Ever Wonder Why "URGENT!" Doesn't Work?

programming flash
1

There seems to be another somewhat sudden preponderance of “URGENT” posts, so I thought I’d post this as a little informational blurb.

Those of you who do this (probably not reading this post – more on that), may have noticed that responses are curiously slow in coming (if they come at all). Ever wonder why?

There are a number of factors that come into play when a message includes “Urgent” or “ASAP” or “tight deadline” or some such time-compression type term in the subject.

  1. Some people, who might otherwise reply, see agreeing to help with an issue marked urgent as almost a binding type of commitment to see the issue through to its solution, and most don’t have that kind of time to devote to a real-time exchange of posts.

  2. Some people, who might otherwise help, may see the note of urgency, and realize that it was posted hours ago, or possibly even days ago, and just presume that it WAS an emergency, and that, by now, it’s either solved or it’s too late to help, so they pass it by.

  3. Some people, who might otherwise help, have a better perspective on what constitutes an emergency:[LIST]
    []“my house is on fire”
    [    ]“the power to my kidney machine has failed”
    []“I’m trapped under my burning automobile”
    [    ]“My cat peed on my keyboard”[/LIST]…and just prefer to deal with people who aren’t carrying quite so much emotional baggage.

I think I can safely say that NOTHING done wth Flash is truly an emergency; any such imposed sense of emergency is artificial, arbitrary, and contrived.

  1. Some people, who might otherwise help, consider the labeling of any one person’s issue as more important than others as a form of arrogance or affrontery, and will just pass the post by on general principle.

And, to return to my previous statement about the likelihood of people who mark their message as emergencies reading this post, it is unlikely because that such persons so marked their messages generally indicates that they probably cannot see beyond their own circumstances. If you ARE one of those people, you might wanna think about changing that, you should be the one to NOT pass by those emergency threads of others – kind of a Karmic justice.