Thanks Kirk (and thanks for the PM). You're a cool guy and I hate having acrimonious exchanges with you, so I'm glad that we're OK with each other. I just need to clear up a couple of things and then I'm going to try and back off from C4C a bit. What follows is just a statement of fact, addressed to anyone who might be interested; I'm not having a bash at you, just using a couple of quotes from your post to set the agenda - apologies in advance.Kirk Bevins wrote:To Phil:
It seems that if anyone was to make a spelling error or a slight grammatical inaccuracy you come down on them with a ton of bricks, or at least comment on their lack of correctness. I've noticed it for some time and that's just who you are but even when it's not me you're picking up on I just think "ffs Phil, let it drop". It's pretty awesome that you have to be 100% right all the time, including always using italics for Countdown which I think is pretty anal but there we go. The reason I (for one) am starting to fight back now as it just frustrates me that every time I see a post from you I can guarantee it's going to be a correction of a post of some kind - I just couldn't hold it in any longer.
You're a nice guy, Phil, and we've met and don't wanna be foes or anything stupid but that's what I've been thinking.
Anyway it would be a shame to lose you from this forum, so for goodness sake keep posting and if you must keep correcting, then please do and I'll try to bite my typing fingers.
This is obviously a problem I have with people's perception of me, but it simply isn't true. As I said to Sue when she and Dez were visiting the other week, if I really did pick people up on every spelling or grammar mistake as people seem to think I do, I would never go out of the house, have a shower, cook meals, or do anything except sit in front of this bloody PC all day long posting corrections to C4C. We all make mistakes and I have no interest in pointing out other people's bad spelling for the sake of it. Outside of one very specific context, I will occasionally draw attention to a mistake if I think it's funny and can point it out in a humorous way.It seems that if anyone was to make a spelling error or a slight grammatical inaccuracy you come down on them with a ton of bricks, or at least comment on their lack of correctness. [...] it just frustrates me that every time I see a post from you I can guarantee it's going to be a correction of a post of some kind
The specific context I mentioned is the daily show recaps. I think the recaps on this site are a terrific resource, and because of that I assume (perhaps wrongly) that we all want them to be accurate. Writing the recaps is a massive enterprise, but it works because it's a team effort. If I make a mistake in one of my recaps, I'm relieved when someone else spots it and points it out so I can fix it. And I do the same for other people. I hope, and believe, that the authors of those recaps don't see it as petty nitpicking - and increasingly nowadays, if I do spot a mistake in a recap, I wait a while in the hope that someone else will flag it up so I don't have to.
Anyway, having a pretty strong sense that all of the above was true, but no hard evidence, I decided to look at some facts. So I clicked 'Search my posts' and checked through the first two pages, representing my most recent 120 posts on the site (20 minutes of my life I'll never get back again
), and totted them up as follows:
- spelling corrections to recaps - 6
- other spelling/grammar corrections - 1
- other corrections (e.g. factual errors) to forum posts - 16
- posts containing no correction of any kind - 97
) but that's me. We all have our eccentricities and that's mine.Anyway, enough from me. I'll probably be lurking more than posting here for a while, just till I get things a little more into perspective. Be nice to each other.
P xx
