Re: Lack of netiquette, was Re: [PATCH v4 00/13] New remote-hg helper

Andreas Ericsson venit, vidit, dixit 02.11.2012 10:38:

On 11/01/2012 02:46 PM, René Scharfe wrote:

quoted

Also, and I'm sure you didn't know that, "Jedem das Seine" (to each
his own) was the slogan of the Buchenwald concentration camp.  For
that reason some (including me) hear the unspoken cynical
half-sentence "and some people just have to be sent to the gas
chamber" when someone uses this proverb.

It goes further back than that.

"Suum cuique pulchrum est" ("To each his own is a beautiful thing") is
a latin phrase said to be used frequently in the roman senate when
senators politely agreed to disagree and let a vote decide the outcome
rather than debating further.

Please don't let the twisted views of whatever nazi idiot thought it
meant "you may have the wrong faith and therefore deserve to die, so you
shall" pollute it. The original meaning is both poetic and democratic,
and I firmly believe most people have the original meaning to the fore
of their mind when using it. After all, very few people knowingly quote
nazi concentration camp slogans.

In fact, many German terms and words are "forbidden area" since Nazi
times, but I don't think this one carries the same connotation.

But that is a side track.

Collaboration (and code review is a form of collaboration) requires
communication. The linked code of conduct pages describe quite well how
to ensure a productive environment in which "everyone" feels comfortable
communicating and collaborating. But even reading pages like these
requires a common sense (of the many undefined terms therein), a sense
which is usually present here on the list, and thus renders a page like
these unnecessary for us. Once there is a lack of commonality, there is
a lack of agreement about those undefined terms (what constitutes a
personal attack etc.).

Consequently, the only practical test for commonality and community
acceptance appears to be just that: commonality and community
acceptance. If many people in a community consider a tone or formulation
offensive, then it is offensive by the very definition of common sense
(common to that community), and there's no point at all in arguing about
it. If I don't like a community's sense I either deal with it or leave it.

It's really not that different from coding style. If we prefer

if (cond) {

over

if (cond)
{

then you either do it that way or your code gets rejected. The
difference is that coding style is easier to define, of course. The
common thing is that there's no point in arguing about it.

Michael