Hi, general comments: The tone of the GIMP mailing list has improved dramatically over the years (long time lurker here) and I would assert that it is generally very reasonable.
However, language barriers can cause problems and special care should be taken when this is obviously the case. Also, it's easy to slip into "bad habits" that may just require a bit of extra self-control. To that end, spending 10 minutes on email is simply a waste of time. Terse is acceptable (even preferrable to long and meandering) and needn't be rude. I suggest an internal triage, where appropriate: (a) Is it worth my time to reply? Can anyone else answer this? (b) Is my response genuinely helpful? (c) Can I mitigate a problem by replying? For the email that instigated this, I found it to be unfriendly as well. The conversation basically went: "What language do you use?", "Figure it out yourself." I would say this fails my little triage test. If you think the question is foolish, treat it like the lunatic ranting on the corner: walk as far away as possible. Alternately, be concise, but helpful: "It's written in C. You can get the source from ... -or- Just search for 'GIMP source code'." The goal would be to encourage the requestor to work forward, not to dissuade them from doing so. Triage test (c) is simply damage control: If someone gets a rude message, a polite response from someone else gives people another place to focus. There is a video called "How Open Source Projects Susvive Poisonous People" available on Google Video from a couple Subversion folks: http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645 It's an hour long but is generally interesting. There are some valuable points not just from a "how to be friendly" perspective (which isn't always the answer, either) but also "how to keep a project on track". The section from 30:00-45:00 is probably most appropriate. And a FAQ would certainly be helpful. Regards, Chris _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
