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

[Michael Everitt <m.j.everitt@iee.org>]

On 20/06/19 04:30, desultory wrote:
> 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.
>
+1