Timeline for Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 13:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Jan 13, 2015 at 21:49 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Joel Spolsky - Particularly on scientific or technical subjects, isn't part of the value of comments not just in helping people improve answers, but also in alerting other readers to the parts of a given answer which may be dubious or non-mainstream? In this sense I think a blunt but impersonal criticism of some part of an answer can be better than one surrounded by friendly "social lubricant" type language in making people skimming through answers understand that they should be skeptical of the claim unless more support is provided (expert opinion, detailed calculations etc.) | |
| Jul 30, 2012 at 20:41 | comment | added | JohnMcG | @JeffAtwood Standard messages would be like the "your call is important to us" recording while on hold. Which is why excellent customer service operations hire more reps instead of providing a better recording. We don't want to provide tools for people to pretend to be civil. We want people to actually be civil. | |
| Jul 21, 2012 at 18:17 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @user568458 sure, I agree -- on smaller Stack Exchange sites there is much more time for individual hand holding, and it is appropriate. What's amusing to me is that whenever Joel brings this up he is invariably talking about Stack Overflow which gets almost 6k questions per day now, and is the least appropriate site for this kind of "go for baroque and florid in your comments at all times" advice. (fun experiment: count the number of SE sites that SO would be larger than in a single day, based on incoming Q count alone.) | |
| Jul 21, 2012 at 11:03 | comment | added | user56reinstatemonica8 | If we're talking standard messages, why not save user's time and make this a feature request? Most common comments map to an existing close reason. How about site-specific configurable, friendly, clear standard comments with links to FAQ, Q&As where Q is on-topic, etc plus a "How could this be improved?" field for question-specific details. e.g. instead of "Not your personal research assistant", a friendly standard explanation of "too localised", instead of "...what did you see?", a friendly "not clear" explanation with "what did you see and...expect?" in the q-specific "How improve?" field) | |
| Jul 21, 2012 at 10:40 | comment | added | user56reinstatemonica8 | What Jeff says is true for StackOverflow - but on smaller SE sites with <20 questions a day, being curt and brusque like this is a bit like a city boy impatiently barging past the only other person on a quiet country street. It's ruder than intended and can be comically inappropriate. I sometimes see SO veterans dishing out "Don't waste my time!" type attitude and snark on a SE site that only gets ~5 questions a day... I'm like, seriously guys? That's the only question asked in the last 5 hours, how can you act like it's straining your patience? | |
| Jul 20, 2012 at 20:33 | comment | added | Rachel | You don't have to be long and wordy to be nice too. A simple "Hi @JeffAtwood, what did you expect to see, and what did you see instead?" at the beginning of your comment goes a long way towards making a brief concise comment sound much friendlier | |
| Jul 20, 2012 at 18:35 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @joel how about "Welcome back! What did you expect to see, and what did you see instead?" | |
| Jul 20, 2012 at 17:40 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @joel well, this is like arguing that a computer desktop should mirror a real world desktop with papers and folders, because that's what you're familiar with. We're trying to improve on the physical world, not recreate its every tic and quirk. That said, if you can come up with a way of being friendly that doesn't add seventeen words to comments -- which are themselves limited to 600 characters for a reason -- then it's certainly more tolerable. We do fun size units of work here, remember? Typing seventeen extra words every time you address another user is not fun. | |
| Jul 20, 2012 at 15:24 | comment | added | Joel Spolsky | I disagree with Jeff. Non-content friendly words are social lubricant, in real life and online. The idea that they are just an annoying waste of time is an almost autistic perspective. | |
| Jul 11, 2012 at 20:28 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @ben well, aren't all "friendly" words kind of generic anyway? When people say, "Hi, how are you doing" do they actually want to know? | |
| Jul 11, 2012 at 20:06 | comment | added | Zelda | @JeffAtwood I don't see how a blatantly generic "friendly" message is actually more friendly than a to the point personalized message. especially not the second time you see the same message...or the 50th | |
| Jul 11, 2012 at 19:46 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | Although, if you really wanted the 200-word florid ultra-friendly comment, having the "default comment selection dialog" would do wonders as guidance. We keep circling back to that... | |
| Jul 11, 2012 at 19:41 | comment | added | Shog9 | Something else here... The unfriendly response also takes more effort than the neutral response. And all three take more effort than saying nothing, which should be the default when, y'know, you've nothing to say. | |
| Jul 11, 2012 at 19:29 | history | edited | Jeff Atwood | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 11 characters in body
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| S Jul 11, 2012 at 19:20 | history | answered | Jeff Atwood | CC BY-SA 3.0 | |
| S Jul 11, 2012 at 19:20 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by user152055 |