free Nate

[THEOSU]

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Hi Bob:

The following is also available to our moderators.

Best wishes,
Mason

Despite my posts to the contrary, he made it very clear that

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Therefore I'm led to conclude that Mason just doesn't care very much about grammar or style.

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or something similar.

In my responses, I not only pointed out that we do care very much about writing issues, but right at the moment we have two texts which have been significantly delayed because of writing issues and these delays have cost us a fair amount of revenue which will not be recovered (and the authors have lost royalties that will not be recovered). So I don't know how else to answer his criticisms.

Yet he kept on. And eventually when this sort of thing happens, it becomes clear that there is an axe to grind and in his own way he's trying to damage our company. So he's now on vacation.

Normally I'm not the one who bans people and this authority is delegated to Mat Sklansky and through him to the rest of the moderators. So if and when Mat feels it's appropriate to reinstate this poster, it will be his decision. But I suspect his vacation will last at least a few days.

There's also another issue here. Checking my emails, this poster sent me his resume in March of 2006 looking for an editor job. Due to a computer crash where I lost some of my sent emails from my hard disk, I don't have my response to him. But we get these inquiries every now and then and my policy is to politely turn these people down.

Also, the book our critic is so negative towards is a book that was very difficult to edit, and in which our editing work was quite extensive. But unlike the other books I mention, we did make a decision to go with this text and not send it back to the authors for rewriting. We also decided not to bring in a skilled writer, such as an Alan Schoonmaker. These are decisions that we make inside our company and we try to make the best decisions we can given the information we have available. They are also impacted by publishing schedule, perceived sales potential, ease of working with the author(s), impact of the book on the company in general, printing costs, and a host of other issues.

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i got tired by the end of the other thread (2 hours of sleep all weekend will do that) but i'm pretty sure there was nothing by MM in that thread as expansive or informative as this. i'm pretty sure if this post, minus lol banaments info, had been in the other thread then nate would still be around.

add me to the collective in support of nate.

[samjjones]

I refuse to throw my support behind Nate's reinstatement until pics of no less than three really cute chicks are posted in this thread.

[steamboatin]

WOW,I seem to be the only one that thinks Nate went to far, other than Mason obviously.

I must live in my own little world or maybe if Nate had been saying those things about YOUR life's work, the opinions might differ.

[NU Star]

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for anyone who needs a refresher on just how arrogant and unyielding Mason Malmuth can be, check out an old thread in HSNL:

No wonder the games are so good!

To his defense, Mason did admit he was incorrect - after just about every HSNL poster/player disagreed with him.

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Wow,

Mason = Grimstarr

[UpstateMatt]

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UM,

"What would an apology from Nate look like?"

Mason, I apologize for offending you by repeatedly stating that you either don't care about or don't have the ability to edit these books in a more effective writing style that is easier to read and more grammatically sound. My intent was not to grind any ax or offend in any way. But while I enjoy and appreciate 2+2 and the books you produce, good editing and effective writing style are things I am very passionate about. This led to me being very vehement in my points and taking a tone that you obviously did not appreciate. I did not in any way mean to imply that you do not care about producing the highest quality work. I now realize that you are balancing the time it takes to edit works that are often submitted to you in very raw and poorly written form, while still getting your books to market in a reasonable timeframe. I apologize for any implication that you do not care about delivering the highest quality product for your customers. I simply felt that your books, while very good, could be even better and more effective; and I thought that perhaps I and/or other users in the 2+2 community might be able to help you in your goal to deliver the highest quality books possible.

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El D:

Fair enough, but isn't the entire gist of the above text already to be found in the content of the original thread?

To me, it's purely ego-stroking for Mason to not reinstate Nate under current circumstances, but to reinstate him after he repeats the above.

One point everyone seems to be forgetting is that Mason and company self-admittedly --- at the beginning of their books --- used to recognize that the books lacked the qualities one might seek in a professional piece of prose. For someone like Nate to suggest the same hardly seems ban-worthy, much less controversial.

So it must be the "tone" or "nature" of the way the argument was stated. But we all know very well that Nate was hardly out of line by "normal" 2+2 standards. Any other topic, any other book series, and there's no ban.

To me, that means only one thing: Mason took the ball and went home, right after Zee implied that doing so was a serious mark against one. To make Nate out here as somehow more in the wrong makes little sense to me.

[Ontario_Tory]

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WOW,I seem to be the only one that thinks Nate went to far, other than Mason obviously.

I must live in my own little world or maybe if Nate had been saying those things about YOUR life's work, the opinions might differ.

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Serious question here - do you think that Nate deserved to be perma-banned for the thread? Or do you agree that, regardless of his having gone too far, the banning is out of line?

My feeling is that Mason took away any legitimacy in the argument that Nate went too far by his serious over-reaction to it.

Here's my analogy - if somebody comes up and starts pushing me, and I pull out a gun and shoot them, while they may have been completely in the wrong to begin with, my over-reaction trumps the 'bad' that started the altercation.

OT

ps - my analogy is a bad one in that it assumes that Nate "sucker punched" Mason. In fact, I believe what happened is that Nate was passionate in his debating an issue - in a forum designed for debate.

[UpstateMatt]

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Friends of Nate,

I just read through that full thread. Nate should probably read the following info:

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it's dense with casualisms, solecisms, and shoddy puncutation.

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I guess none of us is exactly perfect...

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By the way, none takes a singular verb.

--Nate

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http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/039.html
"the citational evidence against restricting none is overwhelming. None has been used as both a singular and plural pronoun since the ninth century."

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-non2.htm
"It’s uncertain who started the notion that none requires a singular verb, but it’s pervasive, both in the US and Britain, and seems to have been drummed into the heads of generations of schoolchildren. However, all the usage guides — and the usage notes in every dictionary that I can find — are unanimous in saying that it’s wrong.

The argument stems from a misunderstanding of where the word comes from. People assume that none is a condensed form of no one or not one. As both always take a singular verb, the argument goes, so must none. However, the amateur etymologisers have got it slightly but seriously wrong. Our modern form none comes from the Old English nan. Though this is indeed a contraction of ne an, no one, it was inflected in Old English and had different forms in singular and plural, showing that it was commonly used both ways — King Alfred used it in the plural as far back as the year 888.

The big Oxford English Dictionary has a whole section on the plural form of none, pointing out that it is frequently used to mean “no persons” (with writers preferring no one when they mean the singular) and that historical records show that its use in the plural is actually more common than in the singular. There are examples cited in the entry from many of the best English writers (and there’s also an instance in the Authorised Version of the Bible: “None of these things move me”, from Acts, chapter 20). On modern usage, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says, “It appears that writers generally make it singular or plural according to whatever their idea is when they write”.

Such writers, me included, follow the sense — we use the plural or singular form according to whether it’s one or many things that we’re writing about. This grammatical construction, which is based on sense rather than form, has the grand name of notional agreement or notional concord, and is very common (so common that we often don’t notice we’re doing it).

So none of you are right when you accuse me of being ungrammatical."

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I fail to see how the quality of one's argument is relevant to the issue at hand. Are you arguing that people who are wrong on the forum should be banned? Or that one factor in banning people should be whether or not they were wrong?

The bottom line was that Nate pissed off the wrong powerful person. Any argument that the ban was content-neutral is ridiculous. Any other person, any other book, any other topic, and there is no ban.

And hey, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a private board and the owners can do as they want. But everyone else has the right to judge them on it, and to call BS when it happens.

matt

[El Diablo]

Matt,

I didn't say I thought he owed an apology or should have been banned. I was simply answering your question regarding what I thought an apology from Nate might look like.

As you say, I don't think something like what I wrote there would really say much of anything different from the thread itself. But it would probably get Nate reinstated faster (based on Mason's post, it appears that he's likely to be reinstated by Mat in a couple of days anyway).

The fact of the matter is, if you piss Mason off in certain ways on this forum, you may get banned, regardless of who you are or what you have contributed here. Most longtime users are aware of this. At that point, you can choose to either play by Mason's rules or stick to your guns and go somewhere else. That's everyone's individual decision to make.

[PITTM]

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WOW,I seem to be the only one that thinks Nate went to far, other than Mason obviously.

I must live in my own little world or maybe if Nate had been saying those things about YOUR life's work, the opinions might differ.

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sure, they might differ, for example, we could be reasonable human beings and not throw a tantrum when someone criticizes our work in progress that is admittedly lacking in exactly the area he criticized.

if nate is forced to apologize that would be ridiculously petty to the point where i would say i would "lose respect" for mason and the admins. However, the way they act really deserves very little to no respect imo. HAVE SOME CLASS ONE TIME PEOPLE.

[El Diablo]

Matt,

"I fail to see how the quality of one's argument is relevant to the issue at hand. Are you arguing that people who are wrong on the forum should be banned? Or that one factor in banning people should be whether or not they were wrong?"

Huh? WTF are you going on about?

I was simply pointing out the delicious irony in Nate's attempt at executing a sweet grammar burn on someone including a snarky FYP and comment.