you know, I had never heard about the Awl or this Choire guy until the posts last week - but it turns out he's apparently quite a cool guy.. check out his personal reply to my email sent to the general questions address over there:
---------------------
> hi -
>
> I've spent the last week getting settled into the crasstalk.com site that Choire recently posted about, and now I'm finding that, although it seems to be mostly good people there, there is an 'unwritten' rule about proper capitalization in one's comments. Not talking about grammar, or spelling, or even punctuation, but freaking capitalization.
>
> so my question (note the lack of a capital at the beginning of this sentence) is, will this be an issue for me if I become part of the awl community?
>
> thanks, and happy chocolate day :)
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No sir!

We don't give two f*cks [edited by mostlysane just in case] about punctuation. The only bannable offense
here is flagrant a**holism [more editing, this guy has quite the pottymouth, huh? :) ]or posting "tl;dr" and that's only if I
spot it.

yours in lowercase,

c.

1) you can't remind someone of something that they never know and that is an unwritten rule - although I suppose that as long as your attempt is properly capitalized, this outweighs any other factors
2) strangely enough, I had contributed almost 100 comments here, beginning from before you were ever seen in these parts, and quite a few of those comments were directly to the admins - no one has seemed to have a problem with it except you, and presumably the admins do have access to my email address if it were something they took seriously
3) not being able to take content seriously on its own terms due to the form it is presented in would seem to be saying that the form prevents being able to even recognize what the 'own terms' of the content even are
4) not all content is meant to be taken seriously - as one whose total contributions to this site to date are almost entirely one-liners and links, I'm surprised to need to tell you that
5) gnats do not victimize, they only annoy
6) making a guess about your approximate age by the fact that you have yet to tackle hegel and nietzche, both of which I had absorbed before you had probably even seen your 1st computer, I find it amusing that you are the one with the 'get off my lawn' attitude - you are going to be quite insufferable by the time you finish nietzche, but don't worry, it's only a phase
7) pi does not equal a round number, people are not always logical and rational, and some mysteries about history, life, and relationships can never be solved, no matter what resources are committed - and these are all facts that form can not contain or do anything other than limit (you'll figure out what this means eventually)
8) some years before you were learning to walk, I sometimes used a screen-name of 'moose4hire' in IRC, and once upon a time, I chanced into a room where some guy liked to sit back like the little demagogue that he was and give people flak about their shortcomings, all of them about form - his name wasnt WetBlanket but it might as well have been.. so after it became too boring to deal with, I thanked him for his attempts to guide us and left a fresh pile of moose pellets on his shoes as I made my way out. So, as I move along to other communities that have better uses for sticks than to massage their hemorrhoids, please accept my donation of sanity-berries upon your no-doubt shiny white puffed-up nikes :)

you are quite right, and I think that both panda (whose post I was responding to) and buick and others and I were not really talking about the issues with Swifter so much as about a general feel of some things that have been said today - you would need to ask them what their focus was when they talked about rules - in my case it wasnt about grammar police (as if grammar dictates how meaningful and valuable someone's comment is) but about the even more trivial and anal attitude regarding punctuation and capitalization that I was overtly threatened about.

Yes, this brigade exists on all forums, but they dont usually have the power to have someone exiled. If they do have that power here, then fine, it's a place where form outweighs content and someone who has typing or ESL handicaps will not have their contributions welcomed. And further, if they have the power and confidence to make those threats publicly, without even consulting with the admins, then that says something too.

Yes, my issue that I'm projecting is that I would like to think that this is a place where what you have to contribute is more important what it looks like - and if some reader can't penetrate to the content because they keep stumbling over punctuation, then is their handicap and/or prejudice reasonable grounds to dismiss any content that might have been there?

No - in truth, my issue is that I just plain old don't think anyone has the right to control what someone else says or how they say it. Now, in your words, do I have the right to my opinion, regardless of how it's formatted, or not? I gather that this is an issue that was decided by 'unwritten' (the worst kind) law on the old crosstalk - I wouldnt know, I was strictly an io9 guy and we were always shaking our heads about the things that the other places would get so worked up about. But everyone that came there had nothing but good things to say about the level of comments that happened every day. I never ever saw any of this drama and attempts to control how someone said what they had to say.

Please understand, I am not being confrontational with you, and I'm glad you brought this up in an attempt to clarify the issues. I guess now it's up to the admins and the community to re-visit which parts of the status quo will carry over and what the community standards will be about acceptable appearance of content.

thank god for the non-USA attitude :) +1

yes, and what is the cost of tolerating what one does not agree with?

speaking as someone who has spent a lot of time there, one of the best things about the chinese culture is that, contrary to what the xenophobes would have you believe, the only rule that most people there pay much attention to is 'whatever works'

driving the wrong way up a freeway exit ramp? 'oh ok, I see what youre doing, no problem' - I saw this every day.. so don't let anyone tell you that anarchy doesnt work when there are over a billion people involved - it only doesnt work when people let the control freaks get away with their power games

if the lingo doesnt give me away, yes, I fought these battles when it was about how long my hair was and whether it was ok for me to walk home from school with a 'colored' girl.. my generation pushed back hard enough to stop a war, kick a president out of office, and make discrimination illegal, and now I'm getting people in my face about how I freaking type?? What. Ever.

There are some good people here. The torch is being passed. Don't let the uptights make the rules for you. Keep the faith and remember that it's the spirit that counts, not the rules.

some folks just arent comfy with others that are too different in values or tastes or priorities - all about control and ego

if they ever got what they wanted, they would probably be amazed at how boring life is, but the thrill is in the domination, I guess

not with that big ole backseat, huh?

somehow I wasnt too worried that you had a sense of humor that isnt regulated by some kind of stylebook :)

looks like I'm one of the next on the control-freak's target list (what else is new?), but when we cross paths again, maybe I'll have enough saved up to buy you a half-tank of gas ;)

+1
you are far too tolerant and practical to be posting on the internet, you know that, right?

I think youre very right, we're on several slippery slopes here - we can hope that the admins will refuse the responsibility to be the equivalent of cops who specialize in jay-walking tickets and that those who simply can not live in a world without laws will learn to deal with the fact that we aint all like that

on the other hand, I'm trying to figure out how someone who's into buicks could have a problem with dullness

youre kidding, right?

in light of all-too-recent drama, let's just agree that this is not crosstalk, there's room for all kinds of styles that arent abusive, and then I can go back to reading my e.e. cummings ;)

to short-circuit any cause for drama, if you feel you must take this personally, please go ahead and take a free shot in reply and I promise to be so abashed that I will slink off and let you win this one :)

I did too, felt warm and comfy.. I would have preferred cherry or maybe walnut, but those would be too dark if they were ever showing in a place that had text on them

birds-eye maple is good too