Java Glossary : charge along
Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy
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Glossary : C words : charge along.
- charge along
- a technique first explicitly formulated by the late Tom Meikle for
persuading experts to give you information they would normally be too impatient
to provide and for worming proprietary trade secrets out of people. There are
two variants the rude and the polite. To use the rude form, you privately or
publicly post something of this form:"You, Ms. Expert are totally
incompetent. Obviously your statements are patently false." Ms. Expert
then wants to put this insolent puppy in his place. So she spends an hour
composing a detailed reply point by point meticulously defending her position
and in the process explaining it in great detail. To use the polite form, you
privately or publicly post something to the effect "Here is my
understanding of how X works. It might work via option a... or option b... or
perhaps something entirely different. However, my thinking now is I believe it
works via option a." If you guessed incorrectly the experts will have
an uncontrollable itch to correct you. They can't stand the thought of
misinformation being disseminated. By doing the work of elaborating some
possible options, you save the expert time. She can answer with multiple choice.
She also has a clearer idea of your level of expertise so she knows how terse
she can be in her reply. So if somebody flames you, you can reframe that (as the
NLP people would say) into a compliment. Perhaps they consider you an expert and
are just trying to worm information out of you using the charge along technique.
