Re: [PATCH 3/4] push: make non-fast-forward help message configurable

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 12:09:07AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> I hate to start off with a digression, but one expression from Japanese I
> have long been frustrated with, because I cannot find a good counterpart
> in English, is "大きなお世話".
> 
> J-E dictionaries often translate this phrase as "none of your business",
> and it indeed is meant to be thrown at somebody who gives an unsolicited
> and an unwanted advice to you, but at the same time it strongly implies
> that the reason why such an advice is unwanted is because you very well
> knows the issue and does not _need_ (not want) the help on the topic at
> all.  It is not about _who_ gives the unwanted advice (which I think the
> expression "none of YOUR business" talks about---if the same advice came
> from somebody else, it might be appreciated), but it is all about on what
> topic the advice is about, and you feel that you know about the topic very
> well yourself and do not need any advice from anybody.

The best related English phrase I can think of is that the person is a
"back seat driver". The phrase "armchair $X" also comes to mind (e.g.,
"armchair critic"), though that is usually to indicate that the armchair
critic is giving _bad_ advice, not being well-versed in the field they
are advising about. And I think you are not so much saying the advice is
wrong as much as it is unwanted because you already know it.

I can't think of a noun that describes the advice itself, though
(nagging? ;) ).

> I have always felt that many of the messages we have added since the
> "newbie friendliness" drive around 1.3.0 deserve to be labeled with the
> expression 大きなお世話.
> 
> Of course, "unsolicited-unneeded-advice.*" is too long as a variable name,
> but I personally would very much welcome changes along this line and I
> think "advice.*" is a good name for the category.

Git config files are utf8, right? You can always internationalize this
feature. :)

Thinking on it more, I think "advice" is the right word. It is not about
arbitrary messages; it is about particular messages which try to advise.
You would never want this feature to cover messages that are
informational about a particular state or action that has occurred. Only
"maybe you should try this" messages.

I'll re-roll 3 and 4 based on that, but I will wait a bit to see any
more comments. Probably you should consider patches 1 and 2 as a
potential series for 'maint', and 3 and 4 should be spun off into their
own series (they really only rely textually on the first two).

-Peff