On Thu 09 Mar 2017 19:31, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> writes: >> From: l...@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) >> Cc: guile-user@gnu.org >> Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:26:09 +0100 >> >> I’m all for personal style, but I’m against passive-aggressive or downright >> aggressive style. > > That's what I'm trying to tell you: there's no aggression.
I understand that different people can have different reactions and it's great that you can look through "style" to the substance. I and a number of other contributors (evidently including Ludovic) find it hard to do so, and the only reason we try is because we care about Guile. It's really weird though to try to ignore this "style" when the style often says precisely that we _don't_ care, in those words, and other times in as many words. Style also has an effect on how willing I am to work with someone, and with their work. I think for the similar reasons that we should encourage good coding styles (that it makes it easy to read and understand what we are doing), we should encourage good communications styles as well, and give negative feedback on those styles that need work. Finally, as Ludovic mentioned, one person's style has an effect on the composition of the body of Guile users and developers. Whether someone feels welcome in a group is a function of lots of subtle and not-so-subtle things. Feeling welcome is, for most people, a prerequisite to further involvement. Guile does OK here -- some good aspects, some needs-improvement aspects -- but I think we can all think of examples of online communities that have atrophied over time, and a hostile online environment can be one of the reasons for this; intervention of maintainers to avoid this failure mode should be expected, I think. I know it's a complicated issue. In the particular case of the mail that Ludovic responded to, I agree with his message and think he did a fine job -- focussing on issues but also making clear that we should be kind to each other in the way we communicate. It was more charitable than I was going to be :) Regards, Andy
