The templates come across to me as officious. As people trying to make themselves look quasi-official since there is a box around their words. And sort of trying to get the upper hand. I don't like them. TCO ( talk) 10:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I see this all the time and was even treated this way when I first started on Wikipedia under a different name (years ago - new account to distance myself from my old identity). It especially sucks that people tend to use WP:HAMMER (and the essay itself is written in a hugely-condescending tone, like "We're SO tired with dealing with people who do this and you should know by now) with all the subtlety of a child getting thrashed on the behind with a switch. Just thought I'd reinforce the essay's point. Lazy Bastard Guy 21:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
I got a good laugh out of your example template. I am going to ramble about a quasi experiment I performed, 40 years ago, when I was an undergrad. I did most of my work on the Faculty of Arts new UNIX system. But I was a teaching assistant for an introductory course, computers for arts students, where my students had to use the University's big iron, an IBM 370 computer, running CMS. CMS was extremely painful to use, because it was originally developed as a simple DOS or CPM like single processor operating system for system developers to use when testing systems software on their virtual machines. Every user got their own virtual card readers, virtual disks, and other virtual devices.
Anyhow, using one system during the day, and another at night, I found myself typing the commands for one system, when I was on the other system. I noticed other people did this too.
I wrote a shell procedure, with many incoming links - kind of like the linux busy-box. My first iteration would try to figure out what I meant, by looking at my args, and then just invoking the real Unix commands for that. But that almost never worked the way I intended.
In addition to the man command, that showed pages from the Unix manual, this version 7 system had a command that would print a much briefer synopsis - usually just a couple of lines. So, my second iteration just used arg zero, the name the shell procedure was invoked under to call up the synopsis page for the corresponding Unix command.
One day I happened to be watching Dave use the Unix system, while I was talking to his friend Frank. I saw him type in a CMS command, when he was on the UNIX system. I saw my shell procedure work perfectly, and tell him he tried a CMS command, when on Unix, and give him that brief synopsis of how to use the Unix command.
Then a few seconds later he said, "Hey Geo, how do you use this Unix command".
I was flabbergasted.
I asked him if he didn't see that my clever shell procedure had just shown him the synopsis.
He said, "Oh yeah, that bumpf. I didn't understand that stuff the first time this happened, so I always just tune it out."
I see this as similar to what you described in your essay.
Cheers! Geo Swan ( talk) 05:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
The templates come across to me as officious. As people trying to make themselves look quasi-official since there is a box around their words. And sort of trying to get the upper hand. I don't like them. TCO ( talk) 10:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I see this all the time and was even treated this way when I first started on Wikipedia under a different name (years ago - new account to distance myself from my old identity). It especially sucks that people tend to use WP:HAMMER (and the essay itself is written in a hugely-condescending tone, like "We're SO tired with dealing with people who do this and you should know by now) with all the subtlety of a child getting thrashed on the behind with a switch. Just thought I'd reinforce the essay's point. Lazy Bastard Guy 21:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
I got a good laugh out of your example template. I am going to ramble about a quasi experiment I performed, 40 years ago, when I was an undergrad. I did most of my work on the Faculty of Arts new UNIX system. But I was a teaching assistant for an introductory course, computers for arts students, where my students had to use the University's big iron, an IBM 370 computer, running CMS. CMS was extremely painful to use, because it was originally developed as a simple DOS or CPM like single processor operating system for system developers to use when testing systems software on their virtual machines. Every user got their own virtual card readers, virtual disks, and other virtual devices.
Anyhow, using one system during the day, and another at night, I found myself typing the commands for one system, when I was on the other system. I noticed other people did this too.
I wrote a shell procedure, with many incoming links - kind of like the linux busy-box. My first iteration would try to figure out what I meant, by looking at my args, and then just invoking the real Unix commands for that. But that almost never worked the way I intended.
In addition to the man command, that showed pages from the Unix manual, this version 7 system had a command that would print a much briefer synopsis - usually just a couple of lines. So, my second iteration just used arg zero, the name the shell procedure was invoked under to call up the synopsis page for the corresponding Unix command.
One day I happened to be watching Dave use the Unix system, while I was talking to his friend Frank. I saw him type in a CMS command, when he was on the UNIX system. I saw my shell procedure work perfectly, and tell him he tried a CMS command, when on Unix, and give him that brief synopsis of how to use the Unix command.
Then a few seconds later he said, "Hey Geo, how do you use this Unix command".
I was flabbergasted.
I asked him if he didn't see that my clever shell procedure had just shown him the synopsis.
He said, "Oh yeah, that bumpf. I didn't understand that stuff the first time this happened, so I always just tune it out."
I see this as similar to what you described in your essay.
Cheers! Geo Swan ( talk) 05:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)