Originally Posted by Brian Austin Whitney
Originally Posted by Nigel Quin
Originally Posted by Michael Zaneski
Originally Posted by Nigel Quin
It was in no way directed at you, in truth my ‘stay on topic’ remark was a general one regarding some threads which tend to meander, I added the smiley face icon to show that it was a light-hearted comment.

Thanks for clarifying that, because for all practical appearances it was directed at me, since I was the only person up to that point to use a chatbot to create something and present it here. Then your post said the equivalent of "here's how to present a chatbot's writings, but WITHOUT going off-topic."

I'm sure you can see how I might have felt that was directed at me, specifically, albeit in a smiley-face-friendly-way, since I was the only person to present chatbot writings up to that point?

And if you were directing that specifically at me, that would have been totally okay. Nothing to worry about! I mean, it did seem like you did, and so I directed my response with that in mind.

Just in case further clarification is needed. My post was a direct response to Everett's original post, I was not referencing other posts within THIS thread, if it seemed like I was then I assure you that was purely unintentional. If I were to comment on anything you or anyone else had said, I would do it directly, like we are doing now. I posted what I thought was an interesting, valid, and mildly amusing thing to throw into the discussion.

Originally Posted by Michael Zaneski
At any rate, life is too short, so I'll just chalk this up to another case how hard it is to communicate well.

Me and the bot say Amen to that!

Nigel, no one rational would ever think you had bad intent or were attacking anyone. You are free to say anything you like here and no need to clarify just to please others. People have such thin skin as they have recently (the past 10 years) been re-educated to think on mainstream social media. We have been here 25 years already on this board and aside from gratuitous directed attacks, we haven't had any problems outside anonymous trolls 20 years ago.

Brian, on the off-chance "no one rational would ever think you had bad intent or were attacking anyone" was aimed in any way at me (you DO quote my exchange with Nigel)--for the record, I never accused Nigel of having bad or malicious intent or inferred that in any way. smile

In fact if you read what I wrote, you can see I am simply trying to explain to him that his ("here's how to stay on topic in this thread using a chatbot presentation") remark, though it seemed to, didn't apply to me at all, since my post of "chatbot writings" were admittedly and intentionally off-topic; and he in turn made sure I understood he was referring to Everett's original post, and that he used "off-topic" simply as a segue into his post, and nothing more.

We were both clarifying things to each other to enhance our understand of each other and what we were trying to communicate. Nowhere was there any accusation or insinuation, cloaked or otherwise, of anyone having any malicious intent.

I imagine sometimes folks that communicate in chatrooms get the wrong idea and can imagine ill-intent cuz they are "thin skinned." But I think here, there was never any perceived ill-intent at any time on anyone's part: just a case of misunderstanding due to "presentation," and the simple act of clarification was all that was needed to fix things, and again, NOWHERE in this entire process was their ever any malice on either side--just the pursuit of being understood.

I've never considered the idea that "clarifying" sometimes isn't a good thing, but I guess that's true if we do it under duress. I felt no duress and unless he concealed it really well, neither did Nigel. My final thought on this: maybe we don't owe our neighbor any clarifications...but...isn't it just kinda neighborly to do so? It's THAT kind of generosity that Nigel showed that in turn, makes it easy to want to return the gesture, and tends to bring folks together instead of tearing them apart.

Good communication is hard, and I'm pretty much all clarified out, LOL. I think most that know me here know that I always make a solid effort to communicate well, and try to catch my projections before they land on others, and I give EVERYONE here the utmost respect, though disagreements will certainly occasionally arise.

Mike

Last edited by Michael Zaneski; 03/06/23 12:02 AM.
Fate doesn't hang on a wrong or right choice
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice

-The Divine Comedy (Neil Hannon)
from the song "Songs of Love"
from the album "Casanova" (1996)