"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robin...@gmail.com> writes: > At 2025-05-21T10:02:44-0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Yeah, I agree. This has been a rule of thumb for as long as I've been >> on the Internet and I've always been uncomfortable with the absolute >> version. I've also seen it abused from time to time for nearly as long >> as I've been on the Internet. It's sometimes appropriate and even >> necessary to publish private communications. > Seconded. > I have complained before about the poor quality of communications from > the Community Team. I do so again to observe that the correlation > between that poor quality and the team's penchant for broad, > unqualified, absolute, overbearing, condescending, and paternalistic > transmissions and the prohibition of disclosure they unilaterally impose > on others with said communications is not a coincidence. Since this was partly in response to something I said, I just want to note that I personally didn't find the Community Team message to be overbearing, condescending, or paternalistic. It's a common piece of Internet advice that is often correct and this is very, very (very) far from the first time that I've seen it, including in the Debian context. The absolute version is a bit of a pet peeve of mine for Usenet reasons unrelated to Debian, which is why I said something, but it's hardly an unusual position. > The Community Team as now constituted is corrosive to collegiality. Speaking of broad, unqualified, and absolute. :) I am happy to have someone occasionally post a public etiquette reminder or tell me directly, "hey, I think you could have handled that better." I don't promise to agree, but feedback is helpful. It's hard to calibrate communication so that it's effective for the people listening if I don't listen to them provide feedback on whether I succeeded! -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
