Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Have something to say about forums.debian.net itself?

Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby kedaha » 2017-08-14 14:12

I know not all forum users' first language is English but when I see the misspellings like "debain" without the capital letter, I usually don't bother to read further.
A forum search showed: Search found 1428 matches: +debain :shock:
When I type a post, if I inadvertently misspell, then the word gets underlined and can be corrected with a mouse click; I'm not a stickler for spelling and punctuation but surely the most frequent errors could be easily avoided by just making use of this feature. It's like using code blocks or other options when editing a post.

Maybe folks who pay no attention to spelling are probably equally sloppy when typing commands in the terminal or when editing configuration files when it's essential to be meticulous unless they just cut and paste willy-nilly.

But it's not exactly "debain of my life" or the bane of my life :lol: but rather just a minor annoyance, like scrolling through reams of code posted without wrapping in code blocks, something which similarly facilitates reading.
Mate DE & OSSv4.
LaMp, WordPress; ispmail
Debian Stable

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. Joseph Conrad.
Kedaha's Conjecture
User avatar
kedaha
 
Posts: 2869
Joined: 2008-05-24 12:26

Re: Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby wizard10000 » 2017-08-14 14:16

I can overlook the occasional typo as I make them myself and I'm not really a grammar Nazi, but if someone doesn't care what they write why should I read it?

The non-native English speakers get a pass (and bonus points for trying) but if English is your first language people certainly are judged by their communication skills - at least judged a little bit by me :mrgreen:
we see things not as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
User avatar
wizard10000
 
Posts: 1299
Joined: 2011-05-09 20:02
Location: everywhere i go, there i am!

Re: Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby Bulkley » 2017-08-14 15:46

The issue is much bigger than spelling. Users post their problems here. When a post is poorly written those of us who might be willing to help can't understand what the problem is; consequently the OP has already missed an opportunity. This forum has a long list of unanswered posts.
Bulkley
 
Posts: 5665
Joined: 2006-02-11 18:35

Re: Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby GarryRicketson » 2017-08-14 19:42

I know sometimes, maybe even often my spelling is pretty bad, I use the "spell checker", and tells me that, so I try to proof read, and correct the mistakes that show.
When the spelling is really bad, it makes it almost impossible to use a translator, so any
one that is using another language can not use a translator to translate it.
Bad grammar as well, causes problems with translating.
This forum has a long list of unanswered posts.

Yes it does, indeed.
User avatar
GarryRicketson
 
Posts: 5191
Joined: 2015-01-20 22:16
Location: Durango, Mexico

Re: Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby kedaha » 2017-08-14 21:46

Thanks for your replies.
Meanwhile I've been making some awful configuration errors myself while attempting to get dkim (DomainKeys Identified Mail) working on my mail server; it's taken me nearly three hours—it's a good job I'm on holiday— and numerous failed attempts which were all down to minor inaccuracies. And then I remembered my own post! I was finally successful in getting the thing up and running by checking and double checking everything. And according to the tutorial I followed "DKIM is much, much easier than it used to be." Ha!
Mate DE & OSSv4.
LaMp, WordPress; ispmail
Debian Stable

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. Joseph Conrad.
Kedaha's Conjecture
User avatar
kedaha
 
Posts: 2869
Joined: 2008-05-24 12:26

Re: Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby NFT5 » 2017-08-14 21:53

I admit to being a 'Grammar Nazi', but, at least here, I self-moderate (Pssst - Garry, there's a difference between 'any one and 'anyone' :P ), usually. I also give more tolerance to those who are clearly of a non English speaking background.

On another forum where I spend (too much?) of my time, being a Moderator has opened my eyes to some of the reasons why posts can appear as bad as they do. One fellow suffers terribly from dyslexia and has to get his wife to check every single post he makes while another has been heavily affected by a stroke and it can take him an hour to knock out a couple of lines, one letter at a time and often hitting the wrong key multiple times. Both have more than a thousand posts, such is their desire to be a part of that community. There are also those with learning difficulties and those who just didn't get the education that others have been fortunate to have.

Then there are those who are just too lazy to bother. The internet has given a voice to many who deserve to be heard and some who don't.
User avatar
NFT5
 
Posts: 243
Joined: 2014-10-10 11:38
Location: Canberra, Australia

Re: Awful spelling mistakes in forum posts.

Postby debiman » 2017-08-16 16:04

i'm not a stickler either, but we all know that computers are.
and that's where i wonder:
if you
- can't even spell out the name and version of your distro correctly
- don't copy-paste blocks of output, but paraphrase, and when you do type an actual command:
- you write "lsbci" instead of the requested "lspci", or "apt get install" instead of "apt-get install"
well how can you ever hope to solve anything?

no malice here. i just wonder.
User avatar
debiman
 
Posts: 3064
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18


Return to Forum stuff & feedback

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

fashionable
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=652001
forums.debian.net
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-51
28648
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:QKN6ZPVJZGGLPF4NZ45KTYAAKKP6XIGK
<urn:uuid:f14a41d9-8030-409d-bda0-82bb8bd95786>
2018-12-13T22:08:32Z
217.196.43.138
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:7R5GUFIET6DU7ULFM4N4YUOEAIYAX2KL
<urn:uuid:08d995ce-8446-4cde-aca8-94268cc489cd>
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=652001
response
<urn:uuid:21de48d8-6d33-42f7-84c2-11be9eaf114e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-51
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for December 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-165-185-158.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/