In this thread I see a few comments assuming that polite VS blatantly rude are the only options. If for &quot;polite&quot; we mean, accepting bad contributions, ideas, code, yep that&#x27;s a problem, but to refuse contribs that don&#x27;t match the idea of the person in charge of a project does <i>not need</i> to be as bad as we see in certain cases. It is possible to say negative things about ideas or code in a decent way and very firmly at the same time, without attaching persons, and without creating an environment where new ideas are limited since, well, you are going to be insulted if your idea is less than excellent. A couple examples:<p>Behavior A: This code is a good example about <i>how you should never write code</i>, it&#x27;s going to explode in the hand of users, it&#x27;s going to make our project a piece of crap. Please don&#x27;t do that, how many times I&#x27;ve to repeat that... you are a long time contrib, it is unacceptable you send me such a crap of stupid patch.<p>Behavior B: Sorry, I think the patch is not good because it does not test correctly for &lt;some-technical-reason-here&gt;. Without this check the code works today but may fail tomorrow. Because our project needs an high level of stability, we can&#x27;t merge such a contribution. Please could you review it or perhaps even rewrite it in a way that&#x27;s going to be very stable? Thanks.<p>I think both A and B send the same message, but with &quot;A&quot; the problem is that the contributor may never return back or may be offended. Life is already tough, there is no need to be offended randomly because you are trying to give code for free.