<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> On 04/08/2012 11:14 PM, Dane Mutters wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:CAAfiTRjrjcOZOrBN6WWc0ZOorA1pE+KZnrRgVwVP1o2D=+6MDg@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> John, So, while I'm, in fact, all for speaking bluntly, I also see the quandary that speaking too bluntly produces when being "wrong" (for the "owners" of a work) would mean that the months they spent on a particular project would all be for nothing, should they admit that they were actually wrong. </blockquote> All things have a balance. Direct personal attacks are less useful than attacks on a particular feature you don't like; attacks by proxy are also more useful than direct personal attacks ("I don't know what idiot came up with this..." that idiot is somewhere, but he's at least able to shuffle back into the crowd and hide...). Directly grabbing the developer in question and giving them a severe public dressing down is just not constructive--let's ignore the issue and lob personal attacks instead now eh? (Thorough dressings down are for the rare situation where the person in question is a severely destructive idiot--this doesn't happen much, aside from that one coworker we've all had that gets paid to creates problems for everyone else.) Either way, getting *too* uncivil is a bad thing. Strong language can be very useful in some forums; but in forums where it's strongly inappropriate you should pick your tone well enough to have the same effect. Railing on something by proxy on a glancing blow may be overstepping the bounds of civility, or it might be a needed slap alongside the head for someone; continuing to ignore the feature itself and continuously use it purely as a proxy to insult someone is just malicious and useless. We don't want to degenerate into a forum of continuous flame wars in any case; but the truth is the occasional burn serves to remind us that fire is hot and we should really pay attention to what we're doing. While you don't want to burn your house down, you also really don't want to freeze to death. That all said, let's keep it civil. Or at least let's go for a farce. <blockquote cite="mid:CAAfiTRjrjcOZOrBN6WWc0ZOorA1pE+KZnrRgVwVP1o2D=+6MDg@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <blockquote style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"> Plus it's fun to read people speaking frankly, though if you spoke like a Franc I guess you'd have to use a lot more accents and apostrophes. </blockquote> <div> Well said. ;-) </div> </blockquote> If only brevity was my strong point. <blockquote cite="mid:CAAfiTRjrjcOZOrBN6WWc0ZOorA1pE+KZnrRgVwVP1o2D=+6MDg@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <div>--Dane </div> </blockquote> </body> </html>