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List:       gentoo-user
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Trouble decrypting message from firefox ebuild
From:       Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-01-20 17:08:18
Message-ID: 58965d8a0901200908h3d58d81dga6bea5b1ba259dfd () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Stroller
<stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 19 Jan 2009, at 20:36, Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> On 2009-01-19, Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@nyu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I would favor the original (with Alan McKinnon's change).  It is
>>> somewhat wordy but this issue has caused several users grief and the
>>> (admittedly repetitive) original wording makes it very clear what must
>>> be done and gives some idea of what caused the change.
>>
>> Being somewhat repetitive was was intentional. It's sort of
>> like the redundant information in an error-correction code. It
>> reduces the liklyhood of being misunderstood -
>
> It's also more likely to get skipped over & to cause busy administrators'
> eyes to glaze over.
>
> I'm all for being explicit, but verbosity for its own sake is not beneficial
> - with excessively long messages I often tend to find that I have to read
> them over several times to make sure I'm understanding it properly. "WTF?!?!
> Are you REALLY telling me the same thing three times?"
>
> A short concise note is more likely to make sense and get the point across.
> Assuming it is written in English - which the original, of course, was not -
> a short note will feel logical to the reader and he or she will know
> immediately how to respond to it.
>
> But, hey! It's your bug. File it. The longer it's left unfiled the less
> relevant this discussion becomes. You asked for opinions - just make sure
> the subject line of your bug report explains the problem clearly ;). "ewarn
> message is poor English, doesn't make sense" is my best suggestion.
>
> Stroller.

Maybe a compromise would be a short "you should do the following steps
now" message suffixed with a "for more information, follow this link
(to a bug/forum post) that explains why".

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