[Ian: I subscribe to this list; PLEASE do not CC me on replies.] On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 09:58:16PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > How about `shouting match' ? Works for me. > > 5) I appreciate your willingness to delete the sentence about "go away > > and grow up", but more important to me is the issue of whether you think > > it's sound policy for the Technical Committee to refuse to "grant > > certiorari", if you will, to a developer who is willing to > > constructively discuss a dispute when the person he or she is in > > conflict with isn't. > > In direct answer: no, I think it would be an unsound policy. The > Technical Committee would probably be annoyed at the uncooperative > developer, but it should take the `case'. Uhm, what you originally had written implied that the TC would be annoyed with the developer who *wasn't* being uncooperative. If YOU really can't engage helpfully, for example because THE OTHER DEVELOPER REFUSES CONSTRUCTIVE DISCUSSION, YOU can refer the question to the Technical Committee (including, possibly, reassigning a bug report to them) or the Project Leadership. If YOU do this, be prepared to be told to go away and grow up ! Emphasis added. I am assuming the antecedent of "this" in the final sentence is "refer the question to the Technical Committee or the Project Leadership", since that's the nearest possible candidate. > > The thrust of section 4 appears to be advice to developers for resolving > > disputes when the TC cannot be involved. If so, I think that should be > > made explicit. > > You're right. But, I don't think that needs to be made explicit. <scratches head> I don't see what is lost through clarity. > > 7) I could not locate the language "consider writing it" in the draft > > you sent to debian-project. > > I haven't sent out my latest draft yet, it'll be out shortly. <scratches head> I'm not sure how I am supposed to take into account language I haven't seen yet, so please remember that my comments apply to the drafts you've actually made public. :) > > 0) In a document that is supposed to speak for a large collective, I > > think it is important to minimize the number of personal idiosyncrasies > > in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage of idioms and > > colloquialisms. > > I don't think any of the issues you've raised that I've not addressed > separately make any significant difference to comprehensibility. Can you tell me what the point is in sticking to (almost unique) idiosyncrasies like spaces before exclamation marks and question marks? The only other people I see writing English who do this are non-native speakers, usually French ones, in whose language I gather such usage of punctuation is standard. They might be appropriate if this draft was to go out with the byline "Ian W. Jackson", but that doesn't appear to be your intent. In short, if I'm writing standard French it's my impression that I should write something closer to Zut alors ! than Zut alors! Why should we expect any less from writers of standard English? > Please let me know if you disagree. Done. I find your usage of punctuation distracting, as you might find excessive usage of CAPITALIZATION for NO APPARENT REASON and perhaps things like i n t r a l e t t e r s p a c i n g in monospaced typography distracting. Certainly my own writing style has its quirks; I try to tone them down or eliminate them for formal documents. If what you want is some indication that "Ian Jackson was here", I don't think anyone would begrudge you an indication of authorship at the bottom of the document, as long as you listed the names of other contributors after your own. -- G. Branden Robinson | It was a typical net.exercise -- a Debian GNU/Linux | screaming mob pounding on a greasy branden@debian.org | spot on the pavement, where used to http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | lie the carcass of a dead horse.
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