Has anyone ever "deciphered" a paragraph?

[RenegadeHealer]

It is not a pleasant experience to have one's mistakes caught and pointed out, but if one wants to accomplish something as difficult as deciphering the Voynich manuscript text, it is very likely going to be a necessary and unavoidable part of the process.

Oh and how, Geoffrey. Working on the VMs is an incredibly humbling undertaking. Many VMs researchers, past and present, are among the world's most cosmopolitan and well-read people, who've made professional reputations for themselves as astute problem solvers.

I'm quite certain Marco intended his criticism constructively. I know him only through his online work on the VMs, but one thing that's very clear to me about Marco is that he's a highly analytical person — my first guess for his Myers-Briggs personality type would be INTJ. People of this type like concise and precise language. They do not pull their punches when asked for feedback. They talk about facts, not feelings, and have learned to be suspicious of new people fronting a high degree of friendliness. They hold themselves and others to a high standard of performance and craftsmanship. The only way to impress these types are words and actions that make sense; They really, really do not like their time wasted. Again I do not know Marco at all outside of this community, and could be way off base with this impression of him. But his feedback to you is consistent with the feedback I've observed him give to to all purveyors of VMs-related theories. He values being fair and logical in his assessments of ideas, over making people feel good or look good. If you sense a note of unkindness in Marco's recent communications with you, I suspect he is frustrated. From his point of view, he took the time to give you honest feedback that he did not owe you, and senses that you have resisted it.

I admit that I do see Voynich Ninja as one big brainstorming session, and I view my posts about my theories as my contributions to that brainstorming session. There is a principle that some teams of colleagues adopt in brainstorming sessions, called "Say everything".

That's fine. By the same token, any ideas you post in a forum are fair game for other participants' feedback. Know your audience. If you aren't receptive to the feedback that present company has to offer to your ideas, you may want to reconsider posting them. If you want to have complete control over the conversation about your ideas, and curate your audience, I recommend a writing them in a blog, with either no comments, or all comments approved by you.