Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Posted Oct 25, 2018 6:46 UTC (Thu) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604)
In reply to: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines by interalia
Parent article: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

> I like the wording and getle rationale in this document, but I do think the personalities who most need reining in are just going to look at such a thing and say "people are too sensitive, they just need to toughen up". I guess it depends who the target audience is.

I would also like to throw in the mix that some people just have poor social and communication skills and don't really pick up as well on social feedback as other people, to the point of it being a neuroligical / psychiatric issue. This isn't really helped by isolating and ostracizing.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Posted Oct 25, 2018 12:19 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> I would also like to throw in the mix that some people just have poor social and communication skills and don't really pick up as well on social feedback as other people, to the point of it being a neuroligical / psychiatric issue. This isn't really helped by isolating and ostracizing.

And to further muddy the waters, those folks with poor social and communication skills are often (by far) the most prolific contributors of (good!) code.

It is somewhat hypocritical to say that these folks should expend great effort to change themselves lest they be ostracized, while not holding those on the other end to that same expectation/standard.

Anyway. As with most things, balance is necessary but it is highly presumptuous to state a-priori where that balance "obviously" must lie.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Posted Oct 25, 2018 20:01 UTC (Thu) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link]

> And to further muddy the waters, those folks with poor social and communication skills are often (by far) the most prolific
> contributors of (good!) code.
>
> It is somewhat hypocritical to say that these folks should expend great effort to change themselves lest they be ostracized, while not > holding those on the other end to that same expectation/standard.

The assumption that people who are perceived as "having poor social and communication skills" are actually capable of "changing themselves", especially "changing themselves *quickly*" while being exposed to a (perceived to be) highly chaotic environment (perceived to be) extremely hostile, up to the point of (perceived to be) being hell-bent on physical/ psychical extermination of "the offender/ enemy" isn't necessarily true.

Eg, as a hopefully completely harmless example, I've meanwhile learnt to answer the "Eat in or take away?" question common in takeaways. That's a devilish bit of language confusion as the only way to eat something someone intends to buy is "inside", the other half of the sentence implying that the product is not supposed to be eaten which is wrong. This took me about 15 years. There are others which still leave my mind entirely blank as to "What does this person want from me???".

That's a problem people without it usually cannot imagine to be a problem hence, they usually arrive at

assumption A) must be an imbecile.
assumption B) must be doing this intentionally to annoy me.

Plus some rather more nasty options I don't want to put into words now.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Posted Oct 25, 2018 22:21 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It is somewhat hypocritical to say that these folks should expend great effort to change themselves lest they be ostracized

They probably have been anyway, in order to function in society at all. (And if they haven't figured out that acting kindly towards people makes those people act better towards them and makes their lives easier, a nice document describing what to do and how to do it actually seems quite likely to be helpful. I wish I'd had one a quarter-century ago.)