On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 08:40:50PM +0300, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > la, 2009-07-25 kello 09:16 -0500, Manoj Srivastava kirjoitti: > > You are making the assumption that the authors reaction to "Bad" > > is less negative than the reaction to "Silly". While this is > > subjective, I do not think it is without contention: > > My hasty re-wording has now given the wrong impression, sorry. My main > point is that it is often possible to express misgivings about things > other people propose without exiting the realm of the polite. I hope I > can claim that is true even though I failed to completely do so myself.
I'm afraid you can't. I'm willing to go on record as saying that stating something negative about someone's ideas in such a manner that it will not offend them, regardless of their current emotions, state of mind, or whatever, is plain impossible. It's possible to make an attempt, of course; and I do not think that stating 'this is silly' without explaining why that is the case should be appropriate in any case; but just stating that an idea is silly /with full explanation/ should always be acceptable, even if it rubs people the wrong way. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
