Re: [PATCH 3/4] push: make non-fast-forward help message configurable

On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 12:09:07AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I hate to start off with a digression, but one expression from Japanese I
have long been frustrated with, because I cannot find a good counterpart
in English, is "大きなお世話".

J-E dictionaries often translate this phrase as "none of your business",
and it indeed is meant to be thrown at somebody who gives an unsolicited
and an unwanted advice to you, but at the same time it strongly implies
that the reason why such an advice is unwanted is because you very well
knows the issue and does not _need_ (not want) the help on the topic at
all.  It is not about _who_ gives the unwanted advice (which I think the
expression "none of YOUR business" talks about---if the same advice came
from somebody else, it might be appreciated), but it is all about on what
topic the advice is about, and you feel that you know about the topic very
well yourself and do not need any advice from anybody.

The best related English phrase I can think of is that the person is a
"back seat driver". The phrase "armchair $X" also comes to mind (e.g.,
"armchair critic"), though that is usually to indicate that the armchair
critic is giving _bad_ advice, not being well-versed in the field they
are advising about. And I think you are not so much saying the advice is
wrong as much as it is unwanted because you already know it.

I can't think of a noun that describes the advice itself, though
(nagging? ;) ).

I have always felt that many of the messages we have added since the
"newbie friendliness" drive around 1.3.0 deserve to be labeled with the
expression 大きなお世話.

Of course, "unsolicited-unneeded-advice.*" is too long as a variable name,
but I personally would very much welcome changes along this line and I
think "advice.*" is a good name for the category.

Git config files are utf8, right? You can always internationalize this
feature. :)

Thinking on it more, I think "advice" is the right word. It is not about
arbitrary messages; it is about particular messages which try to advise.
You would never want this feature to cover messages that are
informational about a particular state or action that has occurred. Only
"maybe you should try this" messages.

I'll re-roll 3 and 4 based on that, but I will wait a bit to see any
more comments. Probably you should consider patches 1 and 2 as a
potential series for 'maint', and 3 and 4 should be spun off into their
own series (they really only rely textually on the first two).

-Peff