sorting 3978

snip

That wasn't my intent when I wrote the paragraph beginning "Excellent" above -- my intent was to say that while *you* might be basing your buttessments only on competence, I wasn't sure that was true about everyone making hiring decisions.

Apparently we have got crosswise, though, and probably nothing useful is going to come of further discussion.

snip

This is kind of a no-win situation, since if I reply at all I might be said to be proving your point, but ....:

I can't imagine how you could possibly know this, unless you've reviewed everything I've posted to all the newsgroups in which I've ever participated. (If you have, then I apologize for speaking too hastily, but surely you have better things to do with your time.)

With regard to trying to get people to be nicer -- that's pretty much exactly what I tried recently with someone in another newsgroup, male if one can go by username (Mark something). I mentioned this earlier in this thread:

In the unlikely event that anyone's interested, this was in comp.text.tex, subject line "Math mode wackiness in memoir clbutt", a good starting point for the part of the discussion in question.

I just skimmed through some of my posts in that thread, and the tone seems to me to be quite similar to the one I used with you, and the suggestions were in the same vein. He found my advice just about as palatable as you did, though his objections were somewhat (though not entirely) different.

As for scoring debating points, yeah, it's something I'm too quick to try to do in any discussion. Quibbling over semantics may be an occupational hazard of an academic job, but I admit it's not very commendable.

Whether you're being singled out .... Yes, probably so, though I say it has as much to do with the number of your posts and the subject material and the overall style-persona as with the fact that you're female. What we'd need for comparison is a male poster who posts as much as you do, on similar topics, and with a similar apparent willingness to converse with a newbie. I can't think of anyone quite like that. Maybe I'm not paying attention.

But if I were to go through all the posts I've made over the past year or so (since I got the idea that it might be interesting to finally venture out of lurker status), a lot of them would be nitpicks of some kind, which seems to me to be similar to what you're objecting to. I haven't really paid attention to whether the targets of the nitpicking are male or female, but I can think of some recent ones that posted under male-sounding names.

snip

As you wish. It was interesting while it lasted.

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.