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Date:      Tue, 31 Mar 1998 22:42:43 -0600 (CST)
From:      Bruce Albrecht <bruce@zuhause.mn.org>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        shimon@simon-shapiro.org, freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: One more: emulators/xzx 
Message-ID:  <199804010442.WAA07985@zuhause.mn.org>
In-Reply-To: <6300.891386702@time.cdrom.com>
References:  <XFMail.980331150056.shimon@simon-shapiro.org> <6300.891386702@time.cdrom.com>

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Jordan K. Hubbard writes:
 > > b.  If I used this language, you will threaten me with banning from the
 > >     lists.
 > 
 > No, actually not.  If you read section 25.1.3 of the handbook more
 > closely, you'll see that it says "Personal attacks and profanity (in
 > the context of an argument) are not allowed", meaning that it's
 > perfectly permissible to say "that system you just purchased, sir, is
 > unfortunately a steaming pile of &$#@%^*!" while it is not permissible
 > to say "You, sir, are a steaming pile of &$#@%^*! for buying such a
 > system and I hate you."
 > 
 > We're all (well, mostly :) adults here and we occasionally use adult
 > language - the charter is not attempting to regulate that.  It's
 > merely attempting to regulate the language used in personal attacks.
 > Perhaps I could have better worded that as "Personal attacks and
 > profanity (in the context of such attacks) are not allowed" since that
 > is how it was meant.

Maybe so, Jordan, but as someone who is regularly recognized as a
spokesman for the FreeBSD core team, I consider it less than
professional for you to use profanity when other phrases will do,
e.g., "Your tree is seriously broken", when responding to messages in
the mailing list.  I hardly think that someone from Sun, or even the
Evil Empire itself, would use profanity in response to an error
report, even if the person had sent numerous bogus reports.  I guess
that in a volunteer organization, it's hard to get reprimanded by
superiors, or fired.

On a related subject, I'm also annoyed with the way some rugrats camp
in the #FreeBSD IRC channel and spend most of their time talking about
their sex lives, or lack thereof (if one excludes onanism).  This, 
too, provides a poor image of FreeBSD to someone who is trying to
learn more about FreeBSD.

I think it takes a lot of postive PR to undo the damage created with
casual profanity used here and on IRC, especially when we're trying to
convince others that FreeBSD is a better alternative to commercial
operating systems.

Bruce

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