[wp-forums] It was a rant

[TechGnome]

Th flip side is that a lot of the time, some people's problems with 
their theme is that is ISN'T valid, and if they would just clean it up, 
they might find their theme works after all. I realize that some people 
don't care about being valid (X)HTML, which is fine, as long as they 
understand that it's going to make debugging the theme that much harder.

That said.... I only vaguely remember the thread, as I usually try to 
stay out of the fire, but I don't think there's anything wrong with 
encouraging posters to make sure that their stuff is valid, but I don't 
think they should be raked over coals if they decide they don't want to.

As for fanning the flames, I don't know how many times over the last 
couple of years that I've started a reply to defend myself (or some one 
else) only to decide that in the end, it wasn't really going to make any 
difference, and could potentially make it worse. In the end I simply 
delete the reply, or I'll post it on my blog if I feel like I absolutely 
HAVE to say something.

Based on my experience in another forum, I've noticed that this seems to 
apply more often than not in these cases: You can lead a horse to water, 
but you can't make him drink. The follow up to that is, but you could 
try to push him in and see what happens.  In other words, you can't help 
some one who deep inside doesn't want to be helped (despite what they 
say), and so you just have to sit back and watch them sink or swim

As for the noise level, I think that comes from the fact that we don't 
put up with people's crap, and aren't afraid to use that delete key of 
ours, and people know it.

-tg

Phu wrote:
> It's not just flames; I think the other points are just as valid. Also,
> Handy and TG are right; there's no need to respond in like. I've seen 
> a few
> people (including some of whom are generally quite helpful) bite back 
> at at
> an inflammatory response. It's human nature to defend yourself but it's
> usually a better idea to just take a step back, look at the bigger 
> picture
> and just let it go.
>
> Saying that, the WP support forum is relatively noise free considering 
> the
> size and breadth of the project so it'd be a shame for this not to 
> continue.
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