:You are attempting to change prevailing
:sentiment on topicality.
Thinking about what you wrote, I think you are correct. It isn't
the topicality itself that I would necessarily see changed, but rather,
just as you say, the -sentiment- about the topicality. As in
how people feel -about- topicality, and thus the manner in which
they react when something is not within the scope of what can,
in a practical sense, be handled in the newsgroup.
I have no objection at all to a group saying "This particular subject
is our area of expertise, and considering the volumes of postings,
on the whole most people here do not have time to pay attention to
much that lays outside of that area."
What I have not liked, though, is some of the manners in which
other topics are dismissed, which at times becomes reminiscent of
a butler looking down his nose and sniffing at the presumption that
one of the "lower classes" would ask him for directions.
:You will not succeed.
The evidence is certainly suggesting that I am not succeeding ;-)
:Continuing to pursue is
etulant and disgraceful on your part. You should stop now and
:apologize, as a professional should. I hold out little hope.
I make no apology for suggesting that people be treated with more
consideration.
I used to know a doctor, a surgeon specializing in a difficult kind of
operation and with a very good success record. People who had worked
with him told me that he had more than once taken a preliminary image,
looked at it the first time while the patient was present, and then had
turned to the patient and said approximately "Oh yeah, you've got a
tumour there. We can't operate on one like that. You'll probably die
from it in about 3 weeks. You can pay the receptionist on your way out."
Now, was that doctor, highly trained and technically very knowledgible,
a "professional" ?
I went to buy something a few months ago. I walked in and indicated
what I wanted. The clerk was a bit startled (I obviously wasn't
a member of the community the store specialized in), but within a
very short time was busy talking to me about the varieties available and
which one I would prefer, was pleased that I had researched the
field, and made sure that I would be happy with the particular one
I picked out. Was that sales-clerk, who had enough knowledge of the
product to be able to sell it but was not a specialist and not
posessing a particularily strong technical knowledge, a "non-professional" ?
There may be technical meanings to "professional", but I would suggest
that in the common parlance of the average person, that the doctor
would be judged by most to be quite non-professional in the way he treated
patients (as "interesting cases" rather than as feeling beings),
but that most people would understand and agree that the sales-clerk
acted "professionally" in treating me as human and ensuring my
satisfaction even though I did not fit into the regular clientele.
An expert can give a completely correct answer to a question and
yet be "non-professional" about it; I prefer to encourage the
variety of professionalism that looks beyond the immediate question
to the deeper situation and does it's best to help the client
get what the client needs, even if the answer arrived at is not the
best possible of answers.
