[pct-l] Bicycle Usage Proposal

[Gary Wright]

On Sep 20, 2010, at 1:14 PM, greg mushial wrote:
> Sorry: but  :-)  means that you'd be happy to de exactly what you  
> said - to
> promote it where you can... (ie, picking a fight, posting such on a  
> hiker's
> board), on the otherhand, if you had used  ;-)   (a wink) then you  
> would
> have been understood, and in all likelyhood would not have provoked  
> the
> responses you got (I know I wouldn't have posted, but I don't speak  
> for
> others).

It doesn't surprise me to find that different people interpret emoticons
differently. The distinction that you authoritatively declare doesn't
really exist in my mind.

A smiley has been an indicator for satire, jest, and joking, for as  
long as
I can remember seeing it and using it. For me that goes back 27 years to
just a year after the smiley was coined in 1982.

Satire, even when done in person with all the associated body  
language, can
be overlooked or misinterpreted.  You have to be doubly-careful with
textual communication.

Satire can also be used to cover up a faux pas and so someone
later claiming to be satirical doesn't necessarily have to be taken at
face value.

As I said previously, we would all be better off if we ratcheted down  
the
rhetoric a notch or two and were a little more generous in our  
assumptions
of other people's motivations.

With regard to the hiker/biker wars in certain areas.  It seems to me  
that
a small minority of bad actors (probably on both sides) have  
succeeded in
poisoning the sense of community on those trails.  It really doesn't  
take
a lot of miscreants in a community for this to happen.

Radar