Hey all,
We seem to have a problem on the openSUSE mailing list of shaming
people and assuming ill intent. This is exemplified by the following
thread excerpt:
On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 11:35 PM Felix Miata
Vojtěch Zeisek composed on 2020-11-27 10:20 (UTC+0100):
Bottom-posting is the standard here. Let's keep it so.
A: Yes.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?
+++
The problem with this is threefold: 1. You are deliberately shaming someone publicly 2. You are piling on the shame by reinforcing it 3. You are assuming that people cannot learn any other way (or ill intent) None of this is actually *helpful*. And I would wager to say that the majority of folks just flat out don't really care if it's top posted or bottom posted. I personally don't. My email client collapses the quotes the same regardless. I realize that to some extent, I'm doing this too by posting this message. But I have been seeing this to various degrees for *years* and it's not only unhelpful, it literally scares people away from our community. And I cannot stomach it anymore. The openSUSE community is intended to be a welcoming place that allows a variety of people from all over the world to work together to make great things. And our Netiquette (which is now linked at the bottom of *every single email from the list*) declares this kind of behavior as undesirable. It does occur to me that a large majority of the people on all openSUSE lists do not know we have rules for the mailing lists. This is why Stasiek and I decided that they would be added to the footer of all emails that travel through the list server. I would like to reiterate that there are much kinder ways of helping people change their behaviors, and that you should always attempt to privately help the person who may be inadvertently doing the wrong thing. Shaming them publicly is a great way to scare people away and even potentially make existing folks leave. Please reconsider the next time you think about doing it. And consider how *you* would feel if someone did it to you. -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!