Do you strive for perfection? Do you know you can check out your perfecto fish awards here?

I have been awarded the PF award 62 times in 2 years 9 months of participation.
I think Marwyn is sneaking my laptop into the barn when I am gone and using his perfecto goose powers. haha

^^^ And I bet he will blame you.

What’s creeping me out is how much time I have spent here. The Herman Melville over 1000 times?? I mean I lurve you guys, but I really think I should get a life.

I have only ten pf. Obviously fluther doesn’t think I’m very perfect.

^^^ PF award is awarded based on your behavior. You are the decider.

Well..right now fluther says I am the cream in their coffee,
More like the snot in their kleenex. haha

@gailcalled Oh. It must be because I am perfect as I am, then! I know you agree. You are in love with the length of my posts! Such a fan! ;-)

Just curious… How long ago did they start the Awards?
@gailcalled, imagine how many more you’d have if they had started awards from day one!!

Oh my! 121 times!
Just imagine what I would accomplish if I treated the rest of my life this way.

9 times in two years. I am surprised, I thought it would be far more.

To answer my own question: The first Q I could find about the awards was asked by @gailcalled on October 9, 2009 http://www.fluther.com/57753/have-you-seen-the-fluther-nautical-almanac/ So it’s just over 3 years since they’ve been tracking our anal-retentive tendencies with the Perfecto Fish award.

It’s because I’m such a perfectionist that I don’t have any! (Is that sad?!?!)

19 times – I should try harder.

Only once in the two years, three months that I’ve been swimming here. I’ve certainly edited myself a few times but not to the perfecto-fishy standards. Let’s just say I care, but only briefly ;-)

zero

37, in less than 2 years. I do go back and correct several times—usually only 1 or 2 times.

Only 12 in just about four years of being here! I usually edit my answers to death before posting them, so the issue does not arise often.

0 for me too. Wonder what that says about me??? My mother always told me I was perfect just the way I am!

@Jeruba‘s answer came a little too close to giving away a state-secret, sorry!

I prided myself on not having a single Perfecto-fish until just recently. Then I got one. Hmph.

@augustlan:When does the statute of limitations expire, if ever? I did not know that it was still secret, but mum’s the word.

30; I edit but I don’t over-edit (even though sometimes I should!)

Hmm—I thought indirect reference was allowed. In fact, I thought I’d read on some meta thread that that was the official position. Especially since this one is easily deduced by simple observation.

@Jeruba Indirect is fine, but your answer mentioned a specific number. I’ll PM you.

No statute of limitations, I’m afraid. It’s always new to somebody. :)

hehehe, apparently I am too simple to deduce! woe is me!

Ok, for what it’s worth, here’s my earlier comment, with the offending part rewritten. Not that its removal was any great loss.

——

539, in a little over four years and more than 15,000 posts. I’m surprised that the number isn’t greater. Just about everything I write needs to be corrected somehow, often several times.

Apparently not everything needs that much correcting.

(Whoops, now it’s 540.)

——

And…now it’s 541.

So what you’re saying is that it has something to do with editing. I can probably count on one hand the times I have edited a response over the years I have been here. Don’t know what that means, either I am a really good typist or I just don’t give a damn!!! :-)

But congrats to all those of you who have received the award numerous times! You humble me.

@rooeytoo It gets to the question about whether editing makes things better, and whether people care enough about what they write to make it better, assuming editing succeeds at that.

I almost never edit. When I do, it is for spelling errors and typos. But I only see those in the time limit rarely, because mostly I am on to the next question. My interest here is in thinking about things. I write it out because it helps me think about things and, of course, because if I don’t, no one will know what I think.

But I edit as I go along. Anything I miss while writing, probably will not get fixed.

I use fluther as practice for a kind of writing process. The idea is that I don’t necessarily know where I am going when I start. I write in order to find out what I think. I write until I get somewhere satisfying. Sometimes, that takes a while. It is a stream of consciousness process.

I could go back, look at what I said, and try to reedit the whole thing so it was short and sweet and said what I had to say in one paragraph, but I don’t, because I believe that would take away a lot of what is interesting in my writing: a window on how my thoughts travel.

Now a lot of people aren’t interested in how I get there; they just want the bottom line. Those people don’t read what I write.

We could argue about whether my process is disrespectful, and whether editing is more helpful to readers. We could discuss what kind of editing people do (which would be an interesting question).

I suppose I could pay attention to this question, and wonder what it means when someone has a lot of perfecto fish or not many at all. I think there is a personality type that is really into editing, and we all know who the really big editors around here are, and I’m sure we all have feelings about their feelings about editing.

I don’t misspell because I pay attention to my spell checker and because I know a lot of words. I tend to think in complete thoughts because I’ve practiced it all my life. I tend to have structure to my writing even though I don’t plan it out because I’ve been practicing story telling for most of my life and because I am a social scientist. So maybe I don’t need to edit in ways that most people need to. And I don’t care to edit in the one way that might actually help me, but that’s because I don’t want to make a point. I want to see how I get to a point.

If lurve means anything, then my process works for others; not just for me. I’m long winded, but, to repeat myself again, that is part of what I want to do. Although it’s a little odd that people complain about that, but then go on to read blog articles and newspapers and journals where the average article is ten times what I write. I suspect it all has to do with what you are here for.

So my brain says I need to wrap up now, but I’m not feeling it. I guess I’ll return to my starting point (which is a fine story telling technique). @rooeytoo You probably are a good typist. You probably also don’t give a damn. People who edit do give a damn, but I can’t tell what they care about since I don’t know the changes they made. You may not need to make any changes. Which means you do care, and are not being disrespectful, because your work is just fine without editing.

Getting the perfectofish is not something I think you should be humbled by, although that’s your choice. We have no idea what kind of editing process people go through. Perhaps they should be humbled by you, because you can write clear concise posts without needing to edit a word!

(Oh, and see? I did get back to what I started with, and I had no plan for doing so when I started).

It’s not really an award for anything, @rooeytoo. It’s just an instance counter. And I think if there’s any congratulating to be done, it should be to the people who don’t get it. Sort of like giving an award for the number of spills you’ve mopped up. Hey, were you that sloppy? Yup, ‘fraid I was.

Not so sure about that @Jeruba. Rather than being the sloppy people, I would say those with the high number are the careful people who take the time to read their posts carefully. I could certainly stand to be more careful and increase my tally. It would also remove the frustration I often experience 10 minutes after posting a comment.

It says 36 in 3yrs so I suppose i’m going to have to trust that figure, I don’t really take care of wot eye rite as a rule, but there it is.

@wundayatta – whew! sometimes I give a damn and sometimes I don’t think a damn is called for! And I was being tongue in cheek about humble, I am rarely ever humble, it just doesn’t seem to be a necessary emotion in my existence at least in my fluther existence.

Why thank you @Jeruba, I do try to be neat and tidy and I do get bored going over the same thing again when there is always something new waiting!

I only have 4 perfecto-fish. I guess I rarely need correction to be perfect. ;)

@Bellatrix The thing is, I read my posts carefully before I click the Answer button. It’s rare that I am in a rush to add my answer in (perhaps because I’m not online in the most busy periods of the site) so I take the time to re-read and check what I’ve written before posting. I check for spelling and typos, for whether I’ve chosen an American version of a word for ease of understanding, for making sure my spelling is British because it matters to me, but mostly for whether I’ve conveyed the meaning I was hoping to in the way I was intending.

That doesn’t mean I give a false, polished version of myself here, as I mostly don’t change what I’ve written. There are just occasions where the topic is so sensitive that I want to be sure what I say isn’t miscontruable. That’s something I’m equally aware of in “real life” conversations, so again, I’m not altering myself for the sake of Fluther.

And finally I check the layout of my answer (though I’m currently writing this on my phone so it is harder to see for me). Shorter paragraphs are easier to read than one long one, but too short makes them pointless and also less flowing.

So, my not having any perfecto fish awards is certainly not a sign of me being sloppy or careless!

@gailcalled keep in mind that the awards haven’t been here since the beginning. I can’t quite remember when exactly they were added but I feel like it was at least 2 years in so your ratio would be a bit higher than 10 per year.

@uberbatman – see my comments a little higher up… it’s just over 3 years.

@hearkat ahhh totally missed it, but then again I only really skimmed the answers…

@harple I also read over my posts, and often add paragraph breaks and certainly fix spelling. I do all that before I post the comment. I will sometimes do some rewriting and sometimes delete things that are too inflammatory or stupid even for me. But that doesn’t really seem like editing to me. Editing seems to involve posting something and then rewriting it. Rewriting before posting is just part of the original drafting. I’m sure that’s a silly thought, but that’s the way I think of it.

@wundayatta I guess I don’t consider my finalised answer as still a draft. In publications one would ideally have done all the editing before going to print, right?...

I’m not casting aspersions on those who gain the perfecto fish award, just sticking up for those of us with fewer or even no pf awards. :)

@harple – I use the mobile site of the iPhone often, and there is no preview. In addition, the notorious iOS autocorrect often tries to correct my typos (which are numerous), and guesses incorrectly.

@harple, I didn’t say ‘not’ having many perfecto-fish means you are sloppy. I said having many absolutely doesn’t suggest that the person is sloppy. One person I would never in a billion years classify as being careless about their writing is @Jeruba.

I did say that I could stand to be more careful and should have many more of those awards given the number of times I hit send and read something later only to notice an error.

Good on you for your perfectionism. Quite a few of other jellies, including me, could learn from your example and @Jeruba.‘s However, I think you misread my post and there was no need to defend anyone.

Dear me, I don’t think there’s really anything to argue about here. I’m the one who used the word “sloppy” and said I had so many “awards” because my writing needs so much correction. I salute those who manage to do all their editing before clicking “Answer” to post; it would be great if we all did that. I always check my posts first too—and then change my mind a little bit (or a lot) more after I see it posted. Sometimes it’s because of outright error and sometimes it’s just a lot of afterthoughts. If my writing usually looks fine, well, it’s because it’s been ground so many times through the fix-it mill.

It’s okay @Bellatrix, I hadn’t taken offence, just wanted to highlight the other side! I know I’m in no way perfect, and am not trying to suggest I’m better than users with the pf award, we just do our editing at different points in the process that’s all. :)

(Actually, the very next answer I wrote after my one above has a silly error in it that I completely failed to spot til an hour or so later…) It just goes to show! :)

@Jeruba Is it possible that if you didn’t put it through the “fix-it” mill, people would still like it just as much? I.e., that the fixes are something only you find necessary?

I don’t even try to be perfect, I only try to be the best I can be. In some cases, that is indeed damned near perfect, in others, not even close!

Seems I’ve got 150. Thanks for the tip on how to check this; I did not know that before. Like @hearkat, I use the iPhone most of the time for Fluthering, where it’s a bit difficult to review posts before hitting the answer button. But I also just like to edit a lot.