Technical inquiries to Arabeyes outsiders,

["Chahine M. Hamila" <HALCON11 at terra dot es>]

Salaam,
I just wanted to point out a little problem in our perception of
prestige. This is something I discussed before with Moe.
What made me think about this is Nadim's latest inquiry which was
personally directed at Roozbeh. (Nadim, I am not blaming here, I'm just
giving food for thought:)).
When directing such personal inquiries publicly, we diminish the value
and weight of Arabeyes' members' statements, because the implicit
message that is passed is that we are not as worth as others in terms of
capabilities and knowledge, and that we have higher authorities. I know
we are not all-knowing, but hey there are quite a few issues where we
definitely know more than any one around on the Net, and when discussing
things (such as with the XFree86 folks) such approach can simply make us
look like a bunch of good-willed amateurs. The world is not perfect, so
we have to play with what builds or undo people's prejudices (favorable
or not). We have the pretention we want to be THE standard makers for
Arabic technical stuff, so let's live with both the arrogance and
modesty of such people, it is part of the communication work. When we do
an inquiry, we are researching possible issues and solutions from equals
and members, exchanges that we might reject (friendly) or take
(sovereinly) according to our own will. We are not defering to higher
authorities who we will have a harder time justifying why we finally
rejected their (quite often not so informed or unbiased) opinion after
defering to them personally.
I hope you guys understand what I mean,
Salaam,
Chahine