Brandon Harris wrote: > On Aug 16, 2012, at 7:18 PM, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: >> Ryan Lane wrote: >>>> What is your plan to clean up the mess you made? >>> >>> I need to call you out on this MZ. This is an incredibly rude way to >>> phrase this. >>> >>> I get that our community tends to accept this kind of behavior, but I >>> think we should really put effort into coming up with some method of >>> discouraging people from acting this way. >> >> What would have been a politer way to phrase the question? I originally >> wrote "when are you going to clean up the mess you made?", but I rewrote it. > > "the mess you made". > > Right there, in that phrase, you have aggressively indicated the following: > > a) That you believe someone fucked up; > b) That you think they're incompetent; > c) That you think they're being lazy about it
I didn't intend to indicate most of that, of course. That said, system administrators are trusted to not break things and when they do, there's a moral obligation to make a good-faith effort to fix that which was broken by their actions. In this case, the moral culpability equation is enhanced by various factors previously discussed. > This communication style typically causes the exact opposite response from > what you apparently want to have happen. I can't speak for others, but when > someone talks to *me* this way, I start tuning them out. Sure. But to me the tone is mostly irrelevant when you're considering a question of morality and ethics. If I break something, I feel obligated to make a good-faith effort to clean up the mess from my actions. I don't care if I'm the only one who noticed or if fifty people have noticed and are now shouting about it. I'll agree that we can't expect anyone to be able to fully rectify the ripple effects of breaking links like this. Perhaps others don't feel similarly about the level of moral culpability, and I can accept that, I just don't happen to agree that such behavior (making a mess and then simply walking away) is acceptable in this case. (It may seem strange to discuss moral culpability in the context of something seemingly so trivial, but when you consider the weighty issues of manipulating a historical record and the level of access and trust required to do so, it makes sense, in my opinion.) MZMcBride _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
