On 03.05.2018 21:31, Brett Cannon wrote:
On Thu, 3 May 2018 at 01:27 Paul Moore <p.f.mo...@gmail.com
<mailto:p.f.mo...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On 3 May 2018 at 03:26, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info
<mailto:st...@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).
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--
Regards,
Ivan
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