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Re: [TSVN] Fwd: tortiseSVN problems

From: Will Dean <svn_at_indcomp.co.uk>
Date: 2005-01-09 16:57:54 CET

>Still I would suggest that you be more polite to random strangers in the
>future, even when they make simple mistakes. If it's not worth your
>valuable time to be courteous, then don't bother sending a response at all
>and possibly other less irritable people will.

I think this is probably the best advice, and the same approach could cover
the expenditure of effort necessary to maintain a flame-war, should one be
looming.

I too find myself wincing occasionally at the tone of Stefan's responses,
but I try to forgive him on the following grounds:

1. He's not a native English speaker, and some languages translate into
English very rudely. (Actually, as far as I can tell, his English is
flawless, so I don't grant him this one so much any more.)

2. The list sees a lot of the same questions over and over again, and a lot
of them are asked by people who clearly haven't read any documentation at
all. (Often, they don't even know what the product *is*, and they're
already asking why it doesn't work.) This is no excuse for being rude to
any of them, but it can exasperate regular users of the list, often to the
amazement of the questioner, who thinks *they've* got a unique problem.

3. I'm afraid that with free software, this is just the way things often
are. Frequently the documentation is crap (this is certainly not the case
for TSVN or SVN) and the ultimate answer to a problem is frequently "fix
it yourself or f*-off".

But like you say, if somebody appears so lazy and/or stupid that one wants
to write a rude reply, the best thing is just to ignore them. Similarly,
if they're so rude to you that a 10000-line analytical response is
required, it's probably best to send it privately, or quietly delete it
after you've had the satisfaction of writing it...

Cheers,

Will

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Received on Sun Jan 9 16:58:31 2005

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