-thinking observers that this fond - though deeply > forlorn - hope is in fact not borne out by the tribulations of common practice > in 21a23 >Added a dash and another space around it, so there are two whitespaces.
Liar.
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And it only took about 1h50m. Have some
.
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Indeed. «Οἱ» is, of course, the masculine and neuter nominative plural form of the definite article. On the other hand, digressing even further from the nominal topic of this, um, topic, if one were to transliterate it phonetically from Modern Greek, it might be written "ee polee," which does not, at least to me, seem to have quite the same je ne sais quoi.
+1 for pedantic dickweedery of high order.
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You ran a diff? That's cheating!!
I figured it out using nothing but my power of observation!
And switching between two tabs in an editor.
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+1 for pedantic dickweedery of high order.
But not the highest order? Ah, well; I must endeavor to improve in the future.
Filed under: How is it possible that no one has yet claimed the user name @pedantic_dickweed, nor anything similar?
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Hey, I was cycling around half the country, couldn't get to it sooner.
Also, surprised it posted, it was throwing errors at me. I guess it failed to get the confirmation that it worked just before my mobile connection went tits up.
Filed under: and for the last 4h I've been drinking, so that's why I'm only replying now
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But not the highest order? Ah, well; I must endeavor to improve in the future.
To be fair, you had the opportunity to, e.g., use the phonetic alphabet in order to achieve higher levels of pedantry. Ergo not the highest order. But much better than some of the topics round here…
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use the phonetic alphabet in order to achieve higher levels of pedantry
In my defense, I was discussing a hypothetical English transliteration, not the pronunciation per se; therefore, the use of the phonetic alphabet was not really applicable. On the other hand, the use of "ee" to represent /i/ is potentially misleading, as it could lead many English speakers to pronounce it as /iː/; "i poli" might be a more a more accurate transliteration. Regrettably, normal written English lacks a means of indicating which syllable should be stressed; necessitating such things as "i po-LI."
Perhaps it was an error for me to omit mention of how it would be written in Modern Greek if the original pronunciation had been preserved. I considered doing so, but did not. I shall rectify this now. As the dasia is not used in Modern Greek, other words in which the /h/ has been preserved are now written with a leading χ. I believe that in order to represent the /oi/ diphthong, since this long ago collapsed into a /i/ monophthong, it would be necessary to use a dieresis: χοϊ.
I will note in passing that it was surprisingly difficult to find the proper code point for the vowel length indicator, /ː/. When I did find it, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that, at least in this font at normal viewing size, it is completely identical to a normal colon. Oh well, since the entire point of this post is to be a pedantic dickweed — nay, not merely a pedantic dickweed, but to rise to the highest order of pedantic dickweedery — using the correct symbol is of great importance.
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In recognition of your dedication, you are hereby granted permission to purchase a purple dildo and fashion it into a trophy.
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I will note in passing that it was surprisingly difficult to find the proper code point for the vowel length indicator, /ː/. When I did find it, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that, at least in this font at normal viewing size, it is completely identical to a normal colon.
It should be used nonetheless; someone with a HighDPI screen can distinguish them easily.
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I will take this moment to appreciate my own mother tongue, even with it's incomprehensible grammar at times, that uses a phonetic alphabet.
Ok, not completely, there are no accents indicated in it since it's just the standard latin set with 4 extra letters and 2 extra digraphs, but at least every letter is always pronounced roughly the same, and things like 'ee' appear nowhere in it.
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Which one's that?
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The rest of it is FUBAR though. Hell, even the alphabet could get cut down IMHO. Fuck
čandćbeing two different letters, in common speech nobody cares to make them very distinct from each other anyway. Generally speaking, in northern part of the country almost everything will sound likeč, while in southern part it's mostlyć.That's two distinct sounds for
chfor you English-speaking folk btw.
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Hell, even the alphabet could get cut down IMHO. Fuck č and ć being two different letters, in common speech nobody cares to make them very distinct from each other anyway.
And in Polish, they make a lot of difference (except č is written as "cz" here). Pronouncing them the same would signal a speech impediment.
For reference, cz / č is this , and ć is this . There are sound clips for each, and there's quite a difference (cz / č ends with a "shhh"-like sound, while ć is more whistley).
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And in Polish, they make a lot of difference (except č is written as "cz" here). Pronouncing them the same would signal a speech impediment.
They are quite different here as well, yes. But as I said, they are pretty region-specific at their extremes. I'm not saying there's not a difference in them while you speak, but I'm personally dubious about separating them with distinct graphemes. If you want to be completely correct about every phoneme you really need the full phonetic alphabet, but in that case you need at least two graphemes for almost every consonant, since there will be differences depending on the structure of the word itself.
I'm not a linguist though, but I know where to use which one in a word properly. It's one of those gripes where I could, and probably would, be proven wrong by someone who knows their stuff. But I'm too lazy and don't care enough to spend the time to research that shit by myself thqh.
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I'm not saying there's not a difference in them while you speak, but I'm personally dubious about separating them with distinct graphemes.
You guys are cute. We have a lot of digraph / letter pairs which map to the exact same phoneme, in every word.
It's like every spelling bee competitor's nightmare.
Filed under: actually we have dictation competitions, which are even more fun
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Don't worry. We get enough gems even this way. If not differentiating between
ćandć/czis a speech impediment then most of the stuff people write around here indicate intelligence impediment, since they can't get it fucking right even if they pronounce it right. They fuck that up, they can't decide where it should beijeas opposed toje(erring onijemostly sinceje"sounds Serbian", and after the recent-ish war thing that's a big tabu)...And don't get me started on improper verbs, or plural forms that are not of the form of "just slap a suffix onto it" because they invent new words every day. Slapping an apostrophe where it doesn't belong in English is peanuts to this mindfuckery.
I guess the lesson is - no matter how simple you make it, don't worry, people are stupid enough to screw it up anyway.
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then most of the stuff people write around here indicate intelligence impediment, since they can't get it fucking right even if they pronounce it right.
At least your language is fairly phonetic. Polish... is not. If you write what you hear, you'll be wrong about 50% of the time.
And if you follow the common grammar rules, you'll fuck yourself up even worse.
As a linguistic side-note - I was recently wondering if I'm the only person who actually finds it easier to think in English than my native language. I've started to catch myself not knowing the proper word or idiom for what I want to say in Polish more and more often.
Filed under: the fact that direct translations often have vastly different emotional loads doesn't help
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As a linguistic side-note - I was recently wondering if I'm the only person who actually finds it easier to think in English than my native language. I've started to catch myself not knowing the proper word or idiom for what I want to say in Polish more and more often.
Nope, kindred soul here. There are concepts and phrases that I'm more comfortable with expressing and thinking about in my native language, but some things just don't translate well in either direction. Guess it's all about context. I tend to default to whichever language can describe whatever I'm thinking about more precisely or with less cruft around it in a given situation.
My closest circle of friends is actually almost exclusively like that. We tend to actually just switch languages mid-conversation sometimes depending on the subject.
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I tend to default to whichever language can describe whatever I'm thinking about more precisely or with less cruft around it in a given situation.
English is a fairly unusual language in that it is defined to be the language spoken by those people who self-identify as English speakers. Which sounds dumb, but isn't. The key is that there's not really a correct set of words or grammar; the grammar rules do change over time (though it's not a good idea to argue this point with an English teacher ;)) and if a concept doesn't have a good word in English you can always just steal a word from somewhere else. And that's all correct. Our dictionaries tend to be enormous, and are works of (academic) discovery.
I'm not sure that I think the loss of other languages to English is a good thing. Convenient for me maybe, but I regret the loss of the other ways of thinking that other languages embody. Language is such a key part of thought.
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And how about the police in Poland? I hear they are very... Enthusiastic.
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And in Polish, they make a lot of difference (except č is written as "cz" here). Pronouncing them the same would signal a speech impediment.
<small>For reference, cz / č is this , <small>and ć is this . <small>There are sound clips for each, and there's quite a difference (cz / č ends with a "shhh"-like sound, while ć is more whistley).</small>
The difference seems to be that one of the people has a lower voice. Other than that, they sound identical.
Filed under: both č and ć are spelled "tc", In Lojban, where t is the t sound and c is the sh sound from English and English.
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And how about the police in Poland? I hear they are very... Enthusiastic.
The first part with the buzz-cut guys in tracksuits is very familiar ("what's up" / "you got any problems" is pretty much a meme here).
The other... well, let's just say if it was a 9-year-old stealing apples from his neighbour instead of four beefy guys, the cop's reaction would've been far more plausible.
Filed under: they tend to pick fights which they can win
August Šenoa - Wikipedia
