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Mon, 10 Mar 2008

Touching someone's ego.

There are two ways to point to mistakes made by others: tell them "hey, you have an error :)" and "you have error here and there". This can be ended up with "yeah, that's a good fix" and "you do not know the things, stops doing this things".
It looks like there is no difference in the first messages, but results will be very contrast. If you do not care about communication with the person who made a mistake, but only cares about things got fixed, there is no difference on how to point to the error, but be ready (although you do not care) that person will reply to you quite aggressively and can resist to make a solution if it is not vital for the things being discussed. It is of course wrong and kind of childish, but that is how people very frequently reply. If you care about communication with the person in question, then speak like you want to be spoken back. It is not very simple actually, but do not expect an easy solution with teaching tone.

This reminds me how kernel maintainers reply to people who make some contribution. There are very good people who start a discussion friendly even if patch or question is really wrong, this can end up with sending to mail archive or faq. There are persons (we all know who) which only replies: this is wrong, you have a race. Sometimes a race places can be pointed.

So, be cool with others and do not pretent to be the smartest one.

That of course touches me too... I'm frequently a hard one to talk with.

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