4 ms·

Ignoring other people is rude, and terrible, terrible advice, both in the virtual world as in the real one. There is a better approach and it's simply: politel

Ignoring other people is rude, and terrible, terrible advice, both in the virtual world as in the real one. There is a better approach and it's simply: politely refuse. People intruding the private email? No problem. Politely refuse, and offer private consultancy at $very_high_price, with alternative, to open a bug in the bug tracker, making explicit that there is no commitment. Something important to keep in mind is also that by establishing ignoring as a policy, one will never learn to politely refuse. I'm a maintaner as well, and I speak for personal experience.

capableweb 6y ago
You can write in big letters "We're volunteers working on this project for free, don't request things, ask nicely", have a notice to ask people to never write us in private, more notices about "if you don't pay, we probably won't prioritize you" and "we don't have unlimited time, if you really want something fixed, fix it yourself or pay someone to fix it" and STILL people will ignore all the notices. After a couple of years of politely declining, it gets tiring. It's OK to ignore people. It's not rude at all! I care more about my own free time (that I spend writing open source software) than I care about being polite to people ignoring instructions and expecting us to work for free FOR THEM.
corty 6y ago
Refusing politely takes time and effort. Ignoring less so. And about the rudeness: The person emailing was rude in the first place, being rude in return is never a problem. They didn't read the README or FAQ and ignored the official channels and means. Of course it is possible to be "nice" and earn a few bucks on the side by making it a paid request. But i.m.e. it is rarely worthwile, most start an argument after receiving the consulting offer which can only be ended by ignoring them after all. And those people are usually the bad kind of customers, complaining about rates, hours, wanting free side requests, "tax-free" invoices, etc. I've tried this (for a short while) and will never do it again. Ignoring them is actually the kindest way to do things, to them (you prevent them from wasting their time) and mostly to yourself.
- ozim 6y ago
  I find ignoring requests/emails etc. perfectly fine and point about person emailing being rude in the first place is spot on. Specially in context of asking for help with things that are in FAQ. I think parent poster was never in a position where he really has to set priorities and never tried to be polite to 1000 people in a single day.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    > never tried to be polite to 1000 people in a single day Funny, I thought this was a software orientated site. /s Seriously though, copy/paste is fine. Autoresponders are fine, especially if noted as such in the email response. An automated response is better than no response.
    - ozim 6y ago
      Auto response is not politeness. Automated response is better if one expects confirmation of delivery and then more specific response. I would be mad at a person that sets "will get back to you soon" as auto reply and never follows up. On the other hand what would be auto response when you don't want to respond? Something like "Hi, we got your message, don't expect hearing from us. Have a nice day!" that is even more rude.
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
  >being rude in return is never a problem Conceptually it is always a problem. This is how communication degrades and descends into chaos.
  - corty 6y ago
    Quite the opposite. Learning can only happen, if there is some kind of feedback. If the other side doesn't notice that something is off in our communication, because I do not signal displeasure about their rudeness by being rude myself, they cannot change their behaviour. Most of the communication in the internet degrades, because information flow is lacking. If you answer politely, you can, when meeting in person, still convey an air of annoyance. You can signal the other person more than just what is being said. In written communication, this doesn't work. All the polite subtleties will be missed. All the cultural cues, like being overly polite or formal to signal distance, don't work because there are just too many cultures meeting, and you can't calibrate your interpretation to the other side like you do "at home". This means that in the internet, you need to be more direct. You need to say what you mean. And if you need to dismiss somebody, you need to be explicitly dismissive. If somebody is rude, you need to be rude and tell them about their rudeness. Being polite for the sake of politeness is misleading, inducing the other side to continue their errorneous behaviour up to the point where things really degrade into an unpleasant situation.
jariel 6y ago
Ignoring people is absolutely fine, especially if you make aware of the policy. Making some software public does not mean that they are entitled to any operational or emotional consideration on your part. Having to 'refuse' costs emotional energy and karma, that bank is not infinite. If you don't want to take inquiries, put that on the front page and ignore everything.
watwut 6y ago
Nah. If it is ok to ignore unsolicited mails and requests. It is not necessary to put effort into them. I an strongly in camp of "it is OK to ask for features and report bugs", but it is only as long as it does not create dutys on the side of maintener. If it would create such duty, then I would think prior should not send those unless super important. Pls, it is easy for many people to overwhelm one maibtennar.
mslm 6y ago
I agree with this approach. Most people who don't want to do this cite the effort required, but you shouldn't have to put a lot of effort into a polite refusal - you can literally just create an email template or some other copy/paste mechanism to simplify the rejection. It shouldn't take that much longer to refuse in this way than it would just deleting it, and then possibly having to deal with continued pokes. And who knows, if you actually _do_ refuse with a note about $very_high_price as an alternative, they might just buy!
nkrisc 6y ago
I don't think there's anything particularly rude about ignoring unsolicited communications in any scenario. Yes, much nicer to politely refuse, but I wouldn't say it's rude to simply ignore it if it is truly unsolicited.
mam2 6y ago
It's because you are too sensitive, and haven't been in a semi-public position or vaguely popular. When you are in a semi-public position or vaguely popular, you can have 1000 persons a day asking you for stuff. No you can't politely refuse because not only you don't have time to write the refusal, but you don't have time to even consider the offer. Ask any pretty girl what happens on tinder. It's the literall same in a professional setting if you have a semi-valuable or public position. Then you will realize being ignored is the default behavior as you get into more "valuable" circles or look for more "valuable" ressources in general, and that it's the burden of the "asker" to make himself interesting to the person he wants an answer from. No one owes you his time because you exist. You will understand that because there will be 100s of candidates looking for the same ressource than (speaking very generally). That's when you will become less sensitive (or you will become frustrated as why the world is soo not nice with you). Good luck and no offense
nurettin 6y ago
Repositories which will ignore you need to communicate and establish these clear goals in the README: No feature requests: Author(s) do not wish to "politely refuse" every wild idea you might have. No Support requests: Author(s) do not wish to "politely refuse" every time you need hand holding with your implementation of hello world. No Pull Requests: Author(s) will collaborate within a restricted group and do not wish to "politely refuse" your t-shirt contest contributions.
- goostavos 6y ago
  >establish these clear goals in the README No amount of README pleading, CONTRIBUTING.md or issue templates can stop the class of people which don't read and don't care. If you open an issue on my project, at the top, you'll get a message explaining that, as shocking as it may be, "debugging requires information." Then there's a checklist of 5-6 items which are the bare minimum required for me to start debugging this app which runs on numerous operating systems and platforms. Despite all of this, about 20% of all issues ever opened in the project have blanket ignored the expectations of the project. The coding part of open source I still love. The administration of the project, and endlessly begging people to follow the guidelines, necessitates occasional sabbaticals to recover my sanity.
throwaway201103 6y ago
I delete probably 50% of my email, unread, based on subject line alone. I don't have time to read all the email I get, let alone politely respond to it.
john_moscow 6y ago
Sadly, there's a type of people that will keep coming back to you as long as you reply. They won't accept what you are telling them, they will endlessly keep rephrasing what they want from you, coming up with endless explanations how it's very bad of you to not do what they are requesting. And once your patience finally runs out after 20 emails back and forth, they will throw a massive tantrum, that sometimes includes false complaints, reviews, and takedown requests. Ignoring them in the first place saves you the trouble. I guess, they quickly pick another victim instead.

capableweb 6y ago

You can write in big letters "We're volunteers working on this project for free, don't request things, ask nicely", have a notice to ask people to never write us in private, more notices about "if you don't pay, we probably won't prioritize you" and "we don't have unlimited time, if you really want something fixed, fix it yourself or pay someone to fix it" and STILL people will ignore all the notices. After a couple of years of politely declining, it gets tiring. It's OK to ignore people. It's not rude at all! I care more about my own free time (that I spend writing open source software) than I care about being polite to people ignoring instructions and expecting us to work for free FOR THEM.

corty 6y ago

Refusing politely takes time and effort. Ignoring less so. And about the rudeness: The person emailing was rude in the first place, being rude in return is never a problem. They didn't read the README or FAQ and ignored the official channels and means. Of course it is possible to be "nice" and earn a few bucks on the side by making it a paid request. But i.m.e. it is rarely worthwile, most start an argument after receiving the consulting offer which can only be ended by ignoring them after all. And those people are usually the bad kind of customers, complaining about rates, hours, wanting free side requests, "tax-free" invoices, etc. I've tried this (for a short while) and will never do it again. Ignoring them is actually the kindest way to do things, to them (you prevent them from wasting their time) and mostly to yourself.

ozim 6y ago
I find ignoring requests/emails etc. perfectly fine and point about person emailing being rude in the first place is spot on. Specially in context of asking for help with things that are in FAQ. I think parent poster was never in a position where he really has to set priorities and never tried to be polite to 1000 people in a single day.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > never tried to be polite to 1000 people in a single day Funny, I thought this was a software orientated site. /s Seriously though, copy/paste is fine. Autoresponders are fine, especially if noted as such in the email response. An automated response is better than no response.
  - ozim 6y ago
    Auto response is not politeness. Automated response is better if one expects confirmation of delivery and then more specific response. I would be mad at a person that sets "will get back to you soon" as auto reply and never follows up. On the other hand what would be auto response when you don't want to respond? Something like "Hi, we got your message, don't expect hearing from us. Have a nice day!" that is even more rude.
ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
>being rude in return is never a problem Conceptually it is always a problem. This is how communication degrades and descends into chaos.
- corty 6y ago
  Quite the opposite. Learning can only happen, if there is some kind of feedback. If the other side doesn't notice that something is off in our communication, because I do not signal displeasure about their rudeness by being rude myself, they cannot change their behaviour. Most of the communication in the internet degrades, because information flow is lacking. If you answer politely, you can, when meeting in person, still convey an air of annoyance. You can signal the other person more than just what is being said. In written communication, this doesn't work. All the polite subtleties will be missed. All the cultural cues, like being overly polite or formal to signal distance, don't work because there are just too many cultures meeting, and you can't calibrate your interpretation to the other side like you do "at home". This means that in the internet, you need to be more direct. You need to say what you mean. And if you need to dismiss somebody, you need to be explicitly dismissive. If somebody is rude, you need to be rude and tell them about their rudeness. Being polite for the sake of politeness is misleading, inducing the other side to continue their errorneous behaviour up to the point where things really degrade into an unpleasant situation.

jariel 6y ago

Ignoring people is absolutely fine, especially if you make aware of the policy. Making some software public does not mean that they are entitled to any operational or emotional consideration on your part. Having to 'refuse' costs emotional energy and karma, that bank is not infinite. If you don't want to take inquiries, put that on the front page and ignore everything.

watwut 6y ago

Nah. If it is ok to ignore unsolicited mails and requests. It is not necessary to put effort into them. I an strongly in camp of "it is OK to ask for features and report bugs", but it is only as long as it does not create dutys on the side of maintener. If it would create such duty, then I would think prior should not send those unless super important. Pls, it is easy for many people to overwhelm one maibtennar.

mslm 6y ago

I agree with this approach. Most people who don't want to do this cite the effort required, but you shouldn't have to put a lot of effort into a polite refusal - you can literally just create an email template or some other copy/paste mechanism to simplify the rejection. It shouldn't take that much longer to refuse in this way than it would just deleting it, and then possibly having to deal with continued pokes. And who knows, if you actually _do_ refuse with a note about $very_high_price as an alternative, they might just buy!

nkrisc 6y ago

I don't think there's anything particularly rude about ignoring unsolicited communications in any scenario. Yes, much nicer to politely refuse, but I wouldn't say it's rude to simply ignore it if it is truly unsolicited.

mam2 6y ago

It's because you are too sensitive, and haven't been in a semi-public position or vaguely popular. When you are in a semi-public position or vaguely popular, you can have 1000 persons a day asking you for stuff. No you can't politely refuse because not only you don't have time to write the refusal, but you don't have time to even consider the offer. Ask any pretty girl what happens on tinder. It's the literall same in a professional setting if you have a semi-valuable or public position. Then you will realize being ignored is the default behavior as you get into more "valuable" circles or look for more "valuable" ressources in general, and that it's the burden of the "asker" to make himself interesting to the person he wants an answer from. No one owes you his time because you exist. You will understand that because there will be 100s of candidates looking for the same ressource than (speaking very generally). That's when you will become less sensitive (or you will become frustrated as why the world is soo not nice with you). Good luck and no offense

nurettin 6y ago

Repositories which will ignore you need to communicate and establish these clear goals in the README: No feature requests: Author(s) do not wish to "politely refuse" every wild idea you might have. No Support requests: Author(s) do not wish to "politely refuse" every time you need hand holding with your implementation of hello world. No Pull Requests: Author(s) will collaborate within a restricted group and do not wish to "politely refuse" your t-shirt contest contributions.

goostavos 6y ago
>establish these clear goals in the README No amount of README pleading, CONTRIBUTING.md or issue templates can stop the class of people which don't read and don't care. If you open an issue on my project, at the top, you'll get a message explaining that, as shocking as it may be, "debugging requires information." Then there's a checklist of 5-6 items which are the bare minimum required for me to start debugging this app which runs on numerous operating systems and platforms. Despite all of this, about 20% of all issues ever opened in the project have blanket ignored the expectations of the project. The coding part of open source I still love. The administration of the project, and endlessly begging people to follow the guidelines, necessitates occasional sabbaticals to recover my sanity.

throwaway201103 6y ago

I delete probably 50% of my email, unread, based on subject line alone. I don't have time to read all the email I get, let alone politely respond to it.

john_moscow 6y ago

Sadly, there's a type of people that will keep coming back to you as long as you reply. They won't accept what you are telling them, they will endlessly keep rephrasing what they want from you, coming up with endless explanations how it's very bad of you to not do what they are requesting. And once your patience finally runs out after 20 emails back and forth, they will throw a massive tantrum, that sometimes includes false complaints, reviews, and takedown requests. Ignoring them in the first place saves you the trouble. I guess, they quickly pick another victim instead.