[Python-Dev] Dealing with tone in an email (was: Drop/deprecate Tkinter?)

[Brett Cannon]

On Fri, 4 May 2018 at 09:07 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Thank you Steven! I assume that Brian hadn't seen my response (such
> crossed messages due to delivery delays are very common in this mailing
> list).
>
> I'd like to use your email (nearly) verbatim to start off the discussion
> about civility we're going to have at the Language Summit.
>

And I will also want to say thanks for the email, Steven! I agree with
everything you said and that any expectations we have of others should
apply equally to anyone on this list in any interaction. And I think it's
especially true in our responses as we should try to keep the moral high
ground by being examples of what we expect and want from others.


>
> On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 8:43 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 06:31:03PM +0000, Brett Cannon wrote:
>>
>> > No one is saying people can't be upset and if you are ever upset there's
>> > something wrong; we're human beings after all. But those of us speaking
>> up
>> > about the tone are saying that you can also wait until you're not so
>> upset
>> > to write an email. This was never going to be resolved in an hour, so
>> > waiting an hour until you're in a better place to write an email that
>> > wasn't quite so inflammatory seems like a reasonable thing to ask.
>>
>> Certainly!
>>
>> I'm not defending Ivan's initial email. His tantrum *was* annoying,
>> unreasonable, and unfair to those who do care about tkinter. He could
>> have done better.
>>
>> But *we* should be better too. Our response to Ivan has not been
>> welcoming, and as a community we haven't lived up to our own standards,
>> as we have piled onto him to express our rightous indignation:
>>
>> 1. Guido responded telling Ivan to calm down and work off his
>>    frustration elsewhere. And that's where things should have
>>    stopped, unless Ivan had persisted in his impoliteness.
>>
>> 2. Brian upped the ante by bringing the CoC into discussion.
>>
>> 3. Paul raised it again by describing Ivan's post as "offensive".
>>
>> 4. And now, Steve H has claimed that Ivan's initial post was
>>    bordering on "abusive".
>>
>> We've gone from rightly treating Ivan's post as intemperate and
>> impolite, and telling him to chill, to calling his post "offensive", to
>> "abusive". (Next, I presume, someone will claim to be traumatised by
>> Ivan's email.)
>>
>> Just as Ivan should have waited until he had calmed down before firing
>> off his rant, so we ought to resist the temptation to strike back with
>> hostility at trivial social transgressions, especially from newcomers.
>> This is what Ivan actually said:
>>
>> - Tkinter is broken and partly functional (an opinion with only the
>>   most tenuous connection with fact, but hardly abusive);
>>
>> - that nobody cares (factually wrong, but not abusive);
>>
>> - that possibly nobody is using it (factually wrong, but not abusive);
>>
>> - that if that's the case (it isn't), then it should be removed
>>   from the std lib (a reasonable suggestion if only the premise had
>>   been correct).
>>
>> Intemperate and impolite it certainly was, as well as full of factual
>> inaccuracies, but to call it "close to abusive" is a hostile over-
>> reaction. We ought to be kinder than that. Our response to Ivan has been
>> more hostile, and less open and respectful, than his email that
>> triggered the response.
>>
>> Brett is right to say people can afford to wait a little while before
>> firing off an angry email. But the same applies to us: we too can afford
>> to wait a little while before raising the threat of the CoC over a minor
>> social faux pas. This community isn't so fragile that we have to jump
>> down the throat of a newcomer lest the community immediately collapses
>> into Call Of Duty gamer culture.
>>
>
>>
>> --
>> Steve
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>
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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