Sorry, the rather harsh ‘nitpicking’ should really have been addressed to the top comment in the chain that started this line of discussion. I placed it as a comment after your contribution because I wanted to point out that even your attempts to give a more generic and widely applicable example will be doomed to failure, because you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.
I’m sorry about that—I’m aware that it does seem like nitpicking, and if it were just an isolated thing then it certainly would be irrelevant nitpicking. But when it’s a common occurrence that I believe really does have a negative impact, I don’t see it that way.
I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don’t think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.
I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don’t think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.
The outcome of this surely seems likely to swing behavior closer to what you would like to see. It seems that the comment was a success. I wouldn’t feel guilty about it at all.
you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.
Yes, but we should keep these assumptions to a minimum, especially when:
a) they might negatively affect some people’s experience of LW.
b) it is fairly easy to make it more universal.
Sorry, the rather harsh ‘nitpicking’ should really have been addressed to the top comment in the chain that started this line of discussion. I placed it as a comment after your contribution because I wanted to point out that even your attempts to give a more generic and widely applicable example will be doomed to failure, because you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.
I’m sorry about that—I’m aware that it does seem like nitpicking, and if it were just an isolated thing then it certainly would be irrelevant nitpicking. But when it’s a common occurrence that I believe really does have a negative impact, I don’t see it that way.
I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don’t think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.
The outcome of this surely seems likely to swing behavior closer to what you would like to see. It seems that the comment was a success. I wouldn’t feel guilty about it at all.
Yes, but we should keep these assumptions to a minimum, especially when: a) they might negatively affect some people’s experience of LW. b) it is fairly easy to make it more universal.