User Guide: Project Tone

Phabricator User Documentation (Application User Guides)

Explains why Phabricator uses a lighthearted tone.

Overview

Phabricator uses a lighthearted tone in documentation and some interfaces, and includes some features which primarily exist to add flavor or make things sillier.

We use this tone because we like building software like this, and the feedback we receive about it from users is overwhelmingly (and often effusively) positive.

Removing Flavor

Although almost all feedback about project tone that we receive is positive, a few users don't like the tone very much (possibly including you if you've been linked to this document). If you prefer a more straightforward tone, you can disable most of the flavor by turning on the phabricator.serious-business setting in the Config application.

(Not everything is covered by this setting. For example, it won't change the documentation.)

If you don't like a piece of flavor because it creates legitimate difficulty or confusion for you or your users and makes it harder to use Phabricator, let us know. We don't intend flavor or tone to get in the way of usability, and can sometimes take a joke too far (particularly for users who don't speak English natively).

If you don't like a piece of flavor because it's a joke that you don't get or don't find particularly funny, but it doesn't impact your ability to understand or use the software, we're less likely to remove it. We find all our jokes very very funny and cherish each of them dearly.

(If you're committed to removing flavor on grounds of taste, we might be willing to accept changes which replace our objectively very very funny jokes with even better ones.)

Next Steps

Continue by:

• ignoring this document and complaining about a joke that you don't think is very funny with Contributing Bug Reports.