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Brilliant Post ... but Nobody Understood It

 
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Do you find that you seem to spend ages thinking about a query and posting pages and pages and the punter just doesn't seem to understand a word of it? Seems to happen to me often enough.
Then somebody else posts two lines and everything appears clear to them

That is why you have fora: one person can explain it one way and somebody else explains it slightly differently and the punter understands it.
 
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What's a punter?
 
Campbell Ritchie
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Ordinary person. Potential customer. Potential victim to be fleeced. Person betting particularly on horse-racing.

But I meant it in the first and second sense.
 
Henry Wong
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When I googled, I got a reference to Football -- and Campbell, since you are a Brit, your version of Football doesn't have punters...
 
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Henry Wong wrote:since you are a Brit, your version of Football doesn't have punters...


Actually it does, but in a completely different sense.
Someone who pays to go and watch something (sport, theatre, etc) or participate in something (see the 10th bullet point) can be referred to (colloquially) as punters.
 
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In a US context I would have understood it to mean the football player (or, more generally, someone who gives up on something, which goes back to the football meaning), but otherwise I only knew about someone betting, or playing the markets. Apparently it's a lot more versatile than that!
 
Campbell Ritchie
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I had hoped to discuss posts which the punters don't understand.
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Or maybe this thread has turned into an object exercise
 
Ulf Dittmer
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Let's pretend this is Meaningless Drivel 201, or, for our American viewers, "I'll take Meaningless Drivel for 400, Alex."
 
lowercase baba
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to get back to the original intent of the thread...

I used to be a math teacher - I taught middle and high school kids over the years (12 to 18 years old). I taught everything from basic math up to pre-calculus.

One thing I learned to have in my arsenal was 3-4 ways to explain something. I would present it one way, and most of the kids would 'get' it, but not all. So I'd present it another way, and a few more would get it.

What seems obvious and intuitive to one person is a brick wall to another.
 
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My colleague had a day of it today trying to explain things to me. We couldn't decide whether he was rubbish at explaining it, or I was rubbish at comprehending it. (Obviously we had opposing opinions on that particular point)

In one example he'd explained how to get some tests passing again that I'd broken last thing yesterday. I was listening to what he said but didn't really 'get it' at the time. It took me to spend an hour or so trying out some things and thinking about it myself to arrive at the same solution he'd suggested earlier. Of course after the fact I realised he'd actually explained it pretty well, I just wasn't seeing it.

As Fred says, saying the same thing a different way can often help. In a forum context you have the benefit of reading a post over a few times (without the pressure of enduring an awkward silence) to try and understand it.
 
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What really gets my goat is:

OP: Why <question>?
Me: Well, <long-winded explanation>.
NPC: Because of reasons...
OP: Wow, thank you NPC!
Me: FUFUFUFUFUFU! <rage quit>
 
Campbell Ritchie
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What's NPC? I think we have come full circle.

Does it mean non‑playing character?
It appears others ahve the same experience. The important thing to realise is that there are different approaches and the other person just happened to choose the explanation which worked and not to get annoyed. Not even if on reflection the other explanation turns out to be weird.
 
Campbell Ritchie
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And sometime it is obvious that people haven't read their first reply and we do suggest they reread it.
 
Jelle Klap
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Campbell Ritchie wrote:What's NPC? I think we have come full circle.

Does it mean non‑playing character?



Right, non-player character i.e. someone other than me. I was trying to come up with a way of indicating a 3rd person and found it in gaming terminology
 
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