Although the polite version is semantically identical the syntax of the message in many cases as important as the message itself. Much of what makes human comm

Although the polite version is semantically identical the syntax of the message in many cases as important as the message itself. Much of what makes human communication universally intelligible across cultures and languages like tone of voice or body language is lost in writing and the human tendency is to replace it with similar substitutes as it helps to convey meta-information that would be hard to convey otherwise. I believe if one would analyze every single email sent by Linux to the list the great majority of them would have similar syntax to the polite English above but, of course, those wouldn't make the news. The bitter rants seem to be reserved to the cases where it is imperative that everybody, involved or not, understand very clearly why that behaviour is not tolerable and the reason for that. Similar cases like the refusal to merge Kay Sievers further submissions [1] until he cleaned up and owned up to his mistakes or the reprieve of a maintainer [2] that broke userland with a kernel commit seems to follow the same pattern. The difference to a professional setting is that, in person in a company, one can always call a closed doors meeting and express with tone of voice and body language the same message without the public spectacle. Even in those cases, specially when everybody knows what it mean to be called to the boss presence, it can be as embarrassing and intimidating as what happens in those forums. [1] http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75