[openstack-dev] [qa] Policy on spelling and grammar

John Griffith john.griffith at solidfire.com
Mon Nov 11 19:02:44 UTC 2013


On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:49 AM, James Slagle <james.slagle at gmail.com> wrote:
> -1 from me as well.
>
> When I first started with OpenStack, I probably would have agreed with
> letting small grammar mistakes and typos slide by.
>
> However, I now feel that getting commit messages right is more
> important.  Also keep in mind that with small grammar mistakes, the
> intent may be obvious to a native English speaker, but to another
> non-native English speaker it may not be.  And just a few small
> grammar mistakes/misspellings/typos can add up until the meaning may
> be harder to figure out for another non-native English speaker.
>
> Also, I can't speak for everyone, but in general I've found most folks
> open to grammar corrections if English is not their native language
> b/c they want to learn and fix the mistakes.
>
>
> --
> -- James Slagle
> --
>
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Guess I'm in the minority with here... some of the nits in commit
messages and comments is a bit extreme.  Sure there are some cases
where I think offering a correction is great/appropriate, but for
example issuing a -1 on somebody's patch because they mixed up their
use of 'there' seems a bit lame.

Seems to me there's a middle ground here, but honestly if you're value
add to the review process is catching grammatical or spelling errors
in comments and commit messages I'd argue that in most cases it would
be nice to have more substantive feedback to go along with it.  I
happen to be a top offender here in terms of grammar or spelling
errors in comments so I'm a bit biased on the topic. :)



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