nocwage
February 15, 2007, 9:44am
31
Roast’s post, which I have quoted below, is not worth reading or endorsing due to that fact that he used “is” instead of “if”. (The mistake has been put into bold text and section underlined to enhance his shame)
I appreciate the open discussion on this topic but let me direct your thoughts towards legible English and grammar, visa vie effort is shown. We can all agree that not everyone is intellectually equal; be it that, someone may be a “genius” with their hands whereas another person may be a “genius” in the books. (I use the term “genius” to distinguish one persons skill set, be it a mix or polar opposite)
With this said, a person could be an amazing mechanic with poor writing skills and if this person were to post a question inside the technical forum it would look rather sparse in text but the problem description would be concise. On the other hand is someone was mechanically inept (like me) but educated (like me, B.Sc.) that posted a question in the technical section, it’d be rather long with possibly a vague problem description.
Now think about it, neither of these posts were perfect, one was to short with bad grammar and the other too long that wouldn’t get to the point. However, there was one common theme, effort. With minimal effort these people both posted viable questions that, in a sense displayed respect conveying to the reader that they are not taking advantage of them and truly looking for help.
This is a good thing, no? Let’s say we continue down the road where a poster is required to take a competency test, sure the educated poster could pass, but what about the highly skilled mechanic? Albeit it’d weed out some of the posters we don’t want but also reject the posters we need. This is why I suggested that posts showing no common respect be ignored. My reason for this thought is that I believe anyone posting with common respect has already passed the competency test negating the need for further administration but requiring a shift in community focus towards rewarding respect and not blatant tom foolery.