As I said to Shari in Comments, in my present condition I deal with the weirdest mental lapses. I used URL because I couldn’t think of “Address Bar.”
But I would not have known what the “address bar” was a few years back. The address bar is in the top right corner of my screen, where it now says:
http://whitakeronline.org/blog/wp-admin/post-new.php
This explanation could easily sound insulting. But if you don’t KNOW that, it is also essential. So is it better to be overcareful and risk somebody taking it as an insult, or just leave it hanging so that someone who doesn’t understand it would feel stupid if they were to ask?
A lot of people will say, “I hate to bore you with this long explanation, but …” That problem is so old that there is an old saying:
“It is better to bore than to mystify.”
My corollary to this is that it is better to risk insult than to mystify. I feel that our tech team is not here to patronize us, but to TEACH us.
They are trying to mediate between human beings and a MINDLESS MACHINE. The machine is totally literal, so a single word can stop us in our tracks. I want them to assume TOTAL IGNORANCE across the board, because somewhere in the explanation is a trip-up it embarrasses me to ask about.
Yes, it IS irritating, even to an old gator-skin like me, to be spoken to as if I were a child. But we have a lot of people here, and we are all important. SOMEONE is not going to know SOMETHING that is explained at the most childish level.
The fact is that it is us computer ignoramuses who probably are the most easily insulted. If I know what the address bar is, it would tend to bother me to have it explained than it would SysOps or Brain. They have nothing to prove, whereas as my level of understanding IS childish, so talking to me as if I were a child would tend to bother me more.
Tough luck, Bob!
This is too serious a matter to tippy-toe about my hang-ups. We are dealing with people who understand reality where it counts, so our knowledge of computers is a minor matter, and too critically important to be retarded by sensitivity on mechanics.
It is better to offend than to mystify.
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