MY "DOUBLE-POSTING", ETCETERA

[RSLancastr]

All:

==========[ "DOUBLE POSTING" ]==========

It has been brought to my attention that I have been doing a fair amount here of what is called "double-posting" here on The Discourse.

My apologies to any who I have annoyed and/or offended by my having done so.

A few thoughts on this:

1. I have NEVER, in more than a decade of frequent posting on dozens of internet forums, and even moderating on a few of them, seen the practice of making two different posts in a row within a given thread/topic forbidden, discouraged, nor even frowned upon.

2. I have never even heard the tern "double posting" used to describe such an occurance. I have only seen it used to describe the EXACT SAME POST beying made two times in a row by the same user in one thread/topic.

But okay, that IS what it is called here, and it IS frowned upon here, so I will try not to do it any more (When in Rome...). I onl;y mention the two points above to explain why I have evidently been doing it here. Avoiding it has never been a part of my frame of reference.

There are some other things I catch myself occasionally doing in posts here (and elsewhere), and want to mention here:

==========[ OCCASIONAL ALL-CAPS "SHOUTING" ]==========

This is a piece of "nettiquette" (or however that is spelled) of which I've been aware since the old BBS days of  the 1980s.
TYPING IN ALL-CAPS IS CONSIDERED "SHOUTING", and is considered rude and annoying.

So why do I occasionally do it here (and elsewhere)? Because...

1 I do not touch-type
...and so I watch the keys as I type rather than the characters as they appear on the monitor. So, if I inadvertently press the CapsLock key (usually when trying to press the letter A), or intentionally press it in order to key something in all caps (either for emphasis, or because it is an acronym (NASA, NATO, ZIP, etcetera) or an initialism (IBM, CRT, ATM,    etcetera) -and then forget to turn CapsLock off, I don't see the resulting "shouting" because I am watching the keyboard, not the monitor. So a whole word, sentence, paragraph or post can be in all-caps before I happen to look up and notice it. I will usually backspace over it and retype it in the correct case at that point, but not if I am being lazy, or am in too much of a hurry. My apologies for that.

2. I type everything with my right hand only.

My stroke, in August of 2008 was in the right hemisphere of my brain, and severely compromised my brain's control of the muscles in the left half of my body (I am what is medically known as a "Left-side Hemiplegic"). As a result, my left leg/foot is nearly useless (thus confining me to a wheel chair), as is my left arm/hand, forcing me to type everything using only my right hand (not the "naughty" one-handed typing you see mentioned some times, I (regretfully) assure you.

Actually, I have ALWAYS typed with only my right hand, throughout my thirty-plus-year career (1976-2008) as a computer programmer. But that is a story for another time.

==========[ OTHER MISCELLANEOUS TYPOS ]==========

aLSO DUE TO MY STROKE, AND DUE TO MY UNIQUE STYLE OF TYPING,

See, I just accidentally "shouted", inadvertently pressing CapsLock when typing the A in "Also"!

Also due to my stroke, and due to my unique style of typing, I frequently press two keys at the same time, or just press the wrong key, and, since I am watching the keyboard instead of the monitor, I usually do not notice it until later, if at all. I have tried some spell-checking plug-ins and such, but with limited success.

==========[ IN CONCLUSION ]==========

I typed all of the above not as a plea for pity, but so that the reasons for some of my frequently garbled and/or frowned-upon method of posting will be a bit better understood.

My thanks to any who took the time to read all of this.

And to those who reply (or even think) "tl;dr", let me say:

tb;fy.

-RSL

[Don Boyer]

Insightful and witty...    I'm the one who pointed it out, but you didn't need to go through making this long post.  We're a forgiving lot of misfits around here.  I have a harder time with it than nearly everyone else because I'm the one going around fixing the double postings!

We know about the all-caps thing, but it's not as big a deal around here and it's really better applied to someone who types every single bleeding thing they write, post after post, in capital letters, INTENTIONALLY.  Now THAT'S annoying...  But again, we're forgiving - if there's no intent and nothing's broken or bleeding, it's no big thing.

[RSLancastr]

Thanks for posting, Don - if only so I can add to the thread without "double-posting"!

Thanks also for the PM explaining why what you call "double posting" is a faux pas here (because some may use it to artificially inflate their post count, thus artifificially inflating their "reputation".

That not only explains why it is frowned upon here, but also why I have never seen it frowned upon anywhere else - This is the first forum I have been on which has a "reputation" score system, and the only thing I'm aware of Post Counts being used for elsewhere is for the forum software to automatically determine a user's "User Type" (Newbie, Regular User, Expert User, Uber User, etc). Since that was worth nothing more than "bragging right", whereas the "Reputation" figure here is used for other, sometimes more tangible behenifts, which can tempt some into trying to artificially inflate their post count here, whereas elsewhere, there is no benefit for them toi do so.

Mystery solved!

And yes, I do tend to go on and on at times, sorry.

And, as much as I hate to play the "stroke card", I have been told that my going on and on at times is largely a result of the stroke (I sometimes think that it damaged my brain's STFU Center)

[Don Boyer]

And, as much as I hate to play the "stroke card", I have been told that my going on and on at times is largely a result of the stroke (I sometimes think that it damaged my brain's STFU Center)

Yeah, if that was a key indicator of having had a stroke, I must've had dozens... 

[RSLancastr]

"Key indicator"? No.

But a stroke can seriously mess up a person's sense of the passage of time.

After my stroke (Aug 4 2008), I spent eleven months in a hospital, various physical rehab facilities and a nursing home before I was finally discharged back home on June 30 2009.

Not long after that, my wife Susan and I visited with a couple we had not seen since my stroke, so I had tons of stories of my Adventures in Healthcare to share with them. As soon as we got there, the four of us sat down and I started in on my stories. Some time later, Susan clearedher throat and said "Robert, do you realize that you have been talking for eight straight hours now?"

I had no clue.

We had sat down and I had started talking at around 8am, and Susan interrupted me at around 4pm - Holy smokes! I would have guessed I had been talking for 30-40 minutes, tops.

That was the most dramatic example, but there have been many others.

[xela]

Is that you in your avatar? Can I have your beard, please? It's fucking GLORIOUS.

[RSLancastr]

Yes, that's me allright, all decked out in my Purple Camo.

Here's a closeup, from my Wikipedia page:



I'm glad you like my beard, but if I gave it to you, nobody would recognize me - I've had it since I was 19 years old (36 year ago)!

I trim it back from time to time, but the only time I have been clean-shaven in more than thirty years was when, after my stroke, one of my doctors had a nurse shave it off while I was in a coma, so he could perform a tracheotomy on me. My kids visited me in the hospital right after that and were freaked out to see their Dad without a beard for the first time in their lives (they were 26, 25 and 23 at the time)!

Plus, my wife likes running her fingers through it, so I kinda have to keep it Alex - sorry!

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

Good post and whole heartily agree. I run my own board as the lead moderator, and we also have a point/ rank system based on contribution - but.... as the old saying goes "points are free" they're not real - they're fake and the true test of reputation is in WHAT you post not how many times you post.

Time will tell and you will either make friends, or make enemies and nobody, noob or veteran will give 2 thoughts about your "digital rep" when your "actual rep" has nothing to contribute.

My philosophy is my forum is there for the people - for them to communicate and enjoy. So they can double post, they can ask the same questions over and over and make a new thread each time - I don't care. The mods and I, we know it's our job to go back and clean it all up - and anyone who doesn't want to clean it up and keep the peace shouldn't be a mod.

Noobs need to ask questions, that's how they learn and the vets need to answer questions, that's why they are vets
Nobody will ask the SAME question in the same way and nobody will answer the same question in the same way

'Sides it's not like a forum takes up real actual physical space anyway. It's all... internet.

(looks back)

Wow, I typed too much.

[xela]

Actually a forum does take up space. Each post you guys make increases the size of our database, This slows down the speed of the forum by a small amount. If I were to add, say, 5 million posts right now, it would take 2-3 additional seconds to load each page. If I deleted all the posts on here, the site would load about 1% faster. If I had limited space, eventually that space would run out. Some people have hosts with limited space, or hosts with limited bandwidth.

@RSL: Yeah I wanted to grow out a beard just for fun but the gf would hear nothing of it. I got two shave-less months though in November/December though. I looked like a Quaker.

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

If I were to add, say, 5 million posts right now,

(said like Homer) "Mmmmmm 5 million posts muaaahhhh."

[RSLancastr]

@Alex:

Although my beard started coming in strong when I wasz 19 or so, I didn't have a decent moustache until I was around 30. In the meantime, with a full beard and sideburns but to moustache, I looked Amish.

Once,m during an after-hours function where I worked (as a computer programmer), a co-worker who I did not know well approached me and said "Say, you're Amish, right?"

After a beat, I replied "Yes, I'm one of those Amish computer programmers you hear so much about."

Years later (after I grew a 'stache), someone else approached me at work and said "What are you, a Mormon or something?" I assume it was a comment on my facial hair, and told the guy that Modern-day Mormons almost never grow facial hair.

Another time, I was sitting in my car in a McDonald's drive-thru line when a woman came up and knocked on my window. When I opened the window, the woman said "Mazeltov, Rabbi!"

Another time, a man approached me in a park and said "Are you the rabbi?"

Evidently, many people equate facial hair with religions.

[Don Boyer]

@Alex:

Although my beard started coming in strong when I wasz 19 or so, I didn't have a decent moustache until I was around 30. In the meantime, with a full beard and sideburns but to moustache, I looked Amish.

Once,m during an after-hours function where I worked (as a computer programmer), a co-worker who I did not know well approached me and said "Say, you're Amish, right?"

After a beat, I replied "Yes, I'm one of those Amish computer programmers you hear so much about."

Years later (after I grew a 'stache), someone else approached me at work and said "What are you, a Mormon or something?" I assume it was a comment on my facial hair, and told the guy that Modern-day Mormons almost never grow facial hair.

Another time, I was sitting in my car in a McDonald's drive-thru line when a woman came up and knocked on my window. When I opened the window, the woman said "Mazeltov, Rabbi!"

Another time, a man approached me in a park and said "Are you the rabbi?"

Evidently, many people equate facial hair with religions.

Well, it is true that some Amish sects have certain customs regarding appearance, including facial hair.  Additionally, rabbis and Orthodox Jews of various sects have similar religious rules.  I've gone around town wearing a dark grey fedora with a black military class-A trenchcoat and people (with an obviously poor understanding of the Orthodoxy) mistook me for an Orthodox Jew.

[Nurul]

You look a little like Brian blessed (might just b because of the beard though)