Re: First Call for votes: General resolution for the handling of the non-free section

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 12:36:19PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 02:58:02PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Personally, I find swearing much less offensive than making things so
> > personal that you title threads with things like "Serious problems with
> > Mr Troup" or "Why Anthony Towns is wrong". But you don't seem interested
> > in doing anything about that, so why should anyone else be interested
> > in addressing your concerns?
> 
> I think you have a point there.
> 
> There's a difference between being abrasive, belligerent, obnoxious,
> and incoherent and being coherently and pointedly slanderous -- and the
> latter is far more noxious.

True, but -- I don't think that either of those subject lines are really
slanderous.  For instance, the "Why Anthony Towns is wrong" should
probably have read "Why Anthony Towns' *Argument* is wrong" -- which
simply uses Anthony's name to identify which argument is being referred
to.  However, I don't see the difference as being all that significant.

Back in my old FidoNet days, the "Golden Rule" of FidoNet went basically
like this:

"Thou shalt not be excessively annoying, and thou shalt not be
excessively easily annoyed."

I think that applies perfectly to Debian.

-- John