On Sun, 12 Aug 2001, Warner Losh wrote:
> A word about tone. If you were to get as in my face about, say,
> pccard, as you about the psm driver, I'd certainly be ill inclined to
> provide you with what you want.
>
> Good Tone:
> Say Warner, why do you bother turning off the power after
> you suspend a socket. Shouldn't the power routines take care
> of that? Is there something subtle that's going on? Maybe a
> comment is in order?
>
> Bad Tone:
> Please explain the pros and cons for turning the power off
> after suspending a socket. I really want to know. Why did
> they do this? Didn't the coder trust the power routines? The
> least he could have done was include a comment. Was there
> some long discussion that I missed?
>
> See the difference? The first tone is friendly, suggesting that
> something in the code might be unclear. The second seems to imply
> that I'm a moron for not documenting every trivial solution with a 20
> page thesis on why it is good or bad to do.
This is such a great example of how tone can come across poorly in a text
medium. I doubt (hope) that Joe didn't mean to come across as that. But
tone in email is so often inferred based on the readers own moods, that
phrasing email becomes much more important so as to not give the reader
the wrong impression.
This should be required reading for anyone considering posting to a
FreeBSD mailing list.
-gordon
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