Subject: Again: expunge

From: [email-masked] (Thomas Ulich)
Date: 12 Jul 1996 08:48:05 GMT

Referring mostly to this "Bovine Remailer" type of guy, who seems to have
lost his own education, namely good manners, somewhere on the road between
his childhood and the moment of his news posting.  I prefer people who do 
not know certain facts over people who can't behave.

Back to the subject: EXPUNGE

To all of this discussion I might add my personal guess, that the vast
majority of pine users around the planet are non-native speakers of English,
and at least I heard the word "expunge" for the first time in my life, when
pine asked whether to expunge a message or not.  And I really needed the help
of a dictionary to figure out what this all is about.

Thus, I consider the use of this term confusing, at least it is not immediately
clear to everyone what it means.  This is against the idea of pine, to
provide an easy to use mail program.  Yes, probably there are many more
things in pine which are against this idea, and yes, maybe it is true, that
one has to be a UNIX Guru to work things out...

I cannot really judge this, because I happen to know UN*X very well, and I am
using the network and e-mail for a long time now.  But this is a strong 
argument as to whether or not "expunge" is a easy word, that when I as a
somewhat experienced user changed from elm to pine about half a year ago,
I ran into troubles.

And the moral?  Never flame somebody today for what you might do yourself
tomorrow, i.e., asking for something you do not know!

All the best from the land of the midnight sun,
-- 
Thomas Ulich  NEW e-mail: [email-masked]  www: http://cc.oulu.fi/~thu/
 
      Inuit say:  He who looks long upon the aurora soon goes mad.

---

From: Barry Landy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 10:47:25 +0100

On 12 Jul 1996, Thomas Ulich wrote:

:>
:>Referring mostly to this "Bovine Remailer" type of guy, who seems to have
:>lost his own education, namely good manners, somewhere on the road between
:>his childhood and the moment of his news posting.  I prefer people who do 
:>not know certain facts over people who can't behave.

Strong support for this view!

:>
:>Back to the subject: EXPUNGE
:>
:>To all of this discussion I might add my personal guess, that the vast
:>majority of pine users around the planet are non-native speakers of English,

I echo this. I give regular coures in Pine, and a large percentage of my
students are not English native speakers (I have Chinese, Japanese,
Africans, all flavours of European, and so on).

I do not even teach them about expunge because I rate the word as
extremely likely to be outside their vocabularies, and I am having quite
enough trouble teaching the basics.

:>and at least I heard the word "expunge" for the first time in my life, when
:>pine asked whether to expunge a message or not.  And I really needed the help
:>of a dictionary to figure out what this all is about.
:>
:>Thus, I consider the use of this term confusing, at least it is not immediately
:>clear to everyone what it means.  This is against the idea of pine, to
:>provide an easy to use mail program.  Yes, probably there are many more
:>things in pine which are against this idea, and yes, maybe it is true, that
:>one has to be a UNIX Guru to work things out...

But I do find Pine easy to teach, even to students who have no prior
experience of ANYTHING (this is in fact the primary reason we chose Pine
- though the fact that it is free also helped :-) )

:>And the moral?  Never flame somebody today for what you might do yourself
:>tomorrow, i.e., asking for something you do not know!

I would very much appreciate an easier linguistic alternative for
expunge. WipeOut comes to mind (but of course conflicts with WhereIs; 
there are no spare letters in Pine!). Another mailer I used to use had
Tidy for this verb. eXterminate is probably well understood, but
possibly a bit long for the "hints lines". 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry Landy                        Computer Laboratory:+44 1223 334600
Head of Systems and Development    Direct line:        +44 1223 334713
University of Cambridge Computing Service
New Museums Site                   Email:[email-masked]
Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG

---

From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 21:18:55 +0800 (GMT)

> Africans, all flavours of European, and so on).

	Well, I too have a diverse group to work with.  Some with UNIX
knowledge, some without.  Some with a good command of spoken English,
most without.  Can't say that I've had too much difficulty explaining
to them what expunge did.  Most of them had more trouble pronouncing it
than anything.  The groups that I've worked with generally see the
opportunity to learn a new word and once they learn the word....they
don't seem to forget.  Sometimes the sentences they produce to "show off"
their newly gained knowledge can bring a chuckle to your lips.

	I suppose I could be just lucky to have worked with a select
group of people who were not adverse to learning.  

	Regards,

		Ed

Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
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