On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 12:31:40AM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 09:18:13PM +0100, Chris Lamb wrote: > > Dear Adrian, > > Dear Chris, > > > > This is fake news. > > > > Please try and avoid casual use of this term on Debian lists. > > > > Whilst I understand your meaning and intentions, the term has now been > > so overused and overapplied and has been evacuated of all useful > > meaning. > > > > Indeed, its use now appears to only distract & unnecessarily antagonise > > readers and should probably be considered an illegal move in civilised > > or otherwise productive conversation. > > I thought this would would have been less offensive than the normal > "This is a lie." when a statement is the exact opposite of the > truth (compare [1] with the claim "no upstream release since 2013"), > but as non-native speaker I accept your explanation that I was wrong > on that. I agree, no one likes being called a liar, but "This is untrue", "this is false", and "this is a falsehood" are more neutral than "this is a lie", because a lie is the product of lying, and lying includes the intent to deceive and/or mislead. Better to allow for the possibility that someone was mistaken or misspoke ;-) Cheers, Nicholas
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