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

[desultory <desultory@gentoo.org>]

On 06/19/19 17:20, David Seifert wrote:
> On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 14:06 -0400, Matt Turner wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:38 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org>
>> 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@lists.gentoo.org, 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@lists.gentoo.org
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But you sent them to gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org 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.
>>
> 
> so do I.
> 
> 
> 
Since, apparently, all native speakers of English are now supposed to
opine on this, here goes.

As a native speaker of English, I do not agree that mgorny's reply to
bircoph was warranted. He replied to a statement of fact, and request to
actually follow published rules by smearing an entire team.

Was bircoph's message the epitome of polite and deferential writing? No.
Is there any reason that it needed to be? Also no. Was it as bad as
comments regularly made by mgorny on this and other mailing lists?
Certainly not, unless you somehow consider being brusque to be worse
than actively belittling or indeed libelous. Would I have taken issue
with mgorny's initial reply had he left as only the first sentence and
resending the nominations to the correct list? No, bircoph's message
could be taken as being mildly rude and just because mgorny has
regularly failed to avoid doing the same, and indeed worse, does not
mean that he cannot ask others to do better. Is there any sensible
reason to make a fuss over this? Absolutely not, yet here we are with
yet another tempest in a teapot on the lists.