Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2018-10-10 23:24
Philip wrote:
>> However, it isn't very clear what the problem is that needs fixing on this board.>>
As I've said many times, there are plenty of things that people here can and should post quite freely. Their opinions, for example, as in: I like that performance, I don't like that player, and so on.
I'm not myself much interested in people's unsubstantiated opinions – but others may well be. I'm not even much interested in my OWN opinions, which is why I seldom post them.
What I am however interested in is information. And, I think it's very important that that information be TRUE information. True information isn't personal in the way that opinions may very well be.
>> Is the idea that people without certain bona fides ought to be readers only on this board, and not writers? >>
No, because bona fides don't guarantee true posts.
What I would like is that people who don't know much about something try to find out more about that something before posting what first comes into their heads.
In a 'bull-session', as characterised by Harry G Frankfurt (sorry about the initial typo 'Harry S Frankfurt') what comes first into your head is perfectly acceptable.
Notice that this may not be a BAD thing in a bull-session, which has acceptability criteria which are much looser than those of other environments. I'm reminded of the rhyme:
Home life is wonderful
Orgies are vile;
But you need a little orgy
Every once in a while.
People have said here that the 'bull-session stance' doesn't matter, because what people say EVEN ABOUT MATTERS OF FACT will be corrected in the long run.
But it does matter, because many people can't distinguish between the false staters and the correcters. So the truth gets drowned out, in both the short and the long run.
I would like people to think more before posting their 'information'.
Here's an example:
I had something very important to say in the thread 'Intonation difficulty in the simplest case.'
By that I mean, important to EVERYONE, not only to my immediate colleagues, but to students in youth orchestras, professionals in symphony orchestras and so on. I had discovered it by enquiry of informed people. I spread it around.
To appreciate it, you needed to make a little effort; but if you do make that effort, you're released from a possibly persistent worry into another way of looking at the difficulty that can in many cases lead to a resolution.
I hesitated quite a lot about posting it here. That's because I feared that it would be drowned out, as usual. Another way of putting that is that I DIDN'T TRUST YOU. But in the end I did, with mixed results. I think it was worth doing, because some people 'got it'. But there was quite a lot of noise, and I don't know whether the idea made it out cleanly from the ruckus.
Much of the noise came from people who posted innocently out of their limited experience. But some of them were less innocently willing to lay down the law as is their habit here.
My plea here is to have less informed people inform themselves before trying to lay down the law.
Tony
Post Edited (2018-10-10 23:54)
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