Being excellent to one another

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi there,

Gentlefolks, please everyone calm down.  Being rude or insulting to
fellow hackers is not acceptable on the project’s communication
channels, period.  When you feel unable to express your disagreement in
a constructive and respectful manner, please delay your reply until you
can do that.

We added to the contribution guidelines in the manual a while back an
item about using gender-neutral wording in our documentation.  We’ll do
that because I believe it’s one of the modest ways in which we can help
fight gender bias in our domain, and because it’s a tiny effort and
leads to “valid” understandable English (there’s lots of documentation
about the origins of singular they, BTW.)

Besides, while I appreciate it when native English speakers provide
corrections and guidance, I think we as a project must tolerate English
mistakes in our communication.  The reason for this is very simple: most
contributors are not native English speakers.  English is our
communication medium; it shouldn’t be a hindrance to the inclusion of
contributors who do not master it.

Happy hacking!

Ludo’.