Re: [PATCH] Documentation/CommunityGuidelines

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 10, 2013, 19:01 UTC
Message-ID: <20130610190102.GF12924@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vzjuxj21b.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

>     0. You do not take offense, no matter what.  If someone attacks
>     you irrationally, you do not respond.  This is a public mailing
>     list, and we are all rational people: the attacker has already
>     humiliated herself in public, and everyone can see that.

[...]

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> I suspect it mostly has to do with the desire to make sure that
> bystanders do not get an impression that the one who speaks last
> gives the conclusion to the discussion, so stating "The attacker
> being the one who speaks last in the discussion does not mean the
> conclusion is his." explicitly might be one way to make it more
> practically useful by alleviating the urge to respond, instead of
> saying "no matter what".
>
> I dunno.

Actually my motivation is worse than that in at least one of the cases I am assuming Ram is referring to.

I don't think most bystanders would misunderstand if I let a certain person alone instead of responding and saying "You are being unproductive. Please stop." But that certain person seems to misunderstand, whether I say that or not. So when I lose patience I say so, knowing that it will spark a discussion with others, knowing that that discussion needs to happen and that if the problem is not addressed I will continue to lose motivation for regular work on-list.

Is that an instance of taking offense and letting emotion overtake reason? Is that against the rules?

Jonathan