The same red herring as always. [LWN.net]

The same red herring as always.

Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:11 UTC (Wed) by rbuchmann (guest, #52862)
In reply to: The same red herring as always. by HelloWorld
Parent article: On kernel mailing list behavior

I fully disagree.

It's almost impossible to communicate unambigously, no matter wich words are used.

I don't know if the four-sides model of communication is well non outside Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-sides_model.
But at least here it's probably part of every communication training (in companies etc.)

"Ok, what kind of ass-hat idiotic thing is this?" and "The following is a bad idea" don't tell the same story and they are both ambigous.
What is he trying to say?
- fact: code is bad/suboptimal/whatever?
- self reveal: I don't like it/I'm really upset/I take only perfect code?
- appeal: Change it/Go away?
- relationship: I usually trust you/I know you can do better/I think you are dumb?

I think that somethink like "Greg, you really disappointed me because I know you know better" would be more clear and polite (my interpretation comes from the Linus' explanations regarding his swearing referenced elsewhere).

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The same red herring as always.

Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:37 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I think that somethink like "Greg, you really disappointed me because I know you know better" would be more clear and polite

Are you really sure? To me Linus version translates to "Greg, you are really slow today and you are doing something really stupid, please stop and we'll be able to work from there" while your version translates to "Greg, you've disappointed me so much I can no longer even express it, I don't even have any swear words left and thus I don't know how I can continue to work with you".

I will expect to see something like "I remove you from list maintainers and will no longer pull patches from you. This is the end." in the next line.

P.S. And this not just my opinion as you can see.