2599.9: Bullet With Butterfly Wings
I have mixed feelings on so-called "freedom of speech." The obvious point is that we should not be persecuted for having and speaking/writing about opinions or beliefs that don't coincide with someone else's, like liking chocolate in a vanilla-eating world. However, there's an obvious crossing the line, as well: posting personal information like someone's bank account numbers or accurate, detailed instructions on how an eight-year-old child can make a working bomb in his home and so on are clear examples of "This does not belong in a publicly-accessible forum AT ALL." [Not even "FOR SCIENCE!"]
I generally feel that some companies [these are who I hear the most complaints about, besides the general LOLZ BUSH stuff] have made good decisions overall, even if I don't necessarily like all of them, and it's a bit discouraging when people turn a simple "Here is a very requested feature that we have just implemented" into "XYZ USED TO BE GOOD NOW THEY ARE FASCISTS KILL DEMS IN THEIR SLEEP" on the basis of not liking said feature. Further, I find it a stretch of the imagination to say that an optional, ignorable feature* is really such a bad thing, particularly where what is being changed does not generally affect the ones complaining about it.
*as opposed to a drastic change that cannot be undone, like randomizing everyone's usernames or unprivatizing private material or something
If I'm being vague, yeah, I tend to be that way. But it's like, okay, you want to have a webpage about questionable content. Fine. Just make it slightly hard to access, like you need to register or go through some extra pages to get to it and NOINDEX the actual content or some equivalent. Or don't put hardcore pornography on your front page if your website is disney.com. Stuff like that. It seems so knee-jerk to get so riled up about an option you won't use and might never know is working.
This seemed relevant enough to save [though irrelevant to the above]:Chevy Chase, Md.: What do you do with a 7 year old who thinks he knows everything, can do everything without practicing, and while an incredibly fabulous kid, risks really being insufferable as he grows older? At some point, he won't be cute and precocious. How do I get him to try things and stick with them?
Carolyn Hax: First and most important thing you can do is make sure there is little to no reward for him in being cute and precocious. You don't want his emotional digestive system to get used to a steady diet of praise and attention, which is akin to refined sugar--quick fuel, no substance--because he'll go seeking it well into adulthood. What you want is for his diet to be heavy in a sense of accomplishment, which is the product of hard work, prolonged attention and effort, obstacles faced and surmounted--i.e., the complex carbs and protein--so he can develop a habit of sustaining himself emotionally.
How tortured is my metaphor? Let me count the ways ...
Practically, this means steering him to, encouraging, praising, and modeling focus and hard work. It's, "I love that you stuck with it" when he works to get something right, vs. "You're so smart!" when he pulls of a parlor trick.
If you're having trouble thinking of or incorporating specifics, it would be worth a conversation with a child-development specialist.
A metaphor for life!