Sincerely, I'm still a little unclear what phrasing you object to here. Just to be perfectly clear, it's the use of the word "mess," right? If so, I can make note not to use that word going forward on this list.
It may be a regional thing, but where I'm from, when a lot of things get broken, it's considered a mess. In this case, a lot of links were broken, so I described the situation as a mess. If there are better words to use to describe the situation or words you'd prefer I use, please let me know.
It's not the words. It's the phrasing, tone, and implication behind the statement. It's basically shaming someone for making a mistake and telling them "you need to fix this. now."
You realize that Daniel is the only person who's deleted posts that has even given the slightest care to the fact that the links break, right? This happens all the time and until today we just broke the links.
I don't believe this is true. As Guillaume said in the opening post, these links have been stable for years. Can you provide links or some other kind of evidence that the archive links breaking in this way is a regular occurrence? I know of one other time that this has happened, but you're suggesting that it happens frequently. I don't believe there is any evidence to support this claim.
I really don't feel like going back and searching for the other cases. It's happened quite a few times in the past on multiple mailing lists.
This thread is about the culture of aggressive behavior that we breed and accept. I'm tired of accepting it.
Can you elaborate on this?
The tone of most of our mailing lists is hostile. It discourages new contributors, it encourages staff to quit, and it encourages volunteers to stop contributing. There's been a few threads just this week that have been overly hostile.
Why does this matter so much? This is like the 27637862487 time that links have been broken due to the exact same action. It isn't the end of the world. It would be ideal if it was repaired, but it's not a dire emergency.
It matters because mailing lists are _hugely important_ to the Wikimedia community and its operations. And again, I don't believe this has happened a number of times previously. I know of it happening once before.
The links breaking sucks, but you're absolutely right that it isn't the end of the world (and I don't think anyone has suggested it is). To me, the apparent corruption of the archives is a much higher priority issue.
As I asked previously, is this a new occurrence? I believe it was already corrupted from the last few times this has occurred.
This is definitely a problem. It's something we should try to fix now, and something we should try to avoid in the future. It's great that you pointed out the problem. I'd really prefer that you point out problems in such a way that isn't hostile, though.
- Ryan