Let's steer this back on topic. As important as religion may be, whether of the Christion, athiest or agnostic variety, Perl Monks is not a good place to sort it out (the name of the place not withstanding). The current topic is decorum, offense, and how much we cramp our style in order to be inclusive of those with different sensibilities. Such a matter of the conventions of courtesy is important for any community, especially one like PM, and it's therefore on-topic for this section.

Different people are shocked by different things. I'm shocked by exlusive use of single letter variables in a large piece of production code. Graphic descriptions of consumption of human flesh and/or excrement are way beyond what I'm willing to read, even if they are part of someone's swearing about something that's realy bad. Others may have better code-reading comprehension or stronger stomachs.

Courtesy requires that one at least start by taking someone at their word about what shocks or hurts them. Of the following responses:

• Oops, sorry, I did't mean to offend.
• Sorry to offend. This is a bit of a rough crowd and that's the way we generally talk here.
• Intentional offense taken, intentional offense given, shall we call it even.
• I don't see a problem, most (normal) people aren't offended by that.

I believe that all but the last are appropriate courtesy in the right circumstances. From her writings, I'm pretty sure the American "Miss Manners" (aka Judith Martin) would agree with that.

In the situation referred in the OP of this thread, I'd vote for the the first of these responses as the most appropriate for Dr.Hyde's response in those circumstances. Others may choose differently, but that's the boundary the OP of this thread is asking about, I believe.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.