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In lugnet.cad.dev, lehman@javanet.com (Todd Lehman) writes:
> [...]
> In lugnet.admin.general, "Selçuk <teyyareci>" <sgore@nospam.superonline.com>
> writes:
> > Smelling bad and looking bad are not the same things. If someone smells bad,
> > you sure want him/her to go out and never come back without taking a bath,
> > since you can't make all the other people squeeze their noses. But if
> > somebody has a harmless but stupid and irritating clothes, just looking at
> > the other side is the way to go.
>
> That's a nice analogy, but it doesn't apply. The situation here is more
> like someone has walked into a room where things are trying to get done, and
> they sit there and muck things up -- asking annoying questions all the time,
> treating people rudely, and making ridiculous demands.
> [...]
OK, here's the analogy.
Imagine that there is this magnificent glass building in a pleasant corner
of town. It's ten stories tall with clear windows going up all the sides
and covering all the insides. The rooms inside are all sorts of neat
shapes, and each room is a little different from the next. It's a giant
evolving-art museum where anyone can go in and other like-minded people,
share ideas, and make things for others to enjoy.
To be admitted to the building, first you have to agree to a set of basic
principles. You won't throw rocks at the windows. You won't put chewing
gum in the light sockets. You won't push anyone down the stairs. You won't
go door-to-door selling vacuum cleaners in the building. And you won't
claim to be someone who you aren't.
Oh, and your use of the building is a privilege which may be revoked if you
don't play well with others in the building.
All of the rooms are glass, and you can see everything that's going on in
each room, but all the rooms have locks. Upon agreeing to the rules for the
building, you're given a complete set of keys for every room. So you can go
into any room and talk to people, paint things on the walls, whatever you
want, as long as you don't break any of the building's rules.
On the first floor there's a giant hall where people do all sorts of
creative and wonderful things. On the second floor there's a marketplace
where people can buy and sell art-related things from one another. On the
third floor you draw with colored pencils. On the fourth floor you paint
with oils. On the fifth floor you paint with watercolors, and on the sixth
floor you have to get by with charcoal. On the seventh floor, you get to
use whatever materials you want. On the eighth floor you have to draw only
animals. On the ninth floor you draw only people. And on the tenth floor
you draw about drawing or paint about painting. (The tenth floor is kind of
weird.)
Now the ninth floor is divided up into several rooms. One room is for
teaching and learning about drawing and painting. Lots of friendly people
hang out there, eager to help and share. The next room over is a bit more
serious. This room is set up for the study of and experimentaion with new
techniques, new methods. Many brilliant masters hang out in this room and
create absolutely wonderful things. The rest of the rooms on the ninth
floor are galleries of various types of art involving people. One gallery
is for the human figure, another is for individual body elements, another is
for scenes of many people together.
This whole building exists, for the most part, in peace and harmony and
zest, as many people come and go as they please and do neat things. Some
people come to learn, some people come to express themselves, some people
come to see what other people have done...purely to enjoy.
Lately, the ninth floor has been losing some of its gusto. It used to be
that the ninth floor was a place you could go to see beautiful paintings of
hands and figures created the masters. You could always count on seeing and
hearing great things on the ninth floor. Today, however, if you visit the
ninth floor, you'll still see all of the beautiful paintings, but among the
delicately crafted masterpieces are ... how shall we say ... randomly placed
stick figures. Now, it's not against the law or against the rules of the
building to draw stick figures on the ninth floor, because stick figures are
people -- so no one is "in trouble" as it were. But it's generally agreed
upon that the ninth floor definitely seems less enjoyable -- and less
seriously devoted to the craft.
In fact, fewer visitors have begun to stop by the ninth floor lately because
of all the stick figures. Somehow, the stick figures just don't have the
same appeal as the masterpieces. What's worse, some of the masters
themselves have begun to show up less frequently, and some have even begun
not to show up at all. They just can't bear the thought of someone drawing
stick figures all over the place. The person drawing the stick figures was
even overheard once berating a master for taking his jolly old time on a
masterpiece. How absurd.
The people who frequent the ninth floor have talked to the stick-figure
artist many, many times about quality, attitude, love of the figure, and
devotion to the craft. They've even offered helpful hints and constructive
feedback many times, but and while it seems to help a little, it just
doesn't seem to help enough. Sometimes the stick figures do end up with a
little flesh on them, but most of the time they just end up with two heads,
an especially short arm, or extra toes.
Is there any solution to this problem?
Obviously, everyone could simply ignore all the stick-figures and the
stick-figure artist. How reasonable is that? Some of the masters have
decided that they can't ignore it, and that they're happier just leaving.
Or, everyone could get together and pose an ultimatum to the stick-figure
artist, asking him to knock it off -- to pursue a different field, or to
somehow magically improve straight to the master level overnight.
Or, everyone could get together ask the building manager to request the key
back to the rooms on the ninth floor. Since all of the rooms in the
building are glass, taking away a key to a room doesn't mean that someone
still can't watch what goes on in the room and learn from watching; it just
means that someone simply can no longer go in to a room and jump around and
make a fuss or mess things up. They're left to sit on the outside looking
in, so that the masters can get back to focusing on what they do best and
enjoy most: creating works of art, unfettered by the frustration of working
with a stick-figure artist in the room.
This is how I see it.
--Todd
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: i admit i was wrong
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| (...) bad, (...) [...] Very nice analogy. This is how restaurants, neighborhoods, dance/night clubs et. al. of all kinds start losing patronage and favor. It all starts with "I'll do what I want in here", which BTW can include the attitude of the (...) (25 years ago, 13-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev, lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: i admit i was wrong
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| (...) Sorry, but I can't snip this masterpiece. Nice anology?..No!..This is wonderful...:-) I can see your point, of course (it is not possible after reading this). Actually, I could already see it before my post, too. You are of course right, but (...) (25 years ago, 14-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev, lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: i admit i was wrong
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| (...) He has used profanity at least once (what I would call profanity), but that's beside the point. Just because someone hasn't broken any written rules (i.e., the Terms of Use), doesn't mean that they haven't violated tacit principles or canons (...) (25 years ago, 13-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev, lugnet.admin.general)
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