Timeline for What recourse is there for a post that is locked for reasons that one does not understand or agree with?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| Mar 16, 2017 at 17:21 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Oct 1, 2013 at 19:48 | history | edited | Jim G. | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 25, 2013 at 21:13 | comment | added | Jim G. | @EMS: OK. That's cool. I just upvoted your comment. Even though we disagree, at least we understand each other. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 19:17 | comment | added | user103181 | I did not down vote you. Also, the whole "if I had more time, I would have written less" quote predates Clinton. That's also been attributed to Pascal and to some famous coders. It's very true of writing code. Less true, I find, for verbal discussions. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 19:02 | comment | added | Jim G. | @EMS: Are you familiar with Bill Clinton's autobiography entitled 'My Life'? It's 1008 pages long! When a radio host asked him why it was so long he said, "If I had more time, I would've written a shorter book." This speaks volumes about the difficulty in formulating a strong, terse, coherent narrative or position paper. It's much easier to skip the edit phase and retain marginal details. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Life_(Bill_Clinton_autobiography) | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:57 | comment | added | Jim G. |
@EMS: ..Because none of our theories sufficiently survive contact with real data... That's true, but the absence of data doesn't strengthen your side either.
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| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:56 | comment | added | Jim G. |
@EMS: ..If someone wrote something verbose and they've thought about it then they already believe they've employed concision as well as possible... - ...Except in most instances they haven't. Also the medium matters. Always. Emails and Stackoverflow posts should be brief. Books (and college essays) can/should be longer. But even in those mediums, I find that the most powerful arguments tend to be terse. And I am not suggesting that all terse arguments are strong.
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| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:44 | comment | added | user103181 | Of course, my skill in deploying that point of view might just be low. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:43 | comment | added | user103181 | To me it is the same thing as with Occam's Razor. One can look at OR as a statement about obsessively pursuing simplicity. Or one can look at OR as a statement that, because none of our theories sufficiently survive contact with real data, suggests always adding more complexity. The verbosity of arguments is similar. Maybe simplicity and concision are the rule rather than the exception. But almost by definition, if someone wrote something verbose and they've thought about it then they already believe they've employed concision as well as possible and that the argument just has to be lengthy. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:36 | comment | added | Jim G. | @EMS: You're wrong about the verbosity thing, but it might take you a few years of people ignoring your emails to figure that out. Otherwise, you seem like a decent guy, so I hope we can help you out. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:27 | history | edited | Jim G. | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:22 | comment | added | user103181 | Also, the aside about American schooling, etc., is pretty unhelpful and (my opinion) upsetting. I do not have the same feelings about verbosity vs. concision that you have. I do not share your opinion about the usefulness of verbosity on SE sites (regardless of the relative prevalence of verbose posts). I do not believe this is a product of schooling. Now, of course my beliefs don't really matter. But then again, neither do yours, so why are you putting them in this answer? | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:20 | comment | added | user103181 | I appreciate your perspective, but I find this unhelpful. For one, it seems you are privileging the commenter who wrote about my rollbacks. Did you look at the rollbacks? Maybe I was right to make them. There were several other commenters who mentioned that they thought my post was good and on-topic but just that specific reference to literature/reference requests was bad. As far as I can tell, no one else ever thought the question came even remotely close to delete-worthy. I'm curious why you feel so much more strongly than they do. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:05 | history | answered | Jim G. | CC BY-SA 3.0 |