(no subject)
Feb. 10th, 2007 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmuzkaa Friend (a candidate for the governmental elections) : Would you do a favor and write a 400 word article for my elections paper ?
Me: Gladly!
Friend: Actually, we are short on space. Could you shorten it to 200 words?
Me: *not so gladly* Okay.
Friend: We dropped your text because of the space shortage. Sorry! But I could use it in my web page!
Me: Just forget it.
Okay, so what actually happened was this: The said friend did ask me to write a short article for her elections paper. Only a week later one of her helpers asked me to shorten it to a half, to approx. 200-300 words. I almost said to forget it at that point, because what can you write in 200 words? But still, I wrote the text and send it again.
And today she wrote a mail where she apologized for having to drop few of the texts, including mine. She had miscalculated the space for the texts and she was truly, genuinely sorry. I do understand that making the best election paper possible is the number one priority and if that means dropping a few texts off, then be it. I don't mind that my text was dropped.
But what irks me is that while three texts were picked up to the paper, she had asked for texts from something like seven people! Her own text was dropped from her friend's election paper four years ago because of the space shortage, so it's not like she would have been totally unfamiliar with this. She totally miscalculated the number of articles needed, and so failed to inform the writers beforehand that they would be contributing to an article pool and not to the paper itself. Which, think, is unprofessional and unthoughtful.
She thanked us for our contributions anyway and asked if she could publish the texts in her web page. I said no thanks.
Me: Gladly!
Friend: Actually, we are short on space. Could you shorten it to 200 words?
Me: *not so gladly* Okay.
Friend: We dropped your text because of the space shortage. Sorry! But I could use it in my web page!
Me: Just forget it.
Okay, so what actually happened was this: The said friend did ask me to write a short article for her elections paper. Only a week later one of her helpers asked me to shorten it to a half, to approx. 200-300 words. I almost said to forget it at that point, because what can you write in 200 words? But still, I wrote the text and send it again.
And today she wrote a mail where she apologized for having to drop few of the texts, including mine. She had miscalculated the space for the texts and she was truly, genuinely sorry. I do understand that making the best election paper possible is the number one priority and if that means dropping a few texts off, then be it. I don't mind that my text was dropped.
But what irks me is that while three texts were picked up to the paper, she had asked for texts from something like seven people! Her own text was dropped from her friend's election paper four years ago because of the space shortage, so it's not like she would have been totally unfamiliar with this. She totally miscalculated the number of articles needed, and so failed to inform the writers beforehand that they would be contributing to an article pool and not to the paper itself. Which, think, is unprofessional and unthoughtful.
She thanked us for our contributions anyway and asked if she could publish the texts in her web page. I said no thanks.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 03:08 pm (UTC)minun visioni oli enemmän tekstiä ja muiden enemmän kuvia. Kolmen ehdokkaan yhteislehdessä oli lopulta niin monta kokkia että jos joskus teen vastaisuudessa vastaavaa, olen läksyni oppinut. Yksi diktaattorin oikeuksin toimiva päätoimittaja jolle tarjotaan luonnoksia ja ideoita ja joka sitten karsii. Valmiiden ja pahimmillaan moneen kertaan viilattujen tekstien hyllyttäminen on hölmöä ja vie kaikkien aikaa, luonnonvara jota kellään ei ole tässä vaiheessa.
Hyvä juttu se silti oli, toivottavasti löytyy käyttöä muualla.