Tut. The word is 'quate' dear fella.
That is a neat solution and saves space too.
I have deleted your reference to the unmentionable vulgarity. Almost as bad as referring to the other forum software by name.
I'm sorry, I'd forgotten that place was actually a profanity in disguise. I usually don't have anything good to say about it either, heh.
ALERT What follows is merely anthropological reflection and may not interest you, Gentle Reader.
Oh, I'm usually interested in that sort of thing.
I also haven't been to Wales before (been up to the Midlands, but that's the nearest I've gone from my normal southern home)
In Wales there is an ancient tradition of never naming the Others by name or title. Hence the Fair Folk from which English gets Fae or Fairies - and anyone who thinks these are cute little flower people should read Pratchett on the E---s as he understood them well. Over here we speak of the Fair Ones, and even then it is usually either the Fair or the Ones but not both words together! Talk about not making a Call.
The Greeks also had the same tradition of the Eumenides, the Beautiful Ones, who were actually the blood cannibal avengers of murder in the birth family, the worst crime of all. (cf. Oedipus) They would tear the victim criminal apart barehanded into gobbets of flesh. They had other names more accurate to their nature but like the Welsh Others, it was dangerous to name them for fear they would hear - and take an interest in you!
I am ruminating on the connection between not explicitly naming as a signal of fear (the Welsh and Greek traditions, and not explicitly naming as a gesture of contempt (the other forum software, the revolting social networking abomination). It is not immediately obvious why fear and contempt prompt the same reaction?
Ah - the contempt does relate to fear. Most of us who feel the contempt for the OFS have had experiences of damage to to with being a client of the OFS long ago in the mythical past. Our beloved XF protects us from living in that sad condition. Oh, I am silly, also of course there was a long period of fear: Although right and justice meant the OFS should be fought off ultimately, right and justice do sometimes fall foul of the law being an ass. We lived with that uncomfortable uncertainty and being bested by an inferior is a remarkably foul experience.
Not-naming seems to be about extremes: dealing with our extreme superiors (the Fair as in Greek, Welsh) and our extreme inferiors (the OFS). Extremes are fearful places, and contempt is partly a fear the inferior might infect, or become a threat. I am also reminded of the recent cowardly fashion to speak of passing rather than dying, as a way of not-naming the feared. Toilets also get the same and we have deep rooted fears there, as we do in sex.
Certainly it's true that we avoid giving names to things in that it will somehow call them. The same concept comes up in popular culture a lot too; a huge deal of it was made in the Harry Potter series (I don't know your feelings on it, but it serves to illustrate), in how everyone was afraid of saying Voldemort's name in fear that it will somehow summon him or alert him. And yes, it is in a sense of contempt as well as fear.
I find it interesting how much time is spent creating euphemisms about, as well as how many profanities steam from, such things. Unfortunately I don't have a good euphemism that relates to that particular place we are not naming; I only have euphemisms that relate to its search engine cousin who 'Does No Evil', though none of those pleasant either.
In the case we're referring to here, about naming things, we have to deal with something that linguistics and anthropology has never had to deal with before - that a faceless, nameless, soulless entity is talking to us and offering us services - I refer to the software and the human/machine interaction. A software author can certainly invest something of themselves into their work, Kier and Mike do it with XF, I do it with what I build (though I would argue it is worlds apart, different not better or worse)... and a humming community can spring out of it but however you look at it, the discussion is about a series of computer instructions interacting with a human to facilitate discussions.
Neither 'My' nor 'Your' seems entirely appropriate here, for precisely the points made above about ownership - that 'Your...' implies that you're being lent the use of something but that it is owned by the nameless faceless entity of the code and database, while 'My...' brings with it a similar sense of oddity: is it not the software saying "My.." in the pages generated?
I would wonder what percentage of people who read 'My....' in a positive sense are dominant type personalities while those who read 'Your...' in a positive sense are submissive personalities?
More intriguingly, then, where does that leave us with 'Notifications' and 'Alerts'? If there is no qualification that they are for you, it can be inferred from context but you're still left with a slight disconnect and impersonal tone. It's almost like the software needs to understand your personality in order to response best to you and your needs - sadly a long way away.
