Au contraire: if I give you ten "nitpicks", the fact that it's "minute criticism" means that you explicitly have licence not to feel bad about it. I use the wor

Au contraire: if I give you ten "nitpicks", the fact that it's "minute criticism" means that you explicitly have licence not to feel bad about it. I use the word "nitpick" in a review to induce the reaction of "sigh, I'll make your tiny change", possibly with "I-the-author don't care but apparently you-the-reviewer do for some reason" and "it's all Smaug123's fault for being unreasonable" if the author needs someone to blame mentally for the fact that the PR isn't approved immediately. It's an explicit label/reassurance that no important fault lies with the author. This is very possibly a team culture thing, though. We all know that the code is what matters, and we are all studiously not letting our egos intervene, but we can help each other not get too attached by deflecting the blame onto the reviewer rather than the author in this tiny way.