Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Michael Everitt <m.j.everitt@×××.org>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel membership vs politeness on mailing lists
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2019 03:33:59
Message-Id: e99b8bee-defb-0d99-6d7f-a5f39cbc1f11@iee.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel membership vs politeness on mailing lists by desultory
1 On 20/06/19 04:30, desultory wrote:
2 > On 06/19/19 17:20, David Seifert wrote:
3 >> On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 14:06 -0400, Matt Turner wrote:
4 >>> On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:38 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o>
5 >>> wrote:
6 >>>> On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 08:03 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
7 >>>>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 20:33:09 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
8 >>>>>> On Tue, 2019-06-18 at 19:20 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
9 >>>>>>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 09:43:05 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
10 >>>>>>>> On Sun, 2019-06-16 at 23:00 +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
11 >>>>>>>>> Only active Gentoo developers who are also Foundation
12 >>>>>>>>> members may be
13 >>>>>>>>> nominated. [1]
14 >>>>>>>>>
15 >>>>>>>>> Nominations MUST be made by posting to
16 >>>>>>>>> gentoo-nfp@l.g.o, and
17 >>>>>>>>> the nominated candidate must accept not later than the
18 >>>>>>>>> end of the
19 >>>>>>>>> nomination period.
20 >>>>>>>> Ok, let's try someone else. I nominate:
21 >>>>>>>>
22 >>>>>>>> David Seifert (soap)
23 >>>>>>>> Mikle Kolyada (zlogene)
24 >>>>>>> You violated the rules:
25 >>>>>>> Nominations MUST be made by posting to
26 >>>>>>> gentoo-nfp@l.g.o
27 >>>>>>>
28 >>>>>>> But you sent them to gentoo-project@l.g.o mail
29 >>>>>>> list.
30 >>>>>>> Hereby they are not valid. Please perform your duty properly
31 >>>>>>> and
32 >>>>>>> send nominations to the aforementioned NFP mail list.
33 >>>>>>>
34 >>>>>> You could also have understood it was a honest mistake and be
35 >>>>>> nice about
36 >>>>>> it. But I suppose that's too much to expect from a ComRel
37 >>>>>> member.
38 >>>>> I politely pointed out your mistake and nicely asked you to fix
39 >>>>> it.
40 >>>>> I even used the word "please". I honestly don't see what was not
41 >>>>> nice about my previous e-mail. Maybe we have a language barrier
42 >>>>> issue here.
43 >>>>>
44 >>>>> My comrel membership has nothing to do with this discussion and
45 >>>>> I'm participating in it as a common Gentoo developer with my
46 >>>>> comrel
47 >>>>> hat off.
48 >>>>>
49 >>>> Do you really believe that a ComRel member (read: a person whose
50 >>>> duty
51 >>>> involves judging other people's behavior) can just take ComRel hat
52 >>>> off
53 >>>> and stop caring about providing exemplary behavior? Following that
54 >>>> logic, I could join ComRel claiming that all the things I've said
55 >>>> and done were 'with my comrel hat off' (since I don't have any)!
56 >>>>
57 >>>> I understand that there might be a language barrier. However,
58 >>>> since you
59 >>>> decide to perform a very specific and important role, I'm afraid
60 >>>> you
61 >>>> need to learn to use English in a way that's actually polite rather
62 >>>> than
63 >>>> using the excuse of a language barrier.
64 >>>>
65 >>>> Let me explain.
66 >>>>
67 >>>> A neutral (i.e. not really polite but acceptable) way of saying
68 >>>> that
69 >>>> would be to say 'you have posted the nominations to the wrong
70 >>>> list'.
71 >>>> That's plain and factual.
72 >>>>
73 >>>> You said 'you violated the rules' which is an
74 >>>> accusation. Accusations
75 >>>> tend to render one as guilty of doing something very
76 >>>> bad. Accusations
77 >>>> are not polite.
78 >>>>
79 >>>> Furthermore, 'perform your duty properly' is passive
80 >>>> aggressive. Adding
81 >>>> 'please' doesn't make it any more polite -- in fact, given just
82 >>>> before
83 >>>> a insulting statement it may have the exact opposite effect.
84 >>>>
85 >>>> The polite way of saying that would be to strip the first part
86 >>>> of the sentence and just say 'please send nominations ...' In
87 >>>> fact,
88 >>>> as you can see the passive aggressive part is completely
89 >>>> unnecessary to
90 >>>> convey the meaning, so what's the purpose of adding it besides
91 >>>> intentionally offending someone?
92 >>> As a native English speaker I agree with Michał's assessment.
93 >>>
94 >> so do I.
95 >>
96 >>
97 >>
98 > Since, apparently, all native speakers of English are now supposed to
99 > opine on this, here goes.
100 >
101 > As a native speaker of English, I do not agree that mgorny's reply to
102 > bircoph was warranted. He replied to a statement of fact, and request to
103 > actually follow published rules by smearing an entire team.
104 >
105 > Was bircoph's message the epitome of polite and deferential writing? No.
106 > Is there any reason that it needed to be? Also no. Was it as bad as
107 > comments regularly made by mgorny on this and other mailing lists?
108 > Certainly not, unless you somehow consider being brusque to be worse
109 > than actively belittling or indeed libelous. Would I have taken issue
110 > with mgorny's initial reply had he left as only the first sentence and
111 > resending the nominations to the correct list? No, bircoph's message
112 > could be taken as being mildly rude and just because mgorny has
113 > regularly failed to avoid doing the same, and indeed worse, does not
114 > mean that he cannot ask others to do better. Is there any sensible
115 > reason to make a fuss over this? Absolutely not, yet here we are with
116 > yet another tempest in a teapot on the lists.
117 >
118 +1