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To put it simply, if @monadic were receptive to @lclarkmichalek's ideas, why did he end the conversation?

But let's look at the Tweet in question:

"@lclarkmichalek @weavenetwork please, if it is so simple and robust you are very welcome to contribute a patch."

1. He says "please", which in this case is sarcastic.

2. Then he says "if it is so simple," which is a dismissive way of saying "you think that it's simple, but you're wrong – it's actually very complicated."

3. And also "if it so so ... robust," which is a dismissive way of saying "you think that it's (more) robust, but you're wrong – it isn't."

4. And finally "you are very welcome to contribute a patch," which, first, does not need to be said as presumably anybody knows that they are welcome to submit a patch to an open source project, and second, basically amounts to "so, I'm going to make my problem your problem."

This case is different from a feature request from a user, where "feel free to do it yourself" is slightly less inappropriate. There, what is meant is "this feature is not important enough to warrant our endorsement or any allocation of resources, but if you were to take on the burden entirely yourself, we would consider it."

In this case, what is meant is something more like "we believe that your charge that there is a fundamental issue with our software is false and we are not interested in discussing until you have actually done the work for us," or in other words "fuck you."

I admit, "fuck you" is quite strong for the general case, but the tone of the Tweet warrants that translation.




I'm sorry but I find your interpretations of 1-4 completely uncharitable and unreasonable.


What you meant is clear to you. It's not clear to other people. You can chose to ignore them - maybe the people who misread the tweet are a small minority. Or you can chose to think about communication style and whether more people had the same "uncharitable" interpretation.

For what it's worth I lean more to the uncharitable reading of the tweet, although I'm not as firm about that reading as others appear to be.

Tweets for communication are hard so it's not particularly suprising when what you say and what you think you say doesn't match what other people think you said.


I don't; if anything, I personally find them too charitable and reasonable.

Just admit that you (if you're the one who wrote that response; it's not exactly clear who's who in this discussion...) were being a bit of a twit and move on. We all do it; I do it, the girl next door does it, my grandma even does it and she's the nicest person I know. There's no shame in being honest about it.


No, for example it is 100% uncharitable and unreasonble to assert that "please" is sarcastic. The truth is quite the opposite.


I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one, then, though thanks for the clarification nonetheless.

Typically (at least in American English vernacular), "please" is very frequently used in a sarcastic manner (e.g. "You think you can jump from the top of that building and not get hurt? Bitch, please." or "Oh please, like you know the difference between a grape and a grapefruit."). While this sarcastic usage is usually accompanied by some other word prefixing it ("Oh please" or "Bitch please" or "Nigga please" or somesuch), it's not uncommon to see a lone "please" used in this sense as well, and the tweet in question very closely resembled that usage.


I'll have to stop saying please when in the US then ;-) But seriously, thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view. alexis.


> To put it simply, if @monadic were receptive to @lclarkmichalek's ideas, why did he end the conversation?

It was actually @lclarkmichalek who ended the conversation.


That does not appear to be the case to me :/




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