[Savannah-hackers] Re: pup at savannah.gnu.org

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

I am bit concerned about this tone of this message.  It didn't bother me;
but the tone of it is not cordial at all.  It makes it sound like we
don't want people to use our servers for projects that are ramping up.
It will surely insult people.

A message written like this would have been substantially better:

   Hi,

   It seems that the account on savannah for the project "pup" that you
   are associated with is not currently utilized.

   It doesn't seem to point to a homepage, the CVS tree and download areas
   are empty, and there don't seem to be any mailing lists.

   If you have plans to use this space to continue hosting it.  However,
   we have a great deal of interest in savannah, and we want to host as
   many active projects as possible.

   We have hidden the project from the public search temporarily, until
   we hear from you about the project.  If we don't hear from you in N
   days, we'll have to delete the project to save space.  However, if the
   project becomes active, you are always welcome to recreate it.


The difference between what I wrote and what is written below would make
the world of difference.  It looks like the text below was written by a
non-native English speaker.  The two texts have subtle differences in
phrasing that makes it substantially more polite to a native English
speaker.


If you don't mind, I would be happy to look over statements in the future
and give my feedback on the text before they are sent.  Would you all
mind doing that?


Your original message was:

> Hi,
> The pup's project account on savannah seems useless.
>
> The homepage point to nowhere else, the CVS tree is empty,
> the download area too, there is no mailing list hosted.
>
> So the "space given [...]  on this server" is not currently used
> "for the expressed purpose of advancing Free Software" as it should
> be, as explained while at the project registration step.
>
> Is this situation permanent or do you have plans about it? In the case
> of a permanent situation, the project account will be deleted.
>
> Could you give us a statement on the subject?
> In the meantime, you project is hidden to public.
>
> Regards,

   -- bkuhn
--
Learn more about my work for FSF and how you can help:
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