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Re: Fw: conduct on the list

2005-08-01 09:48:53

dave is asking you to be polite; regardless of how you feel about
whether it was appropriate for him to do so you could improve the
effectiveness of your communication by following his advice.  Note
that I'm not making a judgment on whether you were rude or not, just
making a claim that you could choose to be more polite and that doing
so will improve how people receive your messages.

for example instead of saying that Yahoo is playing games you could be
more verbose.  You could say that yahoo's actions do not appear to
respect the efforts of community members who are spending time on
DKIM.  Those members are spending their resources without any
assurance that the IPR claims will work out and they will actually be
able to use the contributions you have made to DKIM.  From your
standpoint it feels like Yahoo may be toying with the community contributors.

Doing so focuses the discussion on your feelings and why you are
reluctant to contribute rather than on attacking Yahoo.  You may have
felt that your text did the same thing: implicit in any such statement
is the assumption that it is an opinion.  however I think my phrasing
is actually likely to be more productive.

I' copying the list on this because I think the general lesson is
important.  This community is going to be faced with some conflict.
When there is conflict we run the possibility that we will feel like
people are not being constructive or are trying to shut us out.
Trying to be more clear, to build understanding even when we disagree
or feel that the other side is not being as cooperative as we would
like works better than getting upset.  We will find when we have
misinterpreted something rather than getting angry and building up
hostility that blocks communication.

Again, I'm making no comment on whether what you did is wrong.  I'm
simply suggesting something I think would be better to do in the
future.

--Sam

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