[wsfii-discuss] WSFII-Calendar & NewsBlog :-)

Thu Jan 5 10:40:15 UTC 2006

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 11:08:53AM +0100, Gregers Petersen wrote:
> A new year does as always bring new aspects of everyday life - and 
> the everyday life of "WSFII" is not different from this :-)

i absolutely love the new design and think the effect is great.
thanks very much to anyone who worked on it.

BUT.

I do not like the repeated use of "we" one bit, or these references to
"the coord group" that do not identify the self-appointed organisers. 

who are we? 
i cannot speak for you. 
you cannot speak for me.
can you really speak for we?

when someone i do not know says "we",
i listen extra cautiously.

if we are, then so are they.
does that need to be?

it is possible to take any 'we' statement and rewrite it in a way
which, for me, helps clarify what message is being sent. talking to
"you" has a definite appeal. Perhaps that's just another kind of
rhetorical trick, but i think it's a less slick one. 

If you ever got into 'e-prime' - a version of english which doesn't
use the word "is" in a definitive way - i found trying to stay e-prime
a fun and instructive exercise, both in being more considered about
what i said, and in being able to deconstruct the statements of others.

I strongly feel that Wsfii should be "we-prime".

what do you think?

-jo