[forge-dev] What to do about our little Windows joke...?

[Dan Allen]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Marius Bogoevici <mariusb at redhat.com>wrote:

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Dan Allen" <dan.j.allen at gmail.com>
> > To: "forge-dev List" <forge-dev at lists.jboss.org>
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 3:56:42 PM
> > Subject: Re: [forge-dev] What to do about our little Windows joke...?
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Marius Bogoevici <
> > mariusb at redhat.com > wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Paul Bakker" < paul.bakker.nl at gmail.com >
> > > To: "forge-dev List" < forge-dev at lists.jboss.org >
> >
> > > Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 3:42:15 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [forge-dev] What to do about our little Windows
> > > joke...?
> > >
> > > What you guys like jokes? How unprofessional!
> > >
> > > Unfortunately there is a large group of developers that thinks that
> > > way... I wish it were different, but it would probably be best to
> > > remove this stuff. We won't "win" any users by adding jokes, but we
> > > might piss some people off.
> >
> > They aren't amused.
> >
> >
> >
> > Seriously, if people are offended because someone criticizes Windows,
> > then my feeling is that they are just reading too much into it. It's
> > not like the Windows shell is so amazing it doesn't warrant some
> > criticism.
>
> I didn't discuss Windows jokes in particular, I was making a deadpan
> reference
> to the Victorian-like morals of professionalism vs. humour, answering Paul
> (who was answering me in turn).
>
> Now that you bring it up, someone may feel it's not our business to
> criticize their environment, as horrible as it is (everyone likes funny
> as long as they're not the target). In that light, if we go with the
> jokes, we may want to
> add a self-deprecating note and that may be fine too (right now it really
> sounds like
> we're mocking them, which is a kind of humour not everyone will partake
> in).
>
> But, generally speaking, we may want to reflect whether we want to
> potentially filter
> our audience by exercising our sense of humour on them, or do other things
> like making this feature (which I am sure a lot of users will enjoy)
> optional.
>
> ... or another option is to just add 'Wink,wink! Nudge,nudge!' after the
> message. That would have
> my full approval.
>

:)

I hear ya.

The summary seems to be "comment on the command line impl specifically, not
the OS in general", "make it clear it's just a joke with a emotion" and
finally, "display it only once".

I think those are reasonable action items to keep the humor in. If it
really does turn people off of Forge, I suppose I'd have to reevaluate my
position :)

-Dan

-- 
Dan Allen
Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action
Registered Linux User #231597

http://google.com/profiles/dan.j.allen
http://mojavelinux.com
http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/forge-dev/attachments/20120724/da8fde20/attachment.html