The furniture dilemma [Was: Re: GR Proposal: replace "Chairman" with "Chair" throughout the Debian Constitution]

Francesca Ciceri <[email protected]> Thu, 21 Jul 2016 18:08:39 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.curiosa
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 04:02:26PM +0200, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> On Thu 2016-07-21 11:15:57 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > A "Chairman" is a person. A "Chair" may be an object.
> >
> > I don't think anyone will misinterpret your proposed new wording into
> > thinking the TC has a physical chair that someone sits on, but the
> > s/Chairmain/Chair/ you apply does to me seem to introduce some
> > grammatical ambiguity that could make the text of the constitution less
> > clear than it might be.
> >
> > Since I'm not a native English speaker, I'll assume for now that it's
> > just me and that there's no problem; but if other people do feel the
> > same way about this, perhaps now's the right time to do something about
> > it?  Once this GR passes, it's going to be hard to fix that...
> 
> I'm a native english speaker.  English has far worse ambiguities than
> this, and it is easily recognizable for what it is.  No one will think
> that Debian is proposing that we have special rules for our furniture.
> 
> At any rate, we all know what an organization ruled by furniture is
> called: a bureaucracy :P
> 
>           --dkg
> 

And of course the staff will ensure everything runs smoothly. 

(Those t-shirt with "staff" printed on the back always make me giggle,
as well as the signs "staff only")

Cheers,
zou
-- 
"Nessuna conquista è per sempre. C'è sempre qualcuno che è
interessato a toglierla. Per cui resistere non è solo un 
dovere, ma una necessità dei giovani, altrimenti non si 
va avanti!"
Maria Cervi

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