Today’s topic is one of my favorites, mostly because it allows me to ramble more than usual: communication.

Background: The Hillbilly is on the board for his condo association. At least until the next elections (in 127 days) when I can step down. Really should resign but my daughter has been making waves of quitting one or two of her activities because they’re “too hard” and I don’t want to be too hypocritical when I say she has to finish out the year.

There is one resident who loves and lives to “communicate”. When an e-mail discussion reaches a certain length, inevitably he will be affronted enough to send a lengthy e-mail along these lines:

Coding Hillbilly as far as I am aware I have always been civil in this matter . Lord knows I have been tempted to inject the odd profanity here and there . Do not confuse my civility with some perceived right on your part to protection from criticism . You presume to tell me what your job does not consist of so allow me to enlighten you as to what it does entail . As a Trailer Park Heights board member you owe me a fiduciary duty of care to act in the best interests of the association in accordance with the covenants and the articles . For your edification the association consists of its members so that includes "me" !  I have every right to hold you to account and demand that you carry out your duty . I am not playing games as you suggest Hillbilly , I am deadly serious . Unfortunately I don't feel that you or the board are at all serious . I don't think you understand the covenants and clearly you do not understand your role as a director at Trailer Park Heights . All I have asked you to do is enforce the covenants I get the distinct impression that you have interpreted my request as little more than an annoying pretext orchestrated by me to wage a perceived vendetta against Arbuckle ; nothing could be further from the truth . As a result you continue to fail in the discharge your duty of care owed to me and to the members generally . I think the board's handling of this matter is as poor and naive as your recent choice of Arbuckle as Chairman In fact I think this board has done a pretty poor job all around and continues to be leaderless .  Basically no-one has done much of anything and the most readily apparent evidence of this is the appalling state of the landscaping . 

You have volunteered to work for the members ! Part of your job is to make sure that the covenants are complied with . If you find this to be too onerous then you should resign . What I find ironic is that I am not the person who has precipitated this conflict ; that person would be your erstwhile chairman . Arbuckle used his position as chairman to conduct his cloak and dagger renovations and was untruthful when confronted with past board resolutions and the covenants . The neglect and apathy which allowed Arbuckle to halfway complete his renovations before anyone had a clue what he was doing has forced me to have to constantly needle you into reluctant action . This is not the way it's supposed to work and the result leaves much to be desired .

In response to my email of the 25th you state that Arbuckle has provided the board with all of the requested documentation namely architectural drawings , engineering sign off and an indemnity from the insurance company (Arbuckle) . So let's examine the documents which you consider bring closure to this matter .

Perhaps we should start with the so called architectural drawings . Hillbilly you've got to be kidding me ; not even you can possibly believe that what you sent me are architectural drawings of Arbuckles renovations ?!! This is a drawing provided by the manufacturer of the sky light showing product and model specifications ! I find this representation by you to be disingenuous to say the least .

I am pleased to see that you do actually have a letter from an engineer in Tulsa dated 3rd November 2009 . Having said that , the engineer refers in his letter to some "drawings". He states that the "renovations/remedial works are constructed in accordance with our drawings #2009042 and site instructions which is structurally safe for its intended use" . It is interesting that the engineer signed off on plans which you have never seen and almost a months worth of construction has now taken place since the engineers letter was written . In other words Hilbilly you have absolutely no way of verifying that Arbuckle's finished product is what the engineer signed off on four weeks ago . I hesitate to point out that Arbuckle's engineer is not an independent professional hired by the board at Arbuckle's expense as specified in the covenants .

The document that you consider to be an indemnity is unsigned . Whilst I am reluctant to state the obvious I suppose we all realise that the indemnity is not worth the paper it is written on as long as it remains unsigned and unrecorded . In my business we like to get things signed first and ask questions later . I hope that when you get around to asking Arbuckle to sign whatever it is that you end up with he is still minded to do so . I also hope that you are going to have a "real live lawyer" look at it on behalf of the association The draftsmanship of the current document has a distinctly amateur ring to it . Three guesses who the draftsman was ?

So one out of three Hillbilly . I'd say that is consistent with your general performance . Needless to say I have found your last response equally unsatisfactory .

Hope this clarifies things for you .

No prizes for guessing his profession.

Background to the story: Another resident did renovations and the person who sent this e-mail (who I will call Socio for convenience) wanted to see the documentation he provided to us, the board. There had already been some Melrose Place-like drama so our position was for him to take it up with the owner directly. He has unresolved issues with the other owner and refused. The response that led to this appealed for some civility and said, and I’m *not* paraphrasing, “Our job as a board isn’t to act as a go-between for residents who want to play, ‘Can you tell X I’m not speaking to him?’”. Yes, I goaded him but I needed a sample for this post and didn’t feel like reliving any of his other Greatest Hits.

Here’s where the communication lesson comes in. E-mails sent in this tone of voice have led me to apply a complex formula to determine whether or not I need to respond. The simplified version is thus:

• Remove all statements related to pompousness or peacocking. A big indicator for this is a lack of contractions. I blame Star Trek for this.
• Remove statements intended to show off the writer’s self-presumed mastery of vocabulary. Examples: precipitated, fiduciary duty, and erstwhile. As a general rule, I often discount any e-mail that contains the word “edification” as it is a clear signal the writer is trying too hard.
• Remove lecturing statement and statements that sound like a parent admonishing his child for getting his shoesies all dirty
• Remove snarky attempts at digs and sarcastic closing statements (and generally speaking, any statement that begins “hope this”)
• Remove misdirections and misinterpretations (e.g. that lack of profanity == civility)

After pruning, divide the remaining content but the total content. If the result is less than 20%, the entire e-mail can be safely ignored.

Now to be clear, I have been known to be somewhat verbose from time to time on this blog. But that’s where the crux of the communication lesson comes in: know when and, especially, how to ramble. By and large, I violate these rules for entertainment purposes. It’s part of the overall feel I’m going for with my online persona. I throw big words into my posts once in a while usually because I think it’s funny. (Notice I didn’t say “invariably” there.)

But something like this is meant to be taken seriously. And as I read it over, I can’t help thinking it’s borderline masturbatory. Like it’s some sort of closing argument for a trial. Given that the original request was for documentation to see if he wanted to take further action, I can’t see anything actionable in it. I can’t quite figure out how he wants us as a board to react to this. He’s voiced his displeasure but using such a condescending tone that it’s easier just to dismiss him as someone who is never going to be pleased.

What’s worse is that on the odd occasion an e-mail like this does contain a valid point, it’s going to get lost in the language. To Socio’s credit, he has indeed brought up a valid concern about the landscaping recently. And further to his credit, he has historically been extremely valuable to the community for his past work in managing the landscaping on the property. But it’s too easy to dismiss this past work and any other valid concerns because of the means by which he delivers the message. Call it the Michael Moore Syndrome.

To me, a much more reasonable response would have been about a third the length and gotten right to the point. Something along the lines of “I don’t believe this documentation is sufficient to protect the board’s interest and here are the reasons why” followed by, and this is important, pointed suggestions on what you want to happen. Unless you’re practicing to run for public office, posturing like this for six or seven paragraphs serves no purpose except to set yourself up as a pariah that is “fighting against an unjust bureaucracy.”

The medium is also at fault. Certain people take their written communication very seriously, especially when they think they are better at it than most people. I was very guilty of this in my 20s when I liked to send potshot-laden e-mails to companies that had wronged me. Even now, it’s still my first reaction and I have to write a couple of drafts before I’m happy that I’m not going to make things worse.

Knowing your audience is also key. The board members are volunteers, working as a group for the benefit of all residents to the best of their ability. (At least, that’s what I assume. I get the impression that some people think people join for some ulterior motive, though I can’t figure out what ulterior motive there could possibly be. There’s little personal satisfaction in it.) If we were paid, perhaps there would be some cause for indignation like this. But since we’re all pretty much on equal footing, my first reaction if I had a concern would be to try to work with the board to resolve it, rather than set up a confrontational stance.

This probably isn’t a good time to mention that my condo is for sale…

Kyle the Communicable

Another in the series of “reviewer feedback I’m going to deal with using dicey justification techniques” for Brownfield Application Development. This time, there were concerns that the topics covered in the book don’t go in-depth enough. One reviewer said he or she would need to reference other works in order to learn more.

My justification for that: Good!

We cover a lot of topics in the book. Automated testing, continuous integration, dependency injection, object/relational mappers. Given the scope that we chose, we can’t get in depth. That’s the choice we made when outlining said scope. But if all we’ve done is piqued someone’s interest enough to seek out more information elsewhere, I’ll consider that a success.

That said, clearly we need to set expectations for the reader. One of the underlying themes of the book is to foster a sense of curiosity and, more importantly, a sense of pride in one’s work. To make the reader aware of potential new things and encourage them to delve deeper. In short, to start the journey, not to end it. This is where careful wording at the beginning will improve things, I think.

Next up, why we’re not going to take out the alcohol-fueled rants on datasets.

Kyle the Justified

I'm a big fan of Prisoner's Dilemma. Actually, I'm a fan of picking out when it's being applied to a situation, not of the dilemma itself, which is inherently bad. You can read the details yourself but essentially, it's a fancy way of saying, "every man for himself". (I'd apologize for the male slantedness but I doubt female readers would want to be grouped into that bit of analogy anyway.)

It's a little more complicated than that though once you dive into the philosophy of the idea. Basically, it says that you should act in your own best interest even if it conflicts with the interests of the larger group. That's because everyone else in the group is thinking the same thing. If everyone cooperated, they'd all be better off as a group but as soon as one acts against the group, the whole thing falls apart.

If you generalize the concept, it applies to pretty much every major problem facing the world today: global warming (we should all take mass transit), world hunger (featuring the parental mainstay: "There are starving people in Africa and you want to throw that away!"), the election of George Bush (actually, I can't explain that one). In short, we should all act for the betterment of the group but we rarely do.

Except for a large section of the software industry. What do I, as a supposedly rational person, gain from taking time away from my family, friends, and clients to elucidate you people on a regular basis? I don't have Google ads and even if I did, they aren't going to pay for my extravagant lifestyle of cutting code and skinnin' rodents. In fact, this thing is actually costing me money in the form of hosting fees.

One could argue that I do have ulterior motives in that presumably, my reputation would be enhanced and I would reap all the rewards that rock stars enjoy. And that is probably a factor for most bloggers to varying degrees, depending on the author's degree of optimism.

But I don't think it's the driving factor for most, at least not for the ones in my blog roll. A common characteristic to the ones I know is modesty, almost to the point of self-deprecation. Any praise heaped on one is usually deflected and distributed among at least two or three others. The general vibe I get is that people are genuinely interested in helping others.

Of course, there's often more than a hint of pride involved (who doesn't want to tell the world when they figure out a really tough problem?). And there's nothing wrong with that. As long as pride doesn't give way to ego which it rarely does.

Open source projects are another anomaly with respect to the Prisoner's Dilemma and it's one that's even mentioned in the Wikipedia article. Another example of people working for the good of the group more so than for personal gain.

It's an interesting phenomenon, as is the original dilemma. Maybe it's that the group and the individual both have similar goals. Or maybe the industry attracts people of this nature. I suppose one explanation is as valid as the next and I should stop questioning a good thing.

Kyle the Philosophical

Despite my online nom de guerre, I am what you might call grammatically anal. I don't like ending sentences with prepositions, avoid misplaced modifiers and shy away from run-on sentences. Before y'all go proofreading my previous posts, I will also fight my instincts pretty often to avoid sounding too much like my high school English teacher. Gotta keep this har intry-net blog thingy conversashunal, after all. And besides, if you start speaking strict Queen's English, you kinda sound like the kind of dork that would receive regular beatings in high school. Still, I hate trolling through old entries and finding glaring errors because I think I'm also a little obsessive compulsive and I don't like receiving the same post twice in my RSS aggregator.

So what does this have to do with coding? (Oh man, and I HATE reading posts/essays/whatever that ask questions then proceed to answer them.) I was looking through what is essentially a string table for Livelink listing all the error messages and pieces of text for a particular module. Nothing, repeat NOTHING, screams "I am too &*#$ lazy to check my work" than seeing spelling mistakes or obvious grammatical errors in a resource file. I won't single out anything in Livelink because it's not the only culprit by any stretch.

Seriously, how hard is it to scan a line of text before you press Enter? Especially one embedded in a piece of software that companies may pay tens of thousands of dollars for (ummm...I mean, for which companies may pay tens of thousands of dollars). I've seen my share of misspelled variable names in code which I cringe at a little but let pass because very few people will see them. Having a label's text set to "You will definately get an answer today" (to use one of my "favorite" pet peeves) just makes me lose any confidence in the vendor altogether.

The same applies to obvious grammatical errors. And to overuse of capitalization which is more subtle. e.g. "Enter a New Code if you wish to update an Old Code". Yes, it's cute to see "All your base are belong to us" in a twenty-year-old video game from Japan because the average user is twelve years old and is skipping over that screen without reading it anyway. But not in a content management application. Not in a commercial word processor. Not even in a piece of freeware if you expect to be taken seriously.

So the moral of the story is: Check EVERY piece of text that a user might potentially see. That doesn't mean running it through a spell-checker. That means reading it, ya lazy ass. Word will not pick up a problem with "What moth were you born in?" whereas I see at least two mistakes there, possibly three.

Incidentally, this is also coming on the heels of my just watching East on the Compass, a movie from Spain whose subtitles could have used another round through the spell-checker. Very good movie, though, and if I have my way, you can see it between December 7 and 10 in Nassau.