It seems that some weird (more specific, impolite) things are happening among the developers of my favourite Linux distribution, Gentoo (according to Christel’s entry found at planet.gentoo.org). While I of course don’t want to pretend to have any insight in the process, I’d like to link to the “Code of Conduct” draft, as a useful outcome, and in general give voice to the thought that there are several ways of handling disagreements, from eternal hatred to pretending everything’s fine (those are the most extreme choices, and in my experience both don’t work out in the long run) – among them are positions like “politely voice your opinion” and “… swearing is fine” (the first comment on Christel’s blog entry references a message from L. Torvalds, who made the swearing-statement, in the archives of the Linux kernel Mailing List archive). (Please bear in mind that after this first paragraph I refer to interpersonal behaviour in general and how I experience it)
Well, in my opinion it probably won’t cause serious disagreement if you use harsh language with people whom you’ve known, and who have known you for some time, so they will know how to understand and filter the message behind your statement. There’s nothing wrong with that if everybody involved wants to play along.
Now while those who play along may consider it hypersensitive to insist on a certain level of politeness, I think it simply is the easier way to communicate, especially in larger communities where the implicit agreement on how to accept harsh statements is not so easy to achieve. I think of examples like on-line fora and mailing list communities where participants join and leave frequently, and of workplaces where many people with different mind sets come together: their opinions on what kind of language is tolerable will certainly differ. And from a personal point of view I certainly wouldn’t like to be called names and be attacked on a personal level because of a mistake I made in the code or the documentation, or any other mistake one might make in life. It’s not always possible to separate one’s self from one’s work, so personal attacks are not always easy to shake off. I also would prefer not to have to spend an hour picking the objective message parts out of a subjective statement.
If those attacks aren’t meant 100% serious: there are people who like to play that game a lot. I played the game once, with a former co-worker, using aggravated rules – we used everything to turn it into a biting comment about the other person. As friends and co-workers we certainly knew each other well. Well, we had to call the game off after a year because we couldn’t conduct a sane conversation anymore (and no, he’s a he, so politeness is not a “women issue”).
The message today is: while there certainly are different ways to interact, I prefer the considerate ones.