

Re: Pledge To Killfile a person

[Andrew Suffield]
> I acknowledge that I occasionally write mails which can be sharp and
> pointy, but generally it's just in response to similarly sharp
> mails. It's hardly uncommon in Debian;

Perhaps not, but is it smart to send such messages, and is it the kind
of messages you want to be remembered by?  I suspect we would reduce
the conflict level and increase productivity if there were less such
messages.  Replying with strong language to a message with strong
language tend to just escalate the conflict, and in my experience
rarely end in a constructive way.

> I've made a quick review of my sent mail in the past few months, and
> the mail I've seen on the lists in that time frame, and I don't
> think my percentage is any worse than anybody else (and it's better
> than many). Neither is the number of large threads I've spawned (I
> found two, and I went back two years). The only difference is that
> other people don't have rumours being spread about them.

Perhaps others are better, perhaps others are worse.  One question you
could ask yourself is if you want to be a person increasing the
percentage of "sharp mails" as you put it, or a person decreasing that
same percentage.

For myself, I try to bring that percentage down.  And I tend to find
the messages and meaning of people without strong and abusive language
more relevant and interesting, and I value those peoples meaning
higher than I value others.

If you want your intentions, meanings and messages to be read and
understood by as many as possible, it might be an idea to rephrase
them using less strong language.  If you do not really care about how
many read and understand your messages, continue as you are. :)

Removed your name from the subject.  I believe it is a bad idea to
have names in subjects, as the name linger on while the topic being
discussed tend to drift far away from the original topic.
Petter Reinholdtsen

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