On 03.05.2018 21:31, Brett Cannon wrote:
On 3 May
2018 at 03:26, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
>> Will all due respect, it's sometimes unpredictable
what kind of wording
>> Anglo-Saxons will take as an insult, as there's lot
of obsequiosity
>> there that doesn't exist in other cultures. To me,
"not give a damn"
>> reads like a familiar version of "not care about
something", but
>> apparently it can be offensive.
>
> I'm Anglo-Saxon[1], and honestly I believe that it is
thin-skinned to
> the point of ludicrousness to say that "no-one gives a
damn" is an
> insult. This isn't 1939 when Clark Gable's famous line
"Frankly my dear,
> I don't give a damn" was considered shocking. Its 2018
and to not give a
> damn is a more forceful way of saying that people don't
care, that they
> are indifferent.
Sigh. That's not what I was saying at all. I was trying to
point out
that Antoine's claim that people should ignore the rhetoric
and that
complaining about the attitude was unreasonable, was in
itself unfair.
People have a right to point out that a mail like the OP's
was badly
worded.
> With respect to Paul, I literally cannot imagine why he
thinks that
> *anyone*, not even the tkinter maintainers or
developers themselves,
> ought to feel *offended* by Ivan's words.
Personally, they didn't offend me. I don't pretend to know
how others
might take them. But they *did* annoy me. I'm frankly sick
of people
(not on this list) complaining that people who work on
projects in
their own time, free of charge, "don't care enough" or "are
ignoring
my requirement". We all do it, to an extent, and it's
natural to get
frustrated, but the onus is on the person asking for help to
be polite
and fair. And maybe this response was the one where I
finally let that
frustration show through. I may read less email for a week
or two,
just to get a break.
I had the same response as Paul: annoyed. And while Ivan
thought he was using "emotional language to drive the point
home that it's not some nitpick", it actually had the
reverse effect on me and caused me not to care because I
don't need to invite annoyance into my life when putting in
my personal time into something.
No one is saying people can't be upset and if you are
ever upset there's something wrong; we're human beings after
all. But those of us speaking up about the tone are saying
that you can also wait until you're not so upset to write an
email. This was never going to be resolved in an hour, so
waiting an hour until you're in a better place to write an
email that wasn't quite so inflammatory seems like a
reasonable thing to ask.
Let me express things right from the horse's mouth.
The sole purpose of the tone was to not let the mesage be flat-out
ignored.
I had my neutral-toned, to-the-point messages to mailing lists
flat-out ignored one too many times for reasons that I can only
guess about.
This time, the situation was too important to let that happen.
Whatever anyone may think of this, it worked. I got my message
through, and got the feedback on the topic that I needed to proceed
in resolving the problem that caused it.
I seriously doubt I could achieve that with a neutral-toned message
just stating the facts: dry facts would not show ppl how this could
be important ("ah, just another n00b struggling with Tkinter basics"
or something).