On May 8, 11:18 am, Blue Sow <b...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> FCS wrote:
>
> > I think a direct question warrants a direct answer. Do you mean me?
>
> Ye gods no! You and I were the only contributors to the story.
>
> > And whether you do or not could you please define what you mean by
> > "troll"?
>
> A being whose role in life is to interrupt and disrupt discourse within
a
> newsgroup. Also known as 'one-handed typists'. (That is not intended
as a
> 'dictionary' definition but should suffice for our purpose.)
>
> > I shan't waste your time expecting you to read the post I'm about to
> > compose. The way Mark showed up the moment he was alluded to
>
> Try not to allude to him then (-:
>
> > I just find it odd that, putting aside compulsory education a moment,
> > there is not one member of a book group, evening class, tertiary,
> > further or higher education course in English, Drama, Theatre, Film,
> > Creative Writing who has sent anything in here.
>
> How can you know that? Have you not attended such courses?
In the plural? No.
Have you seen
> everyone's academic record?
Well, no.
As I happen to know that you are incorrect in your
> assumption, it might be more interesting to discuss why you think it
would
> matter, either way.
I took your point. I am now acknowledging I have.
I will ask though: as teacher or student in your
case? I could write in saying I'm doing this or
that course here or there and, indeed, what I
post may be based on readings of people who
are connected to this or that course here or there.
But it wouldn't make it true.
I do get the impression, and I hope I'm not going
to doubt the wisdom of saying this, that whilst you
do play around with language and information, you
are basically honest. So that when you say you
"know" something it means "know" in the dictionary
definition sense of the word, rather than, say, the
rather looser rhetorical sense of the word whereby
people "know" they're going to experience eternal life
one way or another.
But it says a lot for the re****ted success of, say,
Richard and Judy's book club that of all their
viewers who've got into reading - and this group
was up and active before they started, and had
had its flurry of early hopeful posts, furthemorely -
for all the criticism their show is aimed at crass
stay-at-home mothers, queers and good-for-naughts
(rather than those enjoying a dignified retirement,
who make up a lot of the audience for Countdown)
and the all the enthusiasm for reading, because it
hasn't been expicitly suggested as a side benefit
that one may feel inspired to write one's own work,
erm, well no-one's bothering.
Kind of underlines that computers are not alone in
the residual perception concerning them that there
are two basic types: those people have at home
which can do maths and print letters and those
super-duper magic ones people in the media sector
use which can produce photo-realistic graphics,
animations, sound, &c.
Of course I've seen YouTube. I got gulled there by
a tinyurl the other week.
But it seems that just like, say, a mental health
advocacy group may have a fully-featured high-spec
machine with software you could produce a daily
paper installed the standard of newsletters generally
is, well, crap.
Notice how people don't guillotine away the margins
on posters they've printed at home so they can make
use of elements which bleed off the edge like you
find in real advertising? Even in 1990 the bogstandard
open access, ASCII text-only, queue to collect your work
from a pigeon-hole, printer at my alma mater had a
safe-to-use ****elded trimmer within 10' of the counter.
> > There's not even one tutor or teacher has sought consent to send in
> > some of their students' work anonymously in order to *****s the
> > quality of criticism here, to see if there are fresh perspectives they
> > may have missed. Even people training to be teachers or even classroom
> > assistants.
>
> It is highly unlikely that one would expect to find quality criticism in
a
> public newsgroup. This is not to say it is impossible, but there is no
good
> reason why it would be probable.
Erm, no. You're just wrong here.
I thought USENET was up and running quite quickly
after the first e-mail was successfully sent but the
only information I've been able to find cites its advent
as 1979. Its major early users were IT professionals,
military types (generally with IT duties or other interest
in Computing matters) and science academics in Higher
Education and, of these, given the trend has been for
home users to have migrated away from such forums
after the boom around the turn of the century, it seems
it has pretty much reverted back to such types, in that
it's the people who were into it anyway who still are.
In this aspect it is distinctly both like and unlike CB radio
in that CB radio saw a boom and then a dearth and a
return back to the hands of the early enthusiasts. But
its early enthusiasts were truckers, military comms
(IT) types and hobbyist electronic and radio engineers.
As such there have been times when intelligent discussion
and informed criticism have characterised USENET.
Bandwidth is less of a consideration now than ever
before--in these days of MPEG audio and people
ripping feature-length films to DVD over P2P streams
and, as such, concentration span and motivation
would seem to be the only practical constraints
regarding post length. An article aimed at a one-to-
many reader****p should be as long as it needs but
seeing as you clearly have the literacy to read and
follow mine in this rather more one-to-one-but-open
to-anyone-to-read discussion, maybe it's time to
review nettiquette from the ground up.
I certainly have got tired of thirty-somethings posting
cliched ambiguity in the form of pointed one-liners,
thirty-somethings acting, in short, like thirteen year
olds, just because they've read guidelines written in
a bygone age.
As for the standard of criticism, I should've thought
there was more chance of finding real, worthwhile
criticism in a group such as this now than at any
time since about 1984.
We are, after all, statistically likely to be the enthusiasts.
And you're far more likely to get good constructive
criticism from a teacher who is enthusiastic about
you work and its influences than one who's, for any
number of reasons, bogged down by it all.
> I think it would be inappropriate for a teacher to send work in here.
This is
> usually done on servers to which only the student and tutor groups have
access.
Yes, my previous reply which addressed this point
appears to have disappeared off into the ether. Odd
that, isn't it. I wonder who it is that wants exclusive
readings of works I've chosen to pakes copes of
available to the public.
The definition of Passive Agressive springs to mind.
Particularly after comments regarding potential for
a moderated group. I'm not sure how I've in any
way interfered with anyone else's right to impart
a message.
You are, however, only correct so far as the present
tense goes. Traditionally things were a lot more open.
And you also seem to have missed my point that
any motivated students with access to Word Processing
applications often wrote far more than was required
for the actual marticulation and as such would be
extremely well-posited, and at liberty, to post stuff they
thought was alright but not their best work.
The chances of them not having run it by a tutor at
the time if they thought it were any good are low. I'm
just surprised, that's all.
> It is not unusual for posting assignment work on the internet to be
considered
> an offence for which students can be sent down. I am not sure what
would happen
> to tutors who did so, but it would be unpleasant.
Bwahaha! In a field such as creative writing there
are no right or wrong answers such as there are
in maths or physics or chemistry. And the point of
creative writing, surely, is not that it remembers that
only a third of the class showed up when they "did"
Classical Economic Considerations underpinning the
basic assumptions of Keynesian social provision
in request-resourced centralised economies.
> > I tend to believe I have a pretty firm handle on how good I am, in
> > terms of what I can do well, what my strengths and weaknesses are.
> > But I'm also very aware that it's not fresh, new, original writing
> > that sells. It's Jilly Cooper, Dan Brown, Len Deighton &c. That is
> > actually what people want, just like Eastenders, Coronation Street,
> > Emmerdale is what people want.
>
> Indeed. To emulate the efforts of the likes of Mr. Brown, one needs the
writing
> ability of a 14 year old child, or at least the ability to pretend only
to have
> that.
> As to how good you are, there are problems with such an idea. How can I
say
> that Mr. Brown is not good when he just made millions? How can I say
that
> Beckett is better than Shaw (or vice versa)? Is the man who saws cows
in half
> really the best artist in the UK?
It depends. If he's being satirical in his repeated
reproductions of other artists' work which he then
p***** off as his own until they complain, on the
basis that the last supper was reworked (i.e., copied)
goodness only knows how many times by various lesser-
known artists wi****ng to showcase their skills to
potential patrons, then he's made his point and,
in many ways, perhaps should seek some advice
on how to handle his aversion to generating original
material.
If on the other hand he's made very subtle reworkings
to, for example, his coloured circles made up of lots
of dots so they appear the same to the biggest number
of people with deviant colourvision, statistically, or
re-worked them so someone with perfect colourvision
sees the circles as he sees the originals, then it's
possible his reputation with Charles Saatchi is well-
deserved.
> In terms of fiction, there are two types of (published) writer. Those
who sell
> and those who do not - an objective measure. Which ones are 'good' is
> subjective and often irrelevant.
>
> > I'm disappointed that you feel the way you say about how this has
gone.
>
> I did not say how I felt about the way the experiment went insofar as
the
> contributions were concerned.
>
> > But then I don't take kindly to being slated by people who haven't
> > made much effort to demonstrate much ability--which, whether I'm right
> > or wrong, I tend to assume is where Mark's coming at it all from.
>
> You seem to attach a great deal of im****tance to the mutterings of this
person.
> Why is that? Like you and I, he/she/it is just another persona on a
> newsgroup. He could be the tea lady at my local primary school, your
next door
> neighbour, or Dan Brown wondering what people are saying about him.
He was one of the people who was instrumental in
this group appearing on USENET in the first place.
I think it still has, and should have, a future, but only
after the basic assumptions have been reviewed.
I've always had the impression he tries to take the
rise. He's just not that good at it. It's not by any
means true that the original people who moved to
get a group going are still around, much less still
monitor posts or participate.
> > For all his accusations I don't make myself clear and that 10 or 15
> > paragraphs constitutes a "massive missive", not all readers wish to
> > have things made clear. And not everybody wants it all in a pithy
> > nutshell.
>
> It is not the role of a writer to try to write as little (or as much) as
> possible. If every novel were written to be brief and soulless, or
lengthy and
> padded, there would be very few novels.
I have never viewed Mark as any kind of barefoot pugilist.
> > My feeling is that active groups attract activity and if this group
> > wishes to fulfil its charter then the way to do this is to keep it
> > active--with all kinds of writing. I consider the only reason I'm
> > bothering saying this is because I do care about the arts of writing.
> > Mayhaps you disagree and that is your prerogative.
>
> I see newsgroups as virtual meeting places for persons with commonly
held
> interests. Sadly, they are also meeting places for those who wish to
annoy and
> irritate those having such interests.
> While some people are happy to contribute pieces of writing, others only
wish to
> disrupt this process.
Well, I haven't actually done anything as yet.
One thing I was going to ask anyway though is
if this has indeed irredeemably ground to a halt
would you prefer if I removed the quoted material
(i.e., your posts) from my contributions prior to
reposting mine.
If you don't want your contributions up here any
more this wouldn't be a problem but would be a
waste of time if you honestly don't care either
way.
> > For the moment, I will match your contribution with
> > another one, and appreciate you tried to keep it open.
> > I thought the idea of a dog on a raft on the ocean at night had a
> > certain futility that
> > was worthy comedic exploration, but as you swung it back to what you
> > had in mind had applied myself to trying to generate characters such
> > as "The Spelling Bee" whose job it is to go back to the hive and
> > reproduce exact directions to attractive blooms, but who unfortunately
> > suffers from both a stutter and mild dyslexia...
>
> > I'm happy to leave it open to more on an as-and-when basis. Or not.
>
> Feel free to keep it going.
>
> --
> Blue Sow
G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 SIPSTON
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