S. Worthen | Weblog

"The point of a set of guidelines like this readme file isn't to control other's actions in the way a puppeteer would a puppet"

The tone of that readme certainly gave that impression.
They never once said "this is what I'd like", they said "this is what YOU SHOULD DO & NOT DO!"
And tone is SO important if you're trying to persuade someone... which is their only hope in what they're proposing, since they can't force it. So that makes them doubly foolish.

And I don't think the difference between columns & articles belongs logically in this.
When I mentioned newspapers, I meant in the sense that newspapers are PUBLIC. Not whether or not their site or the readme was opinion or fact, but that their site is in PUBLIC, like a newspaper.
It makes no difference if something is opinion or fact if it's in the newspaper - you can't expect people to treat it as private. That's how I was comparing newspapers to the web.