Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] CoC change to encourage clear communication

[James Le Cuirot]

On Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:13:54 +0100
Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'd like to propose amending Gentoo's CoC through adding the following
> point:
>
> - *Use concise and clear language.* The Gentoo community includes
> people from all over the world, with varying English skills and
> available time.
>
>
> Rationale:
>
> The primary purpose of communication on Gentoo media is to share
> information.  In order for this goal to be achieved, it is important
> that the recipients of the message (presumably arbitrary Gentoo users
> following the mailing lists) can understand these messages.
>
> Furthermore, we should note that people don't have infinite time to
> spend on reading mails.  Both sending unnecessarily long mails
> and using hard to understand language means that both users and
> developers have to spend ever increasing amount of time to participate
> or at least follow conversations.  Eventually, it means that some
> people who can't afford to read all the text are excluded.
>
> In my opinion, it's also a matter of respecting others and their time.
> In the extreme case, some people are deliberately participating
> in the described way in order to waste other people's time, to exclude
> them if they can't manage to keep up, to push their ideas forward while
> drowning the opposition in the storm of long replies.

I can certainly appreciate the benefits of this as I just haven't had
the time to read most of the recent... uh... discussions. However, the
idea of enforcing something like this doesn't bear thinking about. It
reminds me way too much of 1984's Newspeak. If we're not going to
enforce it then there seems little point in including it. The most
verbose posters are unlikely to cut down just because we asked them
nicely.

-- 
James Le Cuirot (chewi)
Gentoo Linux Developer