Well, well, well. Where to start?
How very interesting that on your very first post, you make a personal attack - something I've never done to anyone here even when I've been at my most critical. That doesn't make you look too good. Or, as is probably more likely, you're already here under another username, in which case choosing to have a pop at me under a pseudonym makes you a bit of a coward really. At least if I have something to say I say it under my own name.
But, let's look at your criticisms of me.
1. I don't think my point about posting links to foreign-language articles is an irrelevance on a UK forum. Yes, I could read the Dutch one, but if it had been in Spanish or Polish or Finnish, for example, I'd have been as much in the dark as anyone else who might have been interested in the link.
2. My busy-ness on here - not that it's anyone's business but mine, but firstly I don't visit here every day, and when I do it's usually for less than 5 minutes. For 99% of the time I don't respond to posts because a) I have nothing to say or b) it's all been said before on here (and not necessarily by me, either).
3. I'm at my desk too. My desk just happens to be at home because I'm freelance. Last time I checked that status didn't make me any less hardworking or productive than a staffer. And I'm too busy working to earn a living to spend more than a few minutes every 2 days or so.
4. You accuse me of not being a journo. I find that laughable given that my career has lasted 30 years. I'm currently a commissioning editor for one publication on a freelance basis, as well as writing for several others. My staff career includes having been the editor of the UK's oldest daily newspaper, The Public Ledger, as well as having worked on a string of other nationally known titles (mainly magazines).
5. You attribute an extraordinary claim to me about "statements of "fact" (the blogger's mantra: If it is typed and posted, ergo it must be fact)" - er, where have I posted anything on here ever from a blog and claimed it as a fact? I'd be careful if I were you as that could be interpreted as defamatory, suggesting I don't check my facts and just randomly quote stuff from blogs.
6. Excuse me but I hadn't realised it was a crime to try and uphold journalistic standards or expect people to behave professionally (something you've failed to do by attacking me). Yes, I'm critical on here, but it's precisely because so many people come on here with no experience asking ridiculous questions about how to break into journalism when clearly they've been too lazy to go to a library and do some basic research on the requirements for becoming a journalist. When I started out in 1978, my first boss was a lot harsher to me than I've ever been on here and like many trainees I went through a bollocking most days as a way of learning on the job the standards that were expected of me. I learned a lot very fast and have applied that ever since.
7. I do actually give constructive advice on here fairly regularly, but you chose to overlook that. As it's clearly not appreciated here, I won't bother any more but offer it on the other forum I use where it IS appreciated.
My God, Louise! Will you give it a rest!
This person posts a post about an Iphone app with a couple of examples, and you steam over the horizon in your battleship, the HMS Sanctimonious, and proceed to blast away at them in tremendously over the top fashion.
I am astonished at the arrogant tone you use, the rude things you type and the patronising method of your argument. You have the audacity to compare this person's link to an article in Dutch to being as useful as one "in Tagalog about flossing"? They are just showing it's an international thing, and you have to throw in that little nugget that you can speak Dutch while the rest of us spanners won't get the relevance of an article shown in a foreign tongue? Well thanks for that. Round of applause, and a fat woop-de-doo. I think you missed the point there a bit, don't you?
Why are you so busy on here anyway? You must spend ages on this site every day! I sit at my desk (that's right, my desk, in an office, where I am an editor and writer, getting on with my work in the editorial field professionally and respectfully) and do you know what I do to amuse myself over my mid-morning coffee? I log into this site to see what thread or news item or request you've decided to lambast with your lamentably trite, rude, crude and patronising statements of "fact" (the blogger's mantra: If it is typed and posted, ergo it must be fact) and it amuses me. Then I tut-tut and get on with my job. Like you should be doing. Do you do anything other than type posts on here being rude to people and patronising their attempts to get or share info? Get out of your ivory tower and get on with being a writer or a journo, if that is indeed what you are. After all, you must be one if it's been typed and people can see that typing, so it must be fact, right? Put the claws away, stop putting your tuppence-worth in every two minutes and PLEASE try to stop being rude and patronising about 'journalistic style', 'professionalism','not putting links on' and all that sanctimonious drivel. After a while it stops being funny. Really.
Happy Easter, one and all.
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