Bug#513053: [checks/descriptions] warn when first person is used in descriptions
Raphael Geissert <atomo64+debian@gmail.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> and it's not already checked by debconf. I think that one's more
>> questionable and more a matter of style. We may want to impose such a
>> style, but I think more consensus is needed before doing that. I would
>> tend to say "this package is not suitable for..." instead of "You
>> shouldn't use this package if...", but I don't think there's anything
>> basically wrong with the second construction.
> I don't think that using "You" in a description is ok (not even
> lowercase "you", but that would be too picky); but I won't object to try
> to reach a concensus about it.
As with the debconf checks, I'm willing to add checks to Lintian to
enforce things that, say, debian-i18n-english says we should enforce, but
I don't feel like the people who read this list normally have enough
information to do a good review or enough authority to make the call on
what direction to push Debian as a whole.
I'm also hesitant to add too many checks that involve Lintian trying to
read English. It starts reminding me of computer grammar checkers, which
even these days are wrong more often than not (and Lintian is nowhere near
as sophisticated). It's just hesitant, not saying no, though.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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