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Comment by kingofhdds | Hacker News Reader

Did you really read the text to the end? "Verbal assault" doesn't have a universal meaning, politeness is VERY culture-dependent, and in modern IT everybody is forced to accept US corporate standard which I'm not even sure is universal for the majority of Americans, and often perceived as grossly insincere, and restrictive to the point it's practically abusive by people raised in other cultures.

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As a person working for a US giant and not living there, this is relatable. Everyone seemes passive aggressive. It also doesn't help that I've always been more suspicious of polite people since my childhood

In what culture calling someone a fucking inbred imbecile would be considered polite?

Maybe not polite, but plenty would read it for what was meant? I'm not saying it's not unprofessional (and "the community" is probably better off without it) but perfectly healthy environments can include that kinda talk.

Plenty of friend groups cuss each other out in good fun.

Fine. I didn't specify context.

As you and @kingofhdds pointed out, it's OK to call someone that if you are a close friend or somehow trusted not to literally mean it, but we are talking about a mailing list that's a professional exchange for one of the most important software projects in history, that's read by thousands of people and its messages will be archived probably forever.

We can do better than that.

It's still an absolutely monocultural view. Indeed, in anglophone cultures "professional" = more formal, and restrained. In many other places it works like that: professional community means reduced social distance means LESS strict mode of communication, then you would use with people at a bus stop. Personally, I think in some cases it really makes sense to accept a compromise set of rules when communicating internationally, but they must be flexible, dynamic, as much informal as possible, not punishing, and not hindering efficiency. And swearing Linus could be quite within such a compromise. Btw, no formal CoC I ever read represent a compromise, and all efforts to enforce industry-wide CoC is obviously goes against the very idea of compromise.

It's easier than you think. Probably in all cultures there's an implicit quotient of seriousness applied to angry words (from 1 - "Literal meaning" to 0 - "Absolutely doesn't mean it"), depending on context. In many cultures it quickly decreases as social distance between participants of communication gets shorter. E.g. I wouldn't call a random guy "fucking moron", but I can do it within my circle of friends, and nobody would be offended. In many cultures working within a team means entering much closer relations then Corporate Standard (tm) presumes, and here's more: professional communities considered to be a sort of brother/sisterhoods with reduced social distance within. Do you see the point now?

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