Hello Gabriel,
On 2026-07-30 18:39, Gabriel Wicki wrote:
Hi there!
Please feel cordially invited to join the discussion to our much-needed
contribution guidelines on Codeberg¹
Have a splendid time!
gabriel / gabber
¹ https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/10262
Having read through the Codeberg issue page, I had to do a double take.
Are you the same person who wrote about 'WALLS OF TEXTS' from others
concerning others' disagreement on GCD008?:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2026-07/msg00273.html
Flooding Guix's supporting documentation with manipulative language
which appear to be generated with (or at least linguistically conforming
to) tooling which has perturbed a wide range of people recently is
uncool.
A more sensitive person would have waited a little before scratching
such an itch, you really should have recused yourself.
If it is your own thumbing your nose at GDC009, it lacks finesse as
satire.
Ive already raised concerns in a GDC008 thread over asymmetries and
externalities from mass generation of texts harming and distracting
coders focus (which the language within the recent issue is to me an
artifact).
While I felt that about active Guix contributors focus, the same goes
towards technical people wanting to contribute.
As such, given your own critique on 'our' words (WALLS OF TEXTS), I will
rebut the current zeitgeist form of pseudo matey conversational tone
with this quote:
'There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know whether you
know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck.
It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory
meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you
agree with, it is praise.'
https://george-orwell.org/1984/4.html
More practically concerning guidelines, we should not become pseuds
through infantalising our communications style - its hugely offputting
and would disadvantage Guix:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2016/feb/20/stephen-collins-on-craft-beer-cartoon
If we want to widen the pool then improved information and examples
would be more apt - as well as the hard slog of outreach.
Jonathan
fwiw, given Maxim recently was down on satire as a tool: its worth
mentioning that 1984 in many respects is a satire on the BBC as an
institution for conformity (Orwell had a low opinion of it from
experiences)
