Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: desultory <desultory@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel membership vs politeness on mailing lists
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2019 03:30:26
Message-Id: 10239df9-b6a7-0d10-8909-07f454862c39@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel membership vs politeness on mailing lists by David Seifert
1 On 06/19/19 17:20, David Seifert wrote:
2 > On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 14:06 -0400, Matt Turner wrote:
3 >> On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:38 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o>
4 >> wrote:
5 >>> On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 08:03 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
6 >>>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 20:33:09 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
7 >>>>> On Tue, 2019-06-18 at 19:20 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
8 >>>>>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 09:43:05 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
9 >>>>>>> On Sun, 2019-06-16 at 23:00 +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
10 >>>>>>>> Only active Gentoo developers who are also Foundation
11 >>>>>>>> members may be
12 >>>>>>>> nominated. [1]
13 >>>>>>>>
14 >>>>>>>> Nominations MUST be made by posting to
15 >>>>>>>> gentoo-nfp@l.g.o, and
16 >>>>>>>> the nominated candidate must accept not later than the
17 >>>>>>>> end of the
18 >>>>>>>> nomination period.
19 >>>>>>>
20 >>>>>>> Ok, let's try someone else. I nominate:
21 >>>>>>>
22 >>>>>>> David Seifert (soap)
23 >>>>>>> Mikle Kolyada (zlogene)
24 >>>>>>
25 >>>>>> You violated the rules:
26 >>>>>> Nominations MUST be made by posting to
27 >>>>>> gentoo-nfp@l.g.o
28 >>>>>>
29 >>>>>> But you sent them to gentoo-project@l.g.o mail
30 >>>>>> list.
31 >>>>>> Hereby they are not valid. Please perform your duty properly
32 >>>>>> and
33 >>>>>> send nominations to the aforementioned NFP mail list.
34 >>>>>>
35 >>>>>
36 >>>>> You could also have understood it was a honest mistake and be
37 >>>>> nice about
38 >>>>> it. But I suppose that's too much to expect from a ComRel
39 >>>>> member.
40 >>>>
41 >>>> I politely pointed out your mistake and nicely asked you to fix
42 >>>> it.
43 >>>> I even used the word "please". I honestly don't see what was not
44 >>>> nice about my previous e-mail. Maybe we have a language barrier
45 >>>> issue here.
46 >>>>
47 >>>> My comrel membership has nothing to do with this discussion and
48 >>>> I'm participating in it as a common Gentoo developer with my
49 >>>> comrel
50 >>>> hat off.
51 >>>>
52 >>>
53 >>> Do you really believe that a ComRel member (read: a person whose
54 >>> duty
55 >>> involves judging other people's behavior) can just take ComRel hat
56 >>> off
57 >>> and stop caring about providing exemplary behavior? Following that
58 >>> logic, I could join ComRel claiming that all the things I've said
59 >>> and done were 'with my comrel hat off' (since I don't have any)!
60 >>>
61 >>> I understand that there might be a language barrier. However,
62 >>> since you
63 >>> decide to perform a very specific and important role, I'm afraid
64 >>> you
65 >>> need to learn to use English in a way that's actually polite rather
66 >>> than
67 >>> using the excuse of a language barrier.
68 >>>
69 >>> Let me explain.
70 >>>
71 >>> A neutral (i.e. not really polite but acceptable) way of saying
72 >>> that
73 >>> would be to say 'you have posted the nominations to the wrong
74 >>> list'.
75 >>> That's plain and factual.
76 >>>
77 >>> You said 'you violated the rules' which is an
78 >>> accusation. Accusations
79 >>> tend to render one as guilty of doing something very
80 >>> bad. Accusations
81 >>> are not polite.
82 >>>
83 >>> Furthermore, 'perform your duty properly' is passive
84 >>> aggressive. Adding
85 >>> 'please' doesn't make it any more polite -- in fact, given just
86 >>> before
87 >>> a insulting statement it may have the exact opposite effect.
88 >>>
89 >>> The polite way of saying that would be to strip the first part
90 >>> of the sentence and just say 'please send nominations ...' In
91 >>> fact,
92 >>> as you can see the passive aggressive part is completely
93 >>> unnecessary to
94 >>> convey the meaning, so what's the purpose of adding it besides
95 >>> intentionally offending someone?
96 >>
97 >> As a native English speaker I agree with Michał's assessment.
98 >>
99 >
100 > so do I.
101 >
102 >
103 >
104 Since, apparently, all native speakers of English are now supposed to
105 opine on this, here goes.
106
107 As a native speaker of English, I do not agree that mgorny's reply to
108 bircoph was warranted. He replied to a statement of fact, and request to
109 actually follow published rules by smearing an entire team.
110
111 Was bircoph's message the epitome of polite and deferential writing? No.
112 Is there any reason that it needed to be? Also no. Was it as bad as
113 comments regularly made by mgorny on this and other mailing lists?
114 Certainly not, unless you somehow consider being brusque to be worse
115 than actively belittling or indeed libelous. Would I have taken issue
116 with mgorny's initial reply had he left as only the first sentence and
117 resending the nominations to the correct list? No, bircoph's message
118 could be taken as being mildly rude and just because mgorny has
119 regularly failed to avoid doing the same, and indeed worse, does not
120 mean that he cannot ask others to do better. Is there any sensible
121 reason to make a fuss over this? Absolutely not, yet here we are with
122 yet another tempest in a teapot on the lists.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel membership vs politeness on mailing lists Michael Everitt <m.j.everitt@×××.org>