[kbenson]

It does read like that, but even so, the initial question from Raptor Computing Sys was very well worded and not disrespectful at all. The inability to at a minimum leave it as "We've covered this before, and disagree on some items. We'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that." or even "I'm doing what I can, we'll see where it ends up in the end" or "See the official account for official statements" is the troubling part. Then a gain, that doesn't appear to be uncommon on Twitter, where everyone seems to have trouble disambiguating their professional and personal lives, and those of the people they are responding to (which is related).

[wizzwizz4]

To be fair, I can see why

> Even if you do port coreboot

was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter, to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation.

And yet, in reality, it wasn't one. (This is why you assume good faith, people!)

[kbenson]

>> Even if you do port coreboot

> was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter

I guess, because it allows for the chance that someone may not finish what they set out to do?

> to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation

"so what" is not a useful path to de-escalation. It's a way of saying "you've said your point and I don't think any of it applies, but I'm not going to explain why, nor even go to the length of explaining this to you, and instead respond with two words." It is, at it's core, dismissive, and that's not a useful way to de-escalate (even though I admit some people seem to think it is). What people don't seem to understand that that colloquial speech used with a friend is often dismissive in exactly this way, on purpose, because when you can actually assume good faith because of lots of prior interactions, it speeds up communication.

> And yet, in reality, it wasn't one.

Yeah, as I noted above, it very rarely is. The only times I think it can be used safely are when the people in question know each other well enough to know the other person is not being condescending and dismissive, and even then it's easy to be interpreted as that when the discussion is heated. In those cases, it sometimes takes people cooling off to assess the conversation more rationally and see what's actually the more likely intent in the phrase.

> (This is why you assume good faith, people!)

Good faith is useful, and necessary, but it really works best when only a little faith is needed in the first place. Since you can only assume good faith for yourself, it's also in your own self interest to make sure you limit the ways in which you speech can be misinterpreted. Often that means being a bit more formal so misunderstandings based on tone and familiarity are more rare. That's a shame, because sometimes we want to show friendship through our words, but that's much harder to do in pure text. Smiley's and emoticons can actually go a long way towards correctly communicating intent in these cases.

Sorry for the rant, I used this as a way to solidify some of my thinking on the subject. :)