Civil vs. Nice

I’m not going to write a giant spiel on the current LKML kerfuffle. Instead, I’m just going to contrast a few (made-up) examples, none of which are “nice” per se.

The weak and potentially ineffective:

This code doesn’t seem very good. I’d prefer you didn’t submit these kinds of patches.

The needlessly abusive:

Are you an idiot? This code makes me think you are. We don’t need people like you submitting code like this.

The strong and civil:

This code is terribly written and does not at all meet our standards. We will not accept this patch, and if you keep submitting patches of this quality, we’ll be forced to stop wasting time considering them at all.

Just something to think about.