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Why Designers Hate Crowdsourcing
An anonymous reader writes "Since Wired's Jeff Howe coined the term in 2006, 'crowdsourcing' has been a buzzword in the tech industry, and a business model on the rise. 99designs.com is a site that hosts design contests for small businesses requiring relatively smaller design projects. Anyone can submit their near finished pieces of work to the contests, but only one winner gets paid. Forbes covers just why established graphic designers are so angry at this business model's catching on."
Perhaps the parent was joking, who knows.
In my opinion the word niggardly is a bit obscure, rarely used and bound to be misunderstood. There are plenty of other words with the same meaning. The dictionary entry you reference above mentions the possible misunderstanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"
[ok. i'm beginning to hate the /. comment submission system. i lost my original reply.]
A bit obscure, yes. Rarely used, well, depends on who you hang around with. Best avoided, probably, since there's many other excellent words to be used.
However, the point really is the fact that he groundlessly accused someone of racism, rather than taking the 30 seconds that it took me to look it up, to check the origin of the word. That's what I take exception to. People taking a non-existent moral high ground, rather than looking in to something. On a small scale, you get misunderstandings like this. On slightly larger scales, you get parents burning books that teach their children witchcraft (Harry Potter, remember?).
And I highly doubt the person was joking. Implying someone is racist isn't exactly funny. Flat out stating it, can be. I've seen some good stand-up comedians running with bits like that. But implying? No.
[I agree about the hating the submission system. Same thing happened to me.]
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.