Current mood:	Amazed
Entry tags:	fandom: harry potter

HP Arrogance
First post, but IMO this is wanky for the sheer arrogance. In summary, FA head honcho, Heidi squees over her site being nominated for a Webby. While recognizing FA probably won't win she adds the following:

Of course, we're up against LiveJournal and Friendster, but as I just wrote in an email to bradfitz, if FictionAlley, for some bizarre reason, actually wins, it's a victory for LJ as well, because LJ really is a part of FA's community - hence, things like fiction_alley!

Yeah, so every single LJer is a FA member. Not to mention that LJ is where most of the wank can be found.

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heidi
2004-04-26 08:11 pm UTC (link)

But I don't see it as being "mighty bad sentence structure" - I see it as me constructing a metaphor which *should be* clear to anyone who has a clue about FictionAlley and how our site's users use LJ, or that FA users create LJs for ships and "guilds" regularly, or the program we rolled out for code distribution just before LJ eliminated codes.

If you know nothing about FA, or how people use the site, then I guess it is possible to completely misread what I said, but I did not expect my post to be read by people who have no familiarity with FictionAlley Park. The most logical way to read what I wrote is not to paraphrase it as "Yeah, so every single LJer is a FA member. Not to mention that LJ is where most of the wank can be found." It makes no sense to read, "it seems clear to all of us at FA that the nomination is not for us - the admins, the coders, the mods - it's for ALL the users of the site, all the authors, the artists, the posters, the reviewers. They, and by definition, all of you, are the ones who make FA a community..." and say that such an attitude is *arrogant*.

Look, I think it all depends on what your definition of "part" is. I was using "part of" to mean that LJ was (as I now go to my M-W.com dictionary) "an essential portion or integral element" of FA. That is a true fact. It is an essential portion of the community feel of FA. It is an integral element of FA. What is arrogant about our recognizing and acknowledging that?

Believe me, I did understand, once I read some of the comments and bitchings here, why people deemed it wanky - they were using a different definition than I was. And I agree with other posters here that random-readers-of-my-LJ shouldn't be obligated to read my mind to understand what I'm saying. But when I'm using a one-syllable word, and I'm using it pursuant to one of its two primary definitions, I don't think I'm out of line for expecting people to read it the way I wrote it.

I am not trying to patronize you or anyone else on this thread. I also don't think the reading some people are giving to my post was implausible, but along those lines, I don't think that there is any requirement for people to write posts in a manner that takes into consideration all of the potential definitions of a word. I mean, nobody presumed I was using "part" to refer to a constituent member of a machine, or a section of a song, but "part" means both of those things, too. I haven't screamed or yelled at anyone here, although I admit to having done some virtual "running around" because it wouldn't accomplish anything. I'm not sure why you're reading my posts to see yelling and screaming, but it just isn't there.

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