Re: Politics and civility

John,

this must be an honest but useless attempt to translate your message in
french, this is not a critic of the original english message which is
perfectly fine but the french version is so loosy it's a shame.

If I translate it back and try to stay as dumb as the translater, which is
probably a machine, at least I hope it is.

''nous devons empêcher le --''abusif de poteaux
we must stop the -- abusing of (fence) post

Computer can do great things but translating is not one of them. Even man
made translations are one of the most difficult task to take on, I had a
friend ounce who did translation for a living and she explain the kind of
horrors that where done frequently. If one as no other reference then just
the few words in front of him or her especially if this one person doesn't
have a clue when it come to english, there is no way this person can know
what you are talking about. I used a french to english translater to see
what it would come up with for "abusif" and it gave me a lot of options but
none that seem to carry the weight this word can mean, for example sometime
you use it in the following context, for <a father that does nasty things to
his children> we would say something like (un père abusif) and in this case
with the translater suggestions I saw none that carry the same feeling an
"abusing" father can give you. I hope I made my point.

When I said earlier that I like this line of thought, I should have been
more specific, we strive for perfection but we are far from it as human
being I mean. There is nothing wrong about politics per say, it's an
important part of our life wheter we like it or not but thos it have it's
place here on this list? I suppose we could decide whatever we want as a
group and I have no problem about taking actions of somekind to prevent some
folk here to start the third world war. Ok that's may be a little heavy but
I'm sure you know what I mean.

I'll just add this, here where I live in Quebec, 700 miles strait above
New-York, we use to speak politic in family reunion, at the corner store, at
church and basically every time there was an opportunity. My grand fathers
and other grand fathers (I'm not sure about grand mothers) of the time spoke
a lot of politics to the point that my fathers generation decide to put a
stop to this so talking politics became kind of outlawed almost every where
including church in a single generation,. Today, it can be hard to find
someone to speak seriously about politics. I'm very aware of what banning
politics can do but this list is only a microsociety and I don't think
banning politics here would have repercussions outside this list.

Regards
Yves

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Grocott" <john.grocott403@ntlworld.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 5:34 AM
Subject: Re: Politics and civility

> ''nous devons empêcher le --''abusif de poteaux
> ..............................
> Mais, comment ? Avec le respect, J'estime que ce signalisation suivante
est
> art de l'auto-portrait contradictoire, mais pas sans elle est la valeur.
> Merci.
> .....................................
>
>
> ''we need to prevent abusive posts --''
> ..............................
> But, how? With respect, I feel that this following posting is self
> contradictory, but not without it's value.
> Thank you.
>
> John Grocott-Photographist- London - UK
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "etienne garbaux" <photographeur@nerdshack.com>
> To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
> Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 2:20 AM
> Subject: Re: Politics and civility
>
>
> > Katharine wrote:
> >
> >>>> The point is that our
> >>>> political opinions should not be of interest here, one
> >>>> way or the other, because this is not a political list.
> >>>> The only thing of interest here is alternative
> >>>> photography. Those who choose to continue making this a
> >>>> political list, will kill this list.
> >
> > Richard wrote:
> >
> >> Chris and Kathrine, I think the problem here is that
> >> some of the posts were pretty abusive.
> >
> > * * *
> >
> >> I certainly agree with the principal you state but also
> >> believe that abusiveness stops all reasonable discussion and
> >> must not be alowed here.
> >
> > I agree with Richard -- we need to prevent abusive posts -- but in
> > practice, permitting political discussion inevitably leads to ugliness.
> > At
> > least it always has here, as well as on three or four dozen other lists
I
> > could name. The question appears to be whether to allow it up to the
time
> > it turns ugly, or not. I'm with Katharine -- politics is off-topic, and
> > at
> > best it detracts from the list. If people won't keep their politics to
> > themselves without help, we should terminate their posting privileges at
> > the very first mention of it (maybe letting them back on after a month
for
> > the first offense). We should not wait for repercussions.
> >
> > Further, we should construe "politics" broadly, to include expressing
> > views
> > on any contentious, non-photographic social issues. For that matter, in
> > my
> > view we should apply the policy to all off-topic posts, although I would
> > NOT advocate construing "off-topic" broadly. (That is, I would advocate
> > construing "on topic" so as to allow fairly wide departures, as long as
> > there was some relevance to alt.photo and the subject was not politics.)
> >
> > Just a suggestion. I do not intend to debate it, and will most likely
not
> > respond to further posts on the subject. But I do think it is necessary
> > if
> > we are to preserve the list. Looking back over my 8 or 10 years
watching
> > the list, I can think of at least fifteen expert and valuable
contributors
> > who have left because of the sniping and the many off-topic excursions.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > etienne
> >
Received on 05/04/06-07:04:11 AM Z