Hi Richard,
Richard Stallman writes:
> For a new package, it could say,
>
> We're glad to announce adding the new package Whatsit to XXGNU ELPA.
> The initial version number is X.Y. Here's what Whatsit does:
Careful, a machine (program) that pretends to have feelings is a spam
generator in my book. I would not subscribe to such a bot on principle.
Benny,
Respectfully, I consider this caution misguided as applied to the quotation you kept.
We are not talking about a bot in the sense of interactive software that generates responses from end-user interaction.
Any messages that we decide to send will be templates hand-crafted by Emacs developers. To deny "personality" in such messages is to deny personality to ourselves in our capacity as developers, and by extension to the GNU project.
That said, I think it makes sense to agree on terms and boundaries quantifying any external character we reflect in automated communications respecting Emacs. This, perhaps the only concesus persona possible would be for none to be discernable.
I suspect we can do (in my view) more. I least, I think it is worth discussing in concrete terms and with examples and counter examples, what may be possible in this area and if that would advance our goals and honoring our principals.
How do you stand on ”Exciting news, we've added <pkg> to EPLA" vs RMS's original proposal, above? What if we added an exclamation point there? (I think it's better without.)
To be clear,. I do agree that a message which is (or pretends to be) from a program of some seeming "intelegence" and also uses/implies (e.g) the first person, would be off-putting and, indeed, concerning. For example, if Richard's suggestion had been "Hi, this is the GNU ELPA upload ferry with exciting news about a new package", or such, I think I would take your point and agree with the need for caution.
WDYT?