On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:28:49 +0100, Simon Budig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Joao S. O. Bueno Calligaris ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > Simon, where does that forbid one to add words > > like "thanks", "please", "would" and etc... to even a short answer, > > like a FAQ URL??? > > Nothing forbids that. The absence of these things does not make an > answer rude though, which is the point I am arguing.
The absence of thanks may be perceived as rude, especially in the context of a bug report closed as WONTFIX, INVALID or NOTGNOME... Let's take the perspective of the bug reporter: if you report a bug or suggest an improvement and your report is rejected by the developers, then your initial impression will be slightly negative. A "neutral" explanation may be perceived as rude because you took the trouble to find out how to report GIMP bugs, you registered in Bugzilla, you spent the time to write the bug report and the only thing you get in return is a too brief message telling you that your bug report was rejected. Contrary to what Michael wrote in another message, I like the canned replies in Bugzilla because most of them start by thanking the reporter. Although I agree that they could be improved and could include two lines about how to avoid duplicates in the future or how to find some FAQs and so on, they are good enough in most cases. These thanks help to offset the negative impression that the reporters might have after seeing their bug reports rejected or marked as a duplicates of another one. In summary, never assume that a short message is "neutral". The context may lead to a negative perception of your message so it is useful to compensate for that by being more polite than usual. And yes, this may mean thanking the 100th clueless user who suggests again to support more than 8 bits per channel or to improve the user interface by implementing some kind of MDI model. -Raphaël _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
