[PD] Carpet sweeping (was Re: Any relation between pidip and Gem??)

[Chris McCormick]

On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 06:02:10PM -0400, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> >Then we can use this list to make Pd work better.
> >Or am I just naive? :D

I don't think you are naive, Hans. I think this is a good aim for the
list and is extremely acheivable even with a couple of people remaining
incendiary with their invective.

> Hostility doesn't come from out of the blue and it cannot just be swept 
> under the carpet using another outlet.
> 
> Ignoring each other also comes from the impression of talking past each 
> other. Compared to hostility, it's more mature, polite, civilised and 
> insidious.

Even better than ignoring, or sweeping under the carpet, it is possible
to use non-provocatory language and to purposely disarm your own writing
by eliminating emotionally charged content, and still communicate your
point clearly. It's also possible to consider the offence you might
cause to the people you are writing to and change your language to
soften the blow of potentially offensive comments. That only takes a
small amount of extra energy and consideration from each person, but
it greatly improves the efficiency of the list in trasmitting ideas and
hence improving the software, which is really what we all want, right?
Finally, it's possible (but sometimes hard) to emotionally disarm
the writing of others as you read it and not rise to any kind of
argumentative bait.

Then again, maybe it's fun for some people to be argumentative, and
their motives are something other than making better software and helping
others. I myself have definately been guilty of arguing a point on this
list just because of ego, and also of including emotionally charged
language in my replies in order to make a point. It's hard to subtract
that out of the equation sometimes.

My point: ignoring and sweeping under the carpet are not the only, or
indeed the best options.

Best,

Chris.

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http://mccormick.cx