Jon,
I believe that you want people to contribute to this project,
but comments like the ones you made in this thread are more
likely to scare people away. I'm afraid many would-be
contributors read these mails and think "if this is the way
my contributions will be received, I'm out of here".
I suggest a more encouraging and helpful tone. Examples:
> Also, I already wrote all of this code for JServ and Tomcat 3.x
> and you aren't even re-using it. Sigh.
You *could* have said: BTW, there's already code for this in
JServ and Tomcat 3.x. Take a look at ... and see if you can't
reuse that instead.
> I keep looking at this code and realizing how bad it is. :-(
This didn't have to be said at all. Instead, just saying what's
wrong would have had the same positive effect (letting the
contributor know what needs to be fixed), without giving the
guy the feeling that his code is not really appreciated.
Remember that email is a really bad communication tool.
Without gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc.,
all we're left with are the words in black and white. It's
very easy to read more into them than what's intended.
Please, let's keep a more positive tone in the messages on
this list, so people feel like they are welcome.
Hans
--
Hans Bergsten [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Gefion Software http://www.gefionsoftware.com
Author of JavaServer Pages (O'Reilly), http://TheJSPBook.com
