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Re: [RC] Does anybody even bother to read the rules? (an apology) - k s swigartI wish to apologize to Barbara McCrary for quoting her post in my response about this. I didn't mean it as an underhanded swipe at her; although, apparently many people took it that way, so obviously I was totally inept with respect to what I was actually trying to communicate. Which was, why doesn't anybody (not Barbara specifically) check the accuracy of what they are saying before submitting things to an international publication? And to point out that, with respect to what it says in the AERC's rules about ride distance sanctioning, checking first would have been very easy. A goodly number of people complain about being corrected when they are wrong, and I confess that I am piss poor at doing it without ruffling somebody's feathers and having them take it personally. I don't take some kind of perverse pleasure in correcting people's misrepresentations of easily checked facts, especially since I am so bad at doing it without offending (and, belive it or not, there are MANY times that I choose not to even bother). My purpose in my previous post with this title was to try to provoke people into checking for themselves before they publish. I have no idea whether I have been successful in this endeavour, but probably not. Tammy Robinson could easily have avoided being corrected for (and then having to complain about being corrected for) asserting that there were no wild horses in SW Idaho had she simply gone the the BLM website, followed the links to Wild Horses and to Idaho and discovered that it says that there are 775 wild horses in Idaho and four Herd Management Areas in/around the Boise Area which is both south and west of Council, Idaho where she says she never saw any. It took me about 15 minutes to do this (which I didn't do, mind you, until she complained about being corrected). However, clearly, while I acknowledge that I am quite good at identifying when people have made misstatements in their posts, I am virtually incompetent when it comes to pointing it out without people taking offense. You can rest assured that no offense is meant. I wish I were as good at it as Ed Hauser. Because I am aware that I have little social skill with respect to correcting misstatements without causing offense, when people make misstatements, I am left with two choices: correcting them ineptly or leaving the misstatements uncorrected, neither option of which particularly appeals to me (and I vascillate between them and employ both of them). And this most recent post was an, obviously inept, attempt at getting people to do their own fact checking so that I am not constantly faced with that unappealing choice. And, believe it or not, I am genuinely confused as to why people don't. It seems eminently simple to me that the best way to avoid being corrected for saying something wrong is to check before saying things to ensure that they are not wrong. I can't say that I always do this (I have been known to be wrong and sometimes I don't even know where to check), but I always try to. Not only because I don't much like being caught publishing something that is wrong (who does), but also because I think it inconsiderate to my audience to publish misinformation, even if inadvertently, if checking first will avoid it. kat Orange County, Calif. :) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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