Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel membership vs politeness on mailing lists

[Matt Turner]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:38 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 08:03 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> > On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 20:33:09 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2019-06-18 at 19:20 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 09:43:05 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, 2019-06-16 at 23:00 +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> > > > > > Only active Gentoo developers who are also Foundation members may be
> > > > > > nominated. [1]
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Nominations MUST be made by posting to gentoo-nfp@l.g.o, and
> > > > > > the nominated candidate must accept not later than the end of the
> > > > > > nomination period.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ok, let's try someone else.  I nominate:
> > > > >
> > > > > David Seifert (soap)
> > > > > Mikle Kolyada (zlogene)
> > > >
> > > > You violated the rules:
> > > >   Nominations MUST be made by posting to gentoo-nfp@l.g.o
> > > >
> > > > But you sent them to gentoo-project@l.g.o mail list.
> > > > Hereby they are not valid. Please perform your duty properly and
> > > > send nominations to the aforementioned NFP mail list.
> > > >
> > >
> > > You could also have understood it was a honest mistake and be nice about
> > > it.  But I suppose that's too much to expect from a ComRel member.
> >
> > I politely pointed out your mistake and nicely asked you to fix it.
> > I even used the word "please". I honestly don't see what was not
> > nice about my previous e-mail. Maybe we have a language barrier
> > issue here.
> >
> > My comrel membership has nothing to do with this discussion and
> > I'm participating in it as a common Gentoo developer with my comrel
> > hat off.
> >
>
> Do you really believe that a ComRel member (read: a person whose duty
> involves judging other people's behavior) can just take ComRel hat off
> and stop caring about providing exemplary behavior?  Following that
> logic, I could join ComRel claiming that all the things I've said
> and done were 'with my comrel hat off' (since I don't have any)!
>
> I understand that there might be a language barrier.  However, since you
> decide to perform a very specific and important role, I'm afraid you
> need to learn to use English in a way that's actually polite rather than
> using the excuse of a language barrier.
>
> Let me explain.
>
> A neutral (i.e. not really polite but acceptable) way of saying that
> would be to say 'you have posted the nominations to the wrong list'.
> That's plain and factual.
>
> You said 'you violated the rules' which is an accusation.  Accusations
> tend to render one as guilty of doing something very bad.  Accusations
> are not polite.
>
> Furthermore, 'perform your duty properly' is passive aggressive.  Adding
> 'please' doesn't make it any more polite -- in fact, given just before
> a insulting statement it may have the exact opposite effect.
>
> The polite way of saying that would be to strip the first part
> of the sentence and just say 'please send nominations ...'  In fact,
> as you can see the passive aggressive part is completely unnecessary to
> convey the meaning, so what's the purpose of adding it besides
> intentionally offending someone?

As a native English speaker I agree with Michał's assessment.