[normhead]

"When I hear 'with all due respect' I know the last thing I'm going to get is the respect I'm due" ~Commissioner Reagan (Blue Bloods

If he had said "My opinion is not going to get the respect I think it's due." he would have been right.The person using the phrase to alert the person spoken too, that he will probably not like what's coming next, just to minimize shock. The error in the above observation would be that the original speaker actually has said something worthy of any respect. Of course in their opinion they are right, we already knew that.

In peaceful confrontation exercises it is customary to have to repeat the gist of what you oppose to the original speaker's satisfaction to ensure one properly understands the point made, which keeps people from straw man diatribes. That's the only way to completely eliminate these kinds of digressions.

Barring that, indicating that the other person's argument has some merit is all you can do.


But, no one's getting off the hook here, I've proposed a workable solution. If we can't use "With all due respect" to indicate that you understand, in a place where it should be used then what?.Here's the big issue. If someone is to clarify and post "this is what I think you said" and there's no response, you'd have to remove the offender and his post from the thread. Otherwise the result is a stalling tactic inhibiting free discussion.

Maybe people should just have thicker skins. Literally "with all due respect " isn't offensive. Maybe it's those who want to make it so that are the problem. Forums are really bad place for people who expect their opinions to be accepted verbatim without question.

I guess you could just say "I respect your opinion but I think you are in error " could be a substitute phrase. Let's not rewrite the whole English language. The fall back position should always be, take the phrase literally. We can't always be guessing what the regional interpretation of the phrase is in every part of the world.

There isn't a phrase in the world that can't be uttered in a sarcastic , dismissive tone. The fall back should be the literal, not the regional vernacular. And I have many times had to deal with student confrontations where someone got all up in arms over being dissed, when no sane person would have ever taken offence. I've also seen situations where I had to take kids aside and say, "Don't let anyone talk to you like that." If you stick to clarification, and sticking to the literal unless there is clear evidence otherwise, I think that's the best you can do.

---------- Post added 07-12-20 at 03:40 PM ----------

I reckon it comes from Yes Minister

"Hacker was beginning to understand Civil Service code language. Other examples are: 'I think we have to be very careful.' Translation: We are not going to do this. 'Have you thought through all the implications?' Translation: You are not going to do this. 'It is a slightly puzzling decision.' Translation: Idiotic! 'Not entirely straightforward.' Translation: Criminal. 'With the greatest possible respect, Minister ...' Translation: Minister, that is the silliest idea I've ever heard."

I would hate to think common usage of the English language would fall to the level of political gamesmanship.

The subterfuge used by people in hierarchical organizations to impose their will without having to engage in debate would certainly get you kicked out of my house. I don't let people play football in my house either. Those are sports played in specific arenas as a result of artificial power constructs, and have little to do with day to day conversation between peers.

If we are constrained by the possibility that someone may take something we say out of context in a way we didn't mean it, will anyone ever say anything?

It reminds me of the old joke."

Husband :"You look really beautiful today."
Wife "Do you mean I didn't yesterday you cad?"

Simple fact, a person determined to feel disrespected will.... there's nothing you can do about it.
Many feel anyone who disagrees with them are disrespecting them.
A thicker skin is needed for meaningful dialogue.

I have friends who express disagreement with my opinions way beyond what anyone here does. But they're still my friends. I have one Russian jewish friend who's slightly to right of Attila the Hun. But as long as we are still trying to understand each other, we'll go on being friends.

We were on the same baseball teams for 25 years, we still canoe trip together. Although we've been banned from campfires. If we want to talk politics we have to go out of earshot somewhere. He's a rocket scientist who works for Canada's space agency. It sort of takes away the whole " You think you're some kind of rocket scientist or something" line of defence.

And if you say "It's not rocket science." He may say "Well actually it is."

---

Last edited by normhead; 07-12-2020 at 01:13 PM.

[Rondec]

The content and tone of what follows will tell the recipient what you meant so I wouldn't worry about it, Mike.
Bless your heart.

I think this is the challenge with on line discussions. People often cannot discern your intended tone and therefore take offence.

I try to be pretty mild mannered, but there have been plenty of times I meant a comment, more in humor, and people on a thread jumped on it as an indication of my ignorance. But we are all family here and in a family all is forgiven till the next squabble...

[Wheatfield]

I think this is the challenge with on line discussions. People often cannot discern your intended tone and therefore take offence.

I try to be pretty mild mannered, but there have been plenty of times I meant a comment, more in humor, and people on a thread jumped on it as an indication of my ignorance. But we are all family here and in a family all is forgiven till the next squabble...

And for everything else, there is the ignore function, which on this forum is especially good.

[maw]

In my moderate opinion, a kind of dispute is starting up that leads nowhere, it often happens to read a comment with too much superficiality and respond accordingly,
I believe that in a forum (pentaxforums) like this, words have a weight and should not be thrown like gasoline on the fire. Good manners are always welcome.
I think that not responding in a hasty manner is the best solution.

[RobA_Oz]

While I try to be impersonal in responding to some posts, preferring to deal with facts rather than personalities, I sometimes find subsequent responses to be fairly pointed, overly lengthy and picking up on one (sometimes minor) aspect, which takes the discussion off in another direction or into a narrower area. When that happens, I’ll usually defer to the volume (as distinct from the weight) and bow out, without fanfare.

Respect, though, is quite another matter (even counting for etymology).

[Unregistered User 8]

Wow. I often use "with respect" as a sincere courtesy to signal my acknowledgement of, and respect for, someone's opinion when I'm disagreeing with them. Now I'm wondering which other courtesies I typically offer are being taken differently than intended, and perhaps even causing offence... One more reason, perhaps, why I'm not cut out for social media

The content and tone of what follows will tell the recipient what you meant so I wouldn't worry about it, Mike.
Bless your heart.

^^^^ OUCH !! ^^^^......................

Without context, words can mean anything the " reader " wants them to mean. I prefer to use (some would say overuse ) emoji's to convey the the meaning that I choose to convey. A smile is a smile in any language......................but......putting a smile at the end of an insulting post just turns an aggressive post into a passive/aggressive post, and doesn't fool anyone. I try to post so that a member with English (American ) as their 2nd language will understand my meaning.
Even if I know that my reply is to a known English speaker, others reading my post may not be.............

[niels hansen]

I has been a long linguistic jorney. I am not able to understand all of it, but the most relevant - in my eyes- is that the context is really relevant, that politeness may be an expression of misagreement and other negative feelings.
Many contributors make relevant principal statements, but I will try to be a Little more exact.
On page 11 I misplace a comment, Bigmaccam reacts. A fair comment would have been a short notice telling that the comment was misplaced,instead Bigmaccam starts with "respect" but continues with preaching morale,like an impatient teacher to a stupid pupil.
After that I admitted my mistake, isnt that an apology?
I have waited a while with this, discussing with myself and others if this reading is fair
Normhead has also commented, but I am not sure how to understand the content, so it is better not to answer.
I have found rthis forum usefull, I want Pentax to survive. That demands that Pentax reacts with cuatomer care on the issues that is reported in Pf

[gatorguy]

On page 11 I misplace a comment, Bigmaccam reacts. A fair comment would have been a short notice telling that the comment was misplaced,instead Bigmaccam starts with "respect" but continues with preaching morale,like an impatient teacher to a stupid pupil.
After that I admitted my mistake, isnt that an apology?
I have waited a while with this, discussing with myself and others if this reading is fair

As a person not involved I went back to the comment you referred us to and read it. Then I read BigMackCam's reply. In my opinion, BigMack did not appear to be "preaching to a stupid pupil". His was a relatively short response, and not intended only for you but for others beginning to stray off-topic even if their opinions are perfectly valid and welcome if stated in a more proper thread.

Yes, you also apologized for unintentionally distracting the discussion, I've had to do the same before, which I thought settled it all. No harm, no foul. Apparently for you it did not? Personally I think you're taking his comments as much more than they were, and if you took them as an affront it was simply due to a difference in native languages rather than his intent.

Our forums would not be nearly so lively and valuable if we all held the same opinions. Yours are as welcome as anyone's here as far as I'm concerned. The only mistake you made was stating them in the wrong thread. We all do it once in awhile and benefit from others politely bringing it to our attention.

[niels hansen]

As a person not involved I went back to the comment you referred us to and read it. Then I read BigMacCam's reply. In my opinion, BigMac did not appear to be "preaching to a stupid pupil". His was a relatively short response, and not intended only for you but for others beginning to stray off-topic even if their opinions are perfectly valid and welcome if stated in a more proper thread.

Yes, you also apologized for unintentionally distracting the discussion, I've had to do the same before, which I thought settled it all. No harm, no foul. Apparently for you it did not? Personally I think you're taking his comments as much more than they were, and if you took them as an affront it was simply due to a difference in native languages rather than his intent.

Our forums would not be nearly so lively and valuable if we all held the same opinions. Yours are as welcome as anyone's here as far as I'm concerned. The only mistake you made was stating them in the wrong thread. We all do it once in awhile and benefit from others politely bringing it to our attention.

Thanks a lot. I hope you are right- not sure. Big Mac adresses my name... If I continue it will be pixel peeping the language. My conclusio is that many of us may should be more carefull wrting and reading
regards

[BigMackCam]

I has been a long linguistic jorney. I am not able to understand all of it, but the most relevant - in my eyes- is that the context is really relevant, that politeness may be an expression of misagreement and other negative feelings.
Many contributors make relevant principal statements, but I will try to be a Little more exact.
On page 11 I misplace a comment, Bigmaccam reacts. A fair comment would have been a short notice telling that the comment was misplaced,instead Bigmaccam starts with "respect" but continues with preaching morale,like an impatient teacher to a stupid pupil.
After that I admitted my mistake, isnt that an apology?
I have waited a while with this, discussing with myself and others if this reading is fair
Normhead has also commented, but I am not sure how to understand the content, so it is better not to answer.
I have found rthis forum usefull, I want Pentax to survive. That demands that Pentax reacts with cuatomer care on the issues that is reported in Pf

As a person not involved I went back to the comment you referred us to and read it. Then I read BigMacCam's reply. In my opinion, BigMac did not appear to be "preaching to a stupid pupil". His was a relatively short response, and not intended only for you but for others beginning to stray off-topic even if their opinions are perfectly valid and welcome if stated in a more proper thread.

Yes, you also apologized for unintentionally distracting the discussion, I've had to do the same before, which I thought settled it all. No harm, no foul. Apparently for you it did not? Personally I think you're taking his comments as much more than they were, and if you took them as an affront it was simply due to a difference in native languages rather than his intent.

Our forums would not be nearly so lively and valuable if we all held the same opinions. Yours are as welcome as anyone's here as far as I'm concerned. The only mistake you made was stating them in the wrong thread. We all do it once in awhile and benefit from others politely bringing it to our attention.

Thanks a lot. I hope you are right- not sure. Big Mac adresses my name... If I continue it will be pixel peeping the language. My conclusio is that many of us may should be more carefull wrting and reading
regards

Niels - gatorguy's reading of my post is exactly how I intended it. I certainly didn't mean to preach.

After recently stepping down from a four year moderating stint, I guess I still have a tendency to try and level the playing field for all members, and perhaps that comes across as preaching to some, despite my best intentions. I'll try to be mindful of that when posting, and apologise if I offended you.

As for the "With respect" part, I was a little surprised to note how many people see this in a different context. However, it's sincerely meant when I write it, and part of the way I speak. I try not to offend, but sometimes that requires both the poster and reader to assume the best in each other...

[niels hansen]

Niels - gatorguy's reading of my post is exactly how I intended it. I certainly didn't mean to preach.

After recently stepping down from a four year moderating stint, I guess I still have a tendency to try and level the playing field for all members, and perhaps that comes across as preaching to some, despite my best intentions. I'll try to be mindful of that when posting, and apologise if I offended you.

As for the "With respect" part, I was a little surprised to note how many people see this in a different context. However, it's sincerely meant when I write it, and part of the way I speak. I try not to offend, but sometimes that requires both the poster and reader to assume the best in each other...

I have no reason not to believe you. Conclusion: good communicatiob is pretty difficult. regards

[Wiltshireborn]

To the PF community:

I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy in these unprecedented times (please check out our statement on the coronavirus if you haven't already). Like many other businesses, the camera industry has also suffered in the past months (e.g., low camera sales figures and more recently, the sale of the Olympus camera division, etc.). Consequently, even though it would seem that Pentax is coping quite well in comparison, we've been observing a steady rise in negative sentiment toward the Pentax brand throughout the community, which in some cases has led to unpleasant confrontations in forum threads and difficult decisions by the moderators.

In line with my mission of Pentax Forums being a friendly and inclusive community for Pentax users, we are going to be taking a series of steps to help minimize these kinds of unpleasantries going forward.

• We are seeking additional moderators across multiple time zones to ensure that fewer issues that require moderator attention slip through the cracks (please visit this thread if interested)
• To the extent possible, we will take a proactive approach to help members avoid issues, rather than directly stepping in to act on problematic post/threads
• We will provide a greater degree of transparency regarding moderator actions in cases where a member disagrees with a decision that was made, even if the decision itself is not reversed
• We will gather additional feedback from the community: please feel free to share your ideas in this thread (the moderators will not comment on specific incidents however), or contact the moderators privately
• Although constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged, we will continue to maintain a firm stance against any form of bullying, trolling, or personal attacks.

To the latter point, I'd like to reiterate this statement that the moderation team posted several months ago:

Thank you very much for your consideration, and - as always - many thanks for your valued contribution to the forums!

Thank you Adam, I really do not understand why anyone has to behave in a aggressive or hateful manner, whilst using ANY social website. We all have a love of photography on here, so just chill out and enjoy each others experience's

[iheiramo]

Good site. Good people. Few ignore needed to fix to my tastes, but even those are not for language used, but for general attitude in messaging that disturb my good vibes. All in all very civil corner of the internet

[mikesbike]

I have also found this forum to be a good source of information, and is very well-run. The moderators do a great job, and I add my thanks to them!

[felixkh]

Thank you Adam and the moderators for keeping this forum as it is today.

There are some who always dwell in negativity but overall this forums has good sharing by most.