Not everything is obvious to everyone; and what is obvious, may grow less obvious with time, as new generations, and new waves of people who come into a community, come of age without ever hearing it said aloud (since it’s too obvious to say!). This is why even obvious things need to be said, periodically, lest another piece of collective knowledge be lost.
Then, too, things that are obvious when you think about them might not be salient, in the moment of doing; saying the obvious thing increases its salience, and thus benefits everyone.
Finally, a comment on a forum/blog post is not a one-to-one communication between OP and commenter; it’s a public speech act. The advice is condescending, useless to the OP? Perhaps, perhaps not. But that has little bearing on whether it is useful to others who read it!
It will, I think, lead to far more lastingly useful content on this site, if we treat comments not just, and not even primarily, as utterances in a conversation, but also and importantly, as public utterances, spoken before the whole forum, and addressed to the collective. For who might care about the details of some conversation that took place long ago? But what was said to a public audience—that will keep.
Not everything is obvious to everyone; and what is obvious, may grow less obvious with time, as new generations, and new waves of people who come into a community, come of age without ever hearing it said aloud (since it’s too obvious to say!). This is why even obvious things need to be said, periodically, lest another piece of collective knowledge be lost.
Then, too, things that are obvious when you think about them might not be salient, in the moment of doing; saying the obvious thing increases its salience, and thus benefits everyone.
Finally, a comment on a forum/blog post is not a one-to-one communication between OP and commenter; it’s a public speech act. The advice is condescending, useless to the OP? Perhaps, perhaps not. But that has little bearing on whether it is useful to others who read it!
It will, I think, lead to far more lastingly useful content on this site, if we treat comments not just, and not even primarily, as utterances in a conversation, but also and importantly, as public utterances, spoken before the whole forum, and addressed to the collective. For who might care about the details of some conversation that took place long ago? But what was said to a public audience—that will keep.