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A day in the life of the CentOS team

A day in the life of the CentOS team

Posted Mar 27, 2006 7:34 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753)
In reply to: A day in the life of the CentOS team by Incabulos
Parent article: A day in the life of the CentOS team

In the circumstances, I believe the CentOS guys handled themselves in a professional, even exemplary way.

Except for that first reply line from CentOS:

I feel sorry for your city.

As someone who has handled support for some in-house development tools for nearly 2 decades, I know the temptation to be snide in replies to clueless-seeming users is often overpowering, but I have learned that is something to avoid at all costs, because it will sour up all later communications, and obstructs problem solving.


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A day in the life of the CentOS team

Posted Mar 27, 2006 15:22 UTC (Mon) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

I know the temptation to be snide in replies to clueless-seeming users is often overpowering, but I have learned that is something to avoid at all costs, because it will sour up all later communications, and obstructs problem solving.
100% agreement. Why start off with an attack? What reason exists to act that way other than to start a fight or humiliate the person?

A day in the life of the CentOS team

Posted Mar 29, 2006 14:42 UTC (Wed) by maderik (subscriber, #28840) [Link]

While perhaps phrased a bit poorly, I think the sentiment the author was trying to express was "It's unfortunate that your city's website is offline..."

A day in the life of the CentOS team

Posted Mar 30, 2006 14:59 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

That's an over-diplomatic interpretation.

Most people would interpret it more along the lines of: "I feel sorry for your city, seeing that it has people like you working for it."

A day in the life of the CentOS team

Posted Mar 30, 2006 17:42 UTC (Thu) by maderik (subscriber, #28840) [Link]

But it's the first sentence of the first e-mail response. At that time the extent of the problem between keyboard and chair was not fully known. It's only after reading everything else that the second meaning overtakes the first.

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