From: Dr Chris R. Tame (chris@rand.demon.co.uk)
Date: Mon Feb 05 2001 - 12:49:04 MST
In article <3.0.6.32.20010205152307.0084e4e0@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au>,
Damien Broderick <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au> writes
>At 01:40 AM 5/02/01 +0000, Dr. Chris R. Tame wrote:
>
>>>What, your google broken?
>
>>I have a busy career
>
>< longish CV and report on sex life snipped >
>
>>It didn't seem an unreasonable request to ask the poster of two reviews
>>if he could possible post their sources, which he presumably had in the
>>first place - but apparently not.
>>
>>Do forgive me for my appalling laziness and presumption.
>
>Dr Tame, if you'd used the time spent composing this rebuke in googling for
>the two items of information you asked me to send, you'd already have the
>urls.
>
Not true - my reply took a second. Search engine searches can often take
unpredictably large amounts of time, and asking the original poster
first was a reasonable first step.
>But why didn't I include the provenance in the first place, and why was I
>irritated that you couldn't be bothered doing your own search? Well,
>people on this list usually do include such information if it's at hand,
>and seems salient. If it's missing, one might reasonably assume that it
>wasn't readily available.
>
Not a reasonable assumption. Most people are very slack about including
full information on forwarded articles, and don't seem to realise why
such information is important. Many when asked are usually cheerfully
forthcoming.
Why you should find a polite request irritable and deserving of a snide
response tells a lot about you.
>That is the case here. As well, I chose not to take the extra effort to
>find and include it because I thought people would be interested in the
>ideas expressed, not where they first appeared in print.
Unreasonable assumption. For scholarly purposes full references are
vital.
>(Besides, anyone
>who did wish to track down the sources could readily do so, by googling to
>Malik Kenan's name, combined with those of the two reviewers). I'd need to
>repeat those steps myself in order to recover those irrelevant details
>(irrelevant to me, if not to you, but then that's your business not mine),
>and being hectored with news of your busy life doesn't really persuade me
>to make that effort.
If you don't like sarcastic replies then don't dish out snide responses
to a polite and reasonable request for information. As someone who
always tries to help others with reasonable requests I don't appreciate
smartass sarcasm. You got back what you dished out - tit for tat. Now
don't whine about it.
>
>For a formal analysis of the two-way protocols involved, you might consult
>H. Paul Grice, on the Cooperative Principle and other principles of
>conversational implicature (Grice, P., 1989, *Studies in the Way of Words*.
>Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press).
>
>http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/grice.html
>
>Damien Broderick
Your response to my request indicates that whatever lessons it might
have to teach would probably be better studied by yourself.
And that's enough of my time wasted with an unpleasant twat.
-- Dr. Chris R. Tame, Director Libertarian Alliance | "The secret of Happiness is Freedom, | 25 Chapter Chambers | and the secret of Freedom is Courage" | Esterbrooke Street | Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration | London SW1P 4NN England Tel: 020 7821 5502 Fax: 020 7834 2031 Email: chris@rand.demon.co.uk LA Web Site: http://www.libertarian-alliance.com/ Free Life Web Site: http://www.whig.org.uk
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