I dunno, I think we can point out that saying something like “Would you mind reformatting this?” works better in a single message board reply. The ask-don’t-tell heuristic itself is pretty easy—it’s learning how to generate heuristics like that on one’s own that’s hard.
… what IS a good tone for it then?
You need a bit more than a single message board reply to learn it if you can’t tell why the ordering people around above is putting people off.
I dunno, I think we can point out that saying something like “Would you mind reformatting this?” works better in a single message board reply. The ask-don’t-tell heuristic itself is pretty easy—it’s learning how to generate heuristics like that on one’s own that’s hard.