What is the a2k hall of fame all about?

It's been more than alluded to on A2k (but not in my real life) that I'm resistant to change/new technology, etc.

That's not it at all. In fact, in daily life, I'm very much more open to change than most.

Not however, change just for changes sake.

I have no opinion at this time as to this following business, as I'll have to tinker around with it to see if it benefits me in any way. At least now I have an idea of what it's supposed to be/do.

I'll say right out that I have hawkeye on ignore, so I don't know specifically what he was saying about cliques, or popularity contests, but from reading others comments, I know that's what he was talking about.

Actually, I can definately see how this is/could be a popularity thing.

I think those who have said that it's not, that we are all above that, that we are merely following those who interest us, are giving human nature too much credit.

Of course it's at least partly a popularity contest. It follows that the most popular posters are going to get the most followers.
Those who get a lot of followers, will most likely humbly say "oh, it doesn't matter if X number of people are following me".
At least in some amount, these people are full of ****.
It's human nature to be pleased when others think enough of you to want to listen to you.


Back to the technology business.....On a regular basis, weekly it seems, some new product is out on the market, and a large number of people immediately start saying "isn't this cool?"
Well, I'd have to say I don't know if something is cool or not. Not until I have someone explain what it's going to do, and if I decide it does it better than way I'm doing it now.

Do I need an app that will tell me what 15 or 20% of a bill is, so I can leave a tip?
No.

Do I need one that will tell me what song is playing at a bar?
No, of course for one I'm not a big music fan....but also because I personally don't need the instant gratification, and more to the point, I don't want to be pressing buttons and fiddling with an electronic device when there is a real live person sitting with me.

I truly believe many people, through this "gotta have the latest gizmo" mentality, are becoming less and less discerning in ways that really matter. Conversely, they are becoming more and more discerning in ways that don't add up to a pile of beans.
I'm speaking of those who won't meet your eyes in public, and say "good morning", because they are isolated from humanity because of the ipod stuck in their ears.
These same people, who've we've all seen, are the first to carefully monitor how much cinamon is sprinkled on their latte, and whose day is ruined because someone stopping at the light in front of them is going to make them late for their networking meeting.

People before things.

People ask questions, things should be explained the way people can understand.

When cell phones first began to appear in the landscape, it was predictable that those who had one would go into a restaurant or coffee shop, place a call, and talk very loudly--so that everyone would know they owned a cell phone and were, therefore, very, very cool. Later on, though, i blessed the experience, because it taught must how annoying self-centered shits like that are. When my employment required me to carry a cell phone, and i would get frequent calls from the men on the crews we sent out, if i were in a public place, i'd go outside to take the call. I didn't want to annoy people who were just trying to eat their lunch, or have a cup of coffee.

You guys sure bring all your technology and techie baggage to the table.

People have a lot of "baggage" (as you so pejoratively put it) precisely because tech manuals are badly written, opaque and often not helpful at all, and because of the culture among techies of "the customer is always wrong." Personally, i think it's because nerds and geeks want to show how cool and in the know they are, and it's their only shot to lord it over those who otherwise pay them no mind at all. That may not describe you personally, but you certainly do display a classic techie inability to answer a simple question in a simple manner.

We've all got baggage of one sort or another.

Best of all, we've got the time to point it out to each other.

That doesn't explain why it is left at my doorstep though. As an example, you keep bringing up this "customer is always wrong" thing to me. I am a "customer" here. I am a user here. I do not treat people that way here. You've led with that since the start of a2k, why?

That kind of technology baggage keeps getting foisted on me. I was asked for an explanation so I gave it. If I had known it was an invitation to sit down and hear the technology-baggage sermons again I wouldn't have bothered.



I thought I answered it simply, but I also thought I was just being asked for an explanation about something simple.

You know, last night I put my finger on one of the things that I think makes me frustrated in these exchanges and that I don't think I'd communicated clearly for years. I was reading earlier exchanges where people were suggesting this and that (things like hiring a customer support person). I remember being caustic (by my current standards) about this being a free site. I was expressing it poorly, but the point was that I didn't own a bed when they were telling me to make that kind of spend. I felt the doorknob was being set too high, and that no matter how hard I tried I was being held to a standard I just didn't have the resources for. To me, this is a site that was made by a kid who was learning how to do this while living on a couch.

I can certainly see how a2k could improve it's IT services, and its technical writing and its this and that, but we don't have multi-billion dollar companies behind us like other sites some here may have come from. This is a very small operation that largely operates on spare time, the qualities you espouse don't come at negligible costs of time, resources and money. The work is entirely voluntary so it had the feeling sometimes of being criticized as if this were a professional relationship when I see it as more of a voluntary thing offered as-is.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not IT and I'm not a technical writer, and I don't get paid to do this, and I don't want to do the customer support at all but I'll do what I can and I wish expectations understood that this takes a lot of resources (mainly time in this case) and these resources both have limits and are being volunteered here. To me, this feels like being an overworked soup kitchen volunteer and being criticized for not exhibiting the finer qualities of a fancy restaurant's waiter while wanting to be neither (I'd like to just eat sometimes too, I have no desire whatsoever for the customer service, IT, or technical writer roles). I may completely agree about how it could be done better but quality comes with a cost, and sometimes I take the criticism about quality as demand for cost that a2k can't pay for.

So?

If this was a thread about dairy products, I'd be bringing my lactose intolerance baggage to the table.

I don't even know that I'd call this baggage.
I think you call it baggage because you don't like it. If you agreed, it would be insightful commentary about society.

Maybe you're the one with the baggage about people who don't know as much as you think they should about the stuff you know about.

Or not.

what I do know is I think pycho-jargon makes conversations longer than they have to be, since every single thing said has to be qualified 10 different ways so as not to offend.

oh crap

now I've got shewolf following me.

I'll trade you shewolf for spendius and i'm sick dave!

But it's not a thread about IT and technical writers either and I am neither. I just feel it is odd to be confronted with it so often as if I am the ambassador for anyone who might be involved in technology somehow.

And to expound on this a bit: I know IT folk who are annoying queens of their routines and treat their users like their fiefdoms. So I get the baggage (which I don't think is as pejorative btw, it is a history of negative experience one carries with you). As I've said, this is a role I've never liked so I was often their "client" in the corporate world as well. I better understand the reasons they are the way they are than most but even then I still found it irritating enough that I fought to break free in my last corporate gig (and run my department's technology without their help or interference).

Computers can break but they can't make mistakes. They just blindly follow instructions. This doesn't, of course, mean that the customer is always wrong, often it may just be another human who made the mistake (the programmer, or the IT guy himself). But it does mean that when things go wrong that human input is most often the reason it does so and that ruling out misperceptions or mistakes in input is often a first debugging step.

While I can see techies taking this too far in this us vs. the civilians types of conflict and consistently underestimating their users. Sometimes they will even just shirk duty by passing the buck. However I also see users taking it too far in their conflict with technology and techies and seeing the suggestion of human error as more insulting than it should be. I don't really have a dog in this debate, on a2k if it's broken I want to fix it. It is not to my advantage to try to convince a user it is his fault if it is a bug. I am a user too, and I want things fixed here. This is my magnum opus and if it has a bug I want it quashed. But the first step to debugging might be ruling out input error or trying to find out more about the input to replicate a bug in something that is working fine for you.

In any case, I think the best solution for everyone is for me to just do this role a bit less and stick to the stuff I'm good at. I'm weary of being called to explain things and then being criticized about how well I do so when I should probably be doing more real work anyway and not spending so much time on this.

You have a poor memory, thankfully a forum database doesn't.

Here you are in the first year here leading with this in a bug report which I respond to and treat you in no way shape or form like you set the expectation for.



See link above, you are wrong.

I, in turn, didn't "accuse" you of "accusing" me of that. I said that you "led with this", which you did. You brought that baggage to your bug reports right from the start despite not having been treated that way and you claimed to only have done that once and not started that way.

Now you are moving the goal posts when that is clearly shown to have been the case. Grow up yourself, it must be positively painful for you to admit you are wrong.

The guy who is being told to grow up shows an enormous capacity for restraint.

mebbe you fellas should get a room...

You know, this is a forum. It saves what you say. So you can't just pretend it doesn't happen later. In this post, you said:



And that is what I was responding to. You also went on to say you only specifically attributed that to me once, but that is not the claim I am disputing. I am disputing the claim that you did not lead with this from the start and show up here with this chip on your shoulder, regardless of who you think you were directing it at specifically (maybe one of all the other tech support people who were going to come and tell you you were wrong?).



That is what I'm told it takes.