[lojban] Re: tone of letter

[Jacinta Richardson <jarich@perltraining.com.au>]

xah lee wrote:
> Power struggle is the background of the fact that rudeness is not welcomed.

Regardless of power struggles, rudeness and swearing is rarely welcome.

> not to be particularly against the customs of this forum, but my tone is
> really irrelevant to the logo issue. To oppose me by playing antithesis
> of whatever i say about the logo issue, is foolish.

You're correct.  Your tone *is* irrelevant to whether the logo is good or bad.
You raised some very good points about the features of some ideal logos.
Although you didn't give any *specific* feedback on how the Lojban logo could be
improved, which was a shame as you obviously feel that you have some insight in
this area.

However your tone is *NOT* irrelevant with regard to communication requirements.
 It is never considered polite to swear or call people names even in sweeping
generalisations.  Let's pretend you were educated at an institution called
Lord's College.  You probably weren't, so feel free to substitute "Lord's
College" in the below to be the name of your secondary school or university.

Sent to the principal of Lord's College:

	i just want to voice this again:

	the Lord's College logo is really truly hideous.

	it makes Lord's College like a fucking joke by the principal and 	
	know-nothing teacher morons.

	I find Lord's College a significant educational institution. But its
	logo, and now with the joe-blog look of the official website, really
	makes me ashamed to associated with it.

	If the Lord's College org cannot have a professional logo, please at
	least don't use a juvenile one. It is better to have no logo than that.

Taken away from the context of your opinions of Open Source, would you expect to
find the above acceptable?  Do you feel that the Principal of your secondary
college would respond well and say "Yes, of course you're right, our logo must
need work"?

How about the following?

	the current situation, where a garbage logo is used while nobody sees
	wrong with it, in fact perhaps feel great about it, is a common
	phenomenon of the teaching profession, fill with ignorance and lies.

	...

	about the Lord's College logo:
	Some logo don't have an idea behind it. Those do are usually better.
	The idea behind the Lord's College logo is great, but the quality,
	its artistic merits, is worse than nothing.

	There are really a lot of ways to arrive at a quality Lord's College
	logo. The gist of the problem really isn't about resources. It's
	about people — moron heads — in the aura of the teaching profession,
	because their grand vision who cannot see in the first place a shit
	thing is installed, and all the while wallow in the moronitude of
	“contribution”, “free”, “cooperation”, “goodness”, and with a fucking
	attitude and aggression about it too.

	PS This message is not directed at any individual, and i have not one
	person in the Lord's College community in which i hold grudge.

It doesn't matter if *your* school would never have utilised a poor logo.  Many
schools allow teachers and students to provide input for their coat of arms, or
logo, or website from time to time.

You can be 100% correct, but if you insult, belittle and upset people you won't
achieve anything.  If I were the principal of this imaginary school and I got a
letter or two as above I'd bin them and remind myself not to read anything else
such a rude person might send me.

In the open source world at least you will find a few people willing to look
beyond your rudeness to see whether you do actually have a point.  Only a few
though, and often not the people who can make a difference to what you're
complaining about.

So wake up to yourself.  If you're nice to people and polite in your emails you
can achieve a great deal.  Were you to write the following to your principal,
you'd probably get a lot further than the diatribes above.

	Dear Principal of Lord's College,

	It has bothered me for some time that the Lord's College logo
	is not as impressive as this College deserves.  I understand the
	ideas it is intended to represent:

		* A Venn diagram intersected by Cartesian coordinates
		  representing ....
		* ...

	While I think this is an excellent idea, I feel that the current
	logo lets us down because it is:
		* ..
		* ..
		* ..

	I've attached a rough draft of a possible replacement logo and
	would like to discuss this further with you.

	All the very best,

		Xah Lee

Likewise, if you had approached the Lojban community with a letter as above your
point would have been taken into consideration.  We'd probably think of you as
some sensible, contributing person rather than having the less charitable
thoughts due to you getting our hackles up.

Approaching *any* kind of group with such a negative post can only engender
negativity towards yourself.  Welcome to the light.

all the best,

	Jacinta

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