6 ms·

'Please' and 'thank you' go a long when requesting additional features for an OSS project.

by ng-user 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mung 9y ago
It's a suggestion, not a request and a good one at that. So who should be saying 'thank you' here (if anyone)?
- prophesi 9y ago
  Tact.
  - CRConrad 9y ago
    Or "Tack". ;-) No, of course the word you're after is "tact". (And even as a foreigner, it annoys the heck out of me when people mix them up [which you didn't!], ususally as in "take another tact" when they mean "take another tack" [where 'tack' is a originally a sailing term for flipping the sail to the other side of the boat when going against the wind, IIUC; so the expression means "go in a slightly different direction"].) I'm just riffing on Heikki's remark about foreign languages: In my primary language, Swedish, "tack" means "thank you" but is also often used for Eng. "please" -- so "Kan du ... , tack?" means "Could you ... , please?". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing)
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  There’s a human being at the other end of the line. They have feelings. This is their baby, which they’ve gestated for multiple years. Rational fundamentalism is not the one ring to rule them all. There is room for love and compassion in the world. I know (painfully well) that Internet forums (and this one in particular) anything but empower empathy, but that doesn’t make it any less true or valuable. There is room for love and empathy. There really is. Logical, rationalistic supremacy notwithstanding.
  - darkerside 9y ago
    When your baby grows up, and you put it out in the world, you no longer need to--and no longer should--continue to treat it like a baby. The author is not her project, and statements about the project are not personal attacks on the author. And if she were going to take them as such, she probably wouldn't be sharing that project on HN.
    - nothrabannosir 9y ago
      This is not how humans work. Humans are not rational emotionless robots. Humans are complex beings , they have feelings, biases and emotions which they do not control. It’s humane , considerate and kind to keep that in mind when communicating with each other. Nobody is perfect. We shouldn’t expect anyone to be. Being kind and considerate is not a waste of anyone’s time, it’s not disrespectful nor patronising. Maybe all of this is not true for OP, maybe they’re so zen they immediately see past their human instinct to attach themselves to their work (a well known and documented human trait). But it can’t hurt to be tactful , just in case they’re not. I know I personally would’ve felt hurt if that first comment were the reply to something I did. I might, hopefully, have realised that it was, indeed, a useful comment and that I should swallow my pride. And I hope I would have the presence of mind to reply with a smile and a thank you. But it would be a pretense. Why put each other through that? We can be truthful and tactful. There is no reason to be blunt. I can understand the desire to unshackle ourselves from the low entropy morass of politeness. It’s fake and not what you really feel, right? The truth shines through anyway, so do them the honour of not sugar coating it, and be straight? I do understand, but hear this: you lack the nonverbal cues to make that incredibly delicate call. Face to face you would see the twitch in someone’s eye, the soft breeze of disappointment whisking along their face. A tear of pain streaking their human heart while they smile and nod and say thank you. You have an incredibly attune radar for empathy, and you would adjust. But when you lose all that, and the medium for your truth is this harsh knife forged from the soulless steel of words, it cuts more sharply than you can imagine. In a text only medium, I implore everyone on HN: take a moment to consider our humanity. Not just here, but in all threads. Not just of the person we reply to, but of those we speak of. They might read it one day. And they, too, are human. (I should say the painful irony in this rant is palpable to anyone who knows me :( but I am not proud of it. Perhaps it’s precisely why I feel so strongly. It does, after all, take one to know one.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
periram 9y ago
Please use "Please" when you are requesting more work from OSS, OR even better, make the change yourself and how all of us how it should be done.
dagss 9y ago
Come on, this is Show HN! Not some GitHub issue tracker. Try to insert please and thank you in that post ... it will make it sound rude! It will turn it from Show HN feedback to sounding like a feature request, which it is clearly not...
- alehul 9y ago
  You're right that please and thank you could come off as sarcastic or a bit odd in a comment section like this. The best route is probably to clarify that it seems like a good concept, and you think that adding x and y would be the best features to focus on that would make it even better.
- corobo 9y ago
  Just adding "Could you" to the start (and change first sentence's . to ?) would make a world of difference
  - baddox 9y ago
    If you can automatically detect sentences where adding "Could you" would make the author sound more tactful, then why not just mentally add them and assume that the author intended to sound that tactful? This is a slight modification of the principle of charity, something I think is incredibly important and underemphasized, especially for online text communication.
    - jaitaiwan 9y ago
      That's a really cool concept. Write a medium article about it.
      - indigodaddy 9y ago
        I can't tell of this is disengenuous or not..
        BrandonM 9y ago
larkeith 9y ago
There's a certain irony to the lack of tact in this post suggesting better manners. I suspect the point would be better received were it more politely made. I, of course, am merely propagating the cycle.
- mkobit 9y ago
  That post seems like quintessential trolling. It was my expectation as well when going to the page to just click the "Go" button and see what the results would be, and I think the suggestion is great feedback. I think it is generally in the spirit of these "Show HN" posts to give and get feedback and discuss with the creator. The response post to that user, to me, is patronizing and is undoubtedly going to ruffle some feathers. But, now we aren't even talking about the OPs cool project...
- Stratoscope 9y ago
  When I was a kid my mom told me "always say 'please' and 'thank you'." So from then on, when I wanted something, I said "please and thank you." I think this was my first social hack. I just wish it had worked better!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dspillett 9y ago
    I've see something similar when offering items on freecycle: people seem to think that the more they insert "pls" and "thnx" into a message the more likely it is that they'll be first in the queue. I swear at least once there was more instances of "pls" and thnx" (there seems to be a significant overlap between people who overuse the words and people who don't bother to type them properly, though that may be the linguistic snob in me talking) than all other words combined. It backfired by making the message difficult to read so I binned it and read the next.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
GoToRO 9y ago
He is not making any feature request. He is only pointing out a serious UI bug. Free work.
scottmcdot 9y ago
Stack overflow has conditioned me to not use manners. My personal preference is to use them.
thrownaway954 9y ago
Please remember that not everyone on the internet is as over sensitive as you are. Thank you though for your comment.

'Please' and 'thank you' go a long when requesting additional features for an OSS project.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mung 9y ago

It's a suggestion, not a request and a good one at that. So who should be saying 'thank you' here (if anyone)?

prophesi 9y ago
Tact.
- CRConrad 9y ago
  Or "Tack". ;-) No, of course the word you're after is "tact". (And even as a foreigner, it annoys the heck out of me when people mix them up [which you didn't!], ususally as in "take another tact" when they mean "take another tack" [where 'tack' is a originally a sailing term for flipping the sail to the other side of the boat when going against the wind, IIUC; so the expression means "go in a slightly different direction"].) I'm just riffing on Heikki's remark about foreign languages: In my primary language, Swedish, "tack" means "thank you" but is also often used for Eng. "please" -- so "Kan du ... , tack?" means "Could you ... , please?". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing)
nothrabannosir 9y ago
There’s a human being at the other end of the line. They have feelings. This is their baby, which they’ve gestated for multiple years. Rational fundamentalism is not the one ring to rule them all. There is room for love and compassion in the world. I know (painfully well) that Internet forums (and this one in particular) anything but empower empathy, but that doesn’t make it any less true or valuable. There is room for love and empathy. There really is. Logical, rationalistic supremacy notwithstanding.
- darkerside 9y ago
  When your baby grows up, and you put it out in the world, you no longer need to--and no longer should--continue to treat it like a baby. The author is not her project, and statements about the project are not personal attacks on the author. And if she were going to take them as such, she probably wouldn't be sharing that project on HN.
  - nothrabannosir 9y ago
    This is not how humans work. Humans are not rational emotionless robots. Humans are complex beings , they have feelings, biases and emotions which they do not control. It’s humane , considerate and kind to keep that in mind when communicating with each other. Nobody is perfect. We shouldn’t expect anyone to be. Being kind and considerate is not a waste of anyone’s time, it’s not disrespectful nor patronising. Maybe all of this is not true for OP, maybe they’re so zen they immediately see past their human instinct to attach themselves to their work (a well known and documented human trait). But it can’t hurt to be tactful , just in case they’re not. I know I personally would’ve felt hurt if that first comment were the reply to something I did. I might, hopefully, have realised that it was, indeed, a useful comment and that I should swallow my pride. And I hope I would have the presence of mind to reply with a smile and a thank you. But it would be a pretense. Why put each other through that? We can be truthful and tactful. There is no reason to be blunt. I can understand the desire to unshackle ourselves from the low entropy morass of politeness. It’s fake and not what you really feel, right? The truth shines through anyway, so do them the honour of not sugar coating it, and be straight? I do understand, but hear this: you lack the nonverbal cues to make that incredibly delicate call. Face to face you would see the twitch in someone’s eye, the soft breeze of disappointment whisking along their face. A tear of pain streaking their human heart while they smile and nod and say thank you. You have an incredibly attune radar for empathy, and you would adjust. But when you lose all that, and the medium for your truth is this harsh knife forged from the soulless steel of words, it cuts more sharply than you can imagine. In a text only medium, I implore everyone on HN: take a moment to consider our humanity. Not just here, but in all threads. Not just of the person we reply to, but of those we speak of. They might read it one day. And they, too, are human. (I should say the painful irony in this rant is palpable to anyone who knows me :( but I am not proud of it. Perhaps it’s precisely why I feel so strongly. It does, after all, take one to know one.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

periram 9y ago

Please use "Please" when you are requesting more work from OSS, OR even better, make the change yourself and how all of us how it should be done.

dagss 9y ago

Come on, this is Show HN! Not some GitHub issue tracker. Try to insert please and thank you in that post ... it will make it sound rude! It will turn it from Show HN feedback to sounding like a feature request, which it is clearly not...

alehul 9y ago
You're right that please and thank you could come off as sarcastic or a bit odd in a comment section like this. The best route is probably to clarify that it seems like a good concept, and you think that adding x and y would be the best features to focus on that would make it even better.
corobo 9y ago
Just adding "Could you" to the start (and change first sentence's . to ?) would make a world of difference
- baddox 9y ago
  If you can automatically detect sentences where adding "Could you" would make the author sound more tactful, then why not just mentally add them and assume that the author intended to sound that tactful? This is a slight modification of the principle of charity, something I think is incredibly important and underemphasized, especially for online text communication.
  - jaitaiwan 9y ago
    That's a really cool concept. Write a medium article about it.
    - indigodaddy 9y ago
      I can't tell of this is disengenuous or not..
      - BrandonM 9y ago

larkeith 9y ago

There's a certain irony to the lack of tact in this post suggesting better manners. I suspect the point would be better received were it more politely made. I, of course, am merely propagating the cycle.

mkobit 9y ago
That post seems like quintessential trolling. It was my expectation as well when going to the page to just click the "Go" button and see what the results would be, and I think the suggestion is great feedback. I think it is generally in the spirit of these "Show HN" posts to give and get feedback and discuss with the creator. The response post to that user, to me, is patronizing and is undoubtedly going to ruffle some feathers. But, now we aren't even talking about the OPs cool project...
Stratoscope 9y ago
When I was a kid my mom told me "always say 'please' and 'thank you'." So from then on, when I wanted something, I said "please and thank you." I think this was my first social hack. I just wish it had worked better!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dspillett 9y ago
  I've see something similar when offering items on freecycle: people seem to think that the more they insert "pls" and "thnx" into a message the more likely it is that they'll be first in the queue. I swear at least once there was more instances of "pls" and thnx" (there seems to be a significant overlap between people who overuse the words and people who don't bother to type them properly, though that may be the linguistic snob in me talking) than all other words combined. It backfired by making the message difficult to read so I binned it and read the next.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

GoToRO 9y ago

He is not making any feature request. He is only pointing out a serious UI bug. Free work.

scottmcdot 9y ago

Stack overflow has conditioned me to not use manners. My personal preference is to use them.

thrownaway954 9y ago

Please remember that not everyone on the internet is as over sensitive as you are. Thank you though for your comment.