[Twisted-Python] more on IRC frustration

Glyph Lefkowitz glyph at twistedmatrix.com
Tue Sep 30 13:34:15 EDT 2003


Mentioning IRC frustrations in my message to paul reminded me of something.

There is one stylistic hint in particular I'd like to point out, because 
it causes the most misunderstanding, and it seems as though it may be 
particular to our peculiar IRC subculture.  If you're in #twisted and 
somebody says something like this:

<usr> Hi there!  I am a user with a proble integrating widgets and 
frobules, and there seems to be a problem with version 2.5-X of Twisted.
<dev> i guess you are just an idiot then!  haha idiot

Though I seriously doubt such a straightforwardly hostile exchange would 
occur, watch the punctuation in the #twisted regular's phrase.  If it 
follows the pattern

<dev> sentence with no punctuation! additional sentence

it is most likely intended as sarcasm, whereas if it is phrased with 
mroe conventional grammar and punctuation,

<dev> I guess you're just an idiot, then.  Heh.  Idiot.

Then you should really be offended :-).  Other cues of sarcasm include 
use of the word "r" (for "are"), "si" (for "is"), and "teh" (for "the") 
  We rarely make those typos unintentionally.





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