> The underlying assumption is that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective conveyance of information
I see this sort of thought come up a lot, but what situation requires rudeness to be more concise? For example, you could take Torvald's emails, cut out the rudeness, and they'd be much shorter and to the point.
The idea that rude == direct doesn't really hold up in my experience.
It is not the same. The level of insult conveys the information of how wrong the patch/bad the situation is, in Linus's view.
That's important information.
From Torvalds:
The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle," and I mean it.
And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too—not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work.
- this is dangerous, I imagine you can exploit this
- You can easily exploit this code with attached example
A free scale if you need to convey degree of good/badness for attached code. CC0 license.
This is a bit snarky, but I do think that a bit of effort can be made to describe code as being bad without declaring that the author's mother should have aborted them.
Well, taking the "shut the fuck up" incident, the scale was used at the maximum level (an example of the commit breaking a program was provided, with a patch fixing it) and the maintainer insisted it wasn't really a bug because the app was holding it wrong. Therefore, your scale needs an extra level.
I think this example doesn't match the point being argued. You assume the implied rudeness to mean that arguing parties insult each other - but insults are just on one end of the spectrum of "rudeness".
If you argue on the premise that rudeness is the disregard for the opposing party's feelings, there's plenty of opportunities for rational arguments that will provoke a very emotional reaction and thus be discarded without further scrutiny.
So, I'd argue that while the premise that some direct and blunt statements can be rude, that doesn't mean that any rudeness (esp. insults) is a better argument.
I see this sort of thought come up a lot, but what situation requires rudeness to be more concise? For example, you could take Torvald's emails, cut out the rudeness, and they'd be much shorter and to the point.
The idea that rude == direct doesn't really hold up in my experience.