4 ms·

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loud

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loudly. What? Are people not being opinionated enough? Is this defensiveness (if someone doesn't like what you did, well, you've already said it's just your opinion, man)?

peteradio 4y ago
Maybe its an explicitly acknowledged bias suited to their own particular situation. YMMV!
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
If it’s not opinionated, it will just reflect the most popular items in the category that you’d just encounter via a Google search anyway. The entire value of this kind of list is its curation. Sadly, most “awesome” lists are just long lists with a firehose of items of no special quality.
lucideer 4y ago
I would say whether it's valuable is subjective: sometimes I want a more objective data-driven overview of trends, sometimes I want someone whom I've chosen to trust to provide partial views. Flagging it up front serves as much as a warning & disclaimer as it does a hook. As for redundancy, they're technically synonymous but "curated" has become a much abused term and more often than not these days is erroneously used to mean "amassed and presented without endorsement". So I think the redundancy adds clarity here.
bluepizza 4y ago
It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and expresses them. EDIT: I am not contesting any downvotes, but feel free to drop a note explaining why.
- sockaddr 4y ago
  You just need micro-dose so you can grok it from first principles. Here, just read my Medium blog titled “Why I choose X for Y.”
  - rzzzt 4y ago
    X for Y considered harmful. I have an article listing 10 alternatives for X, number 8 may surprise you!
- antonvs 4y ago
  > the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. If you mean the sense which means “independent”, that goes beyond tech. It was used that way by a law professor in front of the Supreme Court in 2010: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_of_the_day_orthogonal https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_o... In software, its use in that way dates back at least 30 years. E.g. from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016560749290317Z https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016560... (1992): > It is shown that most of the above concepts are orthogonal, i.e., they can be implemented independently. At that time, its use was already reasonably well established, although apparently not well enough to omit the i.e.
  - antonvs 4y ago
    Possibly the first published use of the term in software was Van Wijngaarden, in the design of Algol 68, from 1968: > The number of independent primitive concepts has been minimized in order that the language be easy to describe, to learn, and to implement. On the other hand, these concepts have been applied “orthogonally” in order to maximize the expressive power of the language while trying to avoid deleterious superfluities. https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/report/Algol68_revised_report-AB-600dpi.pdf https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/report/A... , section 0.1.2, Orthogonality.
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  If you come from math, you should know that “orthogonal” means “independent” in statistics and linear algebra. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_independence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_independence https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1536234/correlation-coefficient-as-cosine https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1536234/correlation...
imgabe 4y ago
I don't think it claims to be particularly valuable, it's just highlighting that this is one person's viewpoint and is not intended to be the end-all be-all definitive take on the topic. Partly it's a way to head off the inevitable aggressive commenters who will jump all over some detail and how it doesn't apply to some particular situation.
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
It's just a fashionable term at the moment, and a pretty useful way to say "I'm not soliciting input on this so don't bother providing it."
mongol 4y ago
When I see "opinionated", I am interested in the popularity of the project. A popular opinionated framework has found something that works well. But opinionated on its own can equally well be terrible. So I am quite sceptical when I see something advertised as opinionated.
bilsbie 4y ago
Because most resources want to educate you to the point of making an informed decision. But that defeats the whole point of delegating. Personally I get analysis paralysis pretty easily. I couldn’t even figure out what water filter to buy and lost five hours trying to find out.
ryangittins 4y ago
I suspect it's part of an effort to push back against the overwhelming number of thoughtless "listicles" which seem to dominate the internet. I'm planning a trip abroad right now and half the effort is in finding a list of places to visit which was put together by someone who actually went there and has some thoughts rather than someone who slapped together some nonsense. Or someone who has taken the time to really whittle a list down to 7 items rather than making another useless "1200 Things to Do in Italy Mega Post!!!" I think you're right in that "opinionated" seems like a shorthand for "thoughtful curation" which is the opposite of what search engines tend to turn up.
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
I like opinionated people and sources in general because, even if I ultimately don’t agree, it helps to clarify the dialectics present in the landscape of options.
yread 4y ago
I see it as a disclaimer: "I don't claim this to be the best thing applicable to everyone. I have strong opinions that some people don't agree with and this list doesn't include some things other people's lists would." In contrast there are some list which claim to be comprehensive.

peteradio 4y ago

Maybe its an explicitly acknowledged bias suited to their own particular situation. YMMV!

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

If it’s not opinionated, it will just reflect the most popular items in the category that you’d just encounter via a Google search anyway. The entire value of this kind of list is its curation. Sadly, most “awesome” lists are just long lists with a firehose of items of no special quality.

lucideer 4y ago

I would say whether it's valuable is subjective: sometimes I want a more objective data-driven overview of trends, sometimes I want someone whom I've chosen to trust to provide partial views. Flagging it up front serves as much as a warning & disclaimer as it does a hook. As for redundancy, they're technically synonymous but "curated" has become a much abused term and more often than not these days is erroneously used to mean "amassed and presented without endorsement". So I think the redundancy adds clarity here.

bluepizza 4y ago

It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and expresses them. EDIT: I am not contesting any downvotes, but feel free to drop a note explaining why.

sockaddr 4y ago
You just need micro-dose so you can grok it from first principles. Here, just read my Medium blog titled “Why I choose X for Y.”
- rzzzt 4y ago
  X for Y considered harmful. I have an article listing 10 alternatives for X, number 8 may surprise you!
antonvs 4y ago
> the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. If you mean the sense which means “independent”, that goes beyond tech. It was used that way by a law professor in front of the Supreme Court in 2010: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_of_the_day_orthogonal https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_o... In software, its use in that way dates back at least 30 years. E.g. from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016560749290317Z https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016560... (1992): > It is shown that most of the above concepts are orthogonal, i.e., they can be implemented independently. At that time, its use was already reasonably well established, although apparently not well enough to omit the i.e.
- antonvs 4y ago
  Possibly the first published use of the term in software was Van Wijngaarden, in the design of Algol 68, from 1968: > The number of independent primitive concepts has been minimized in order that the language be easy to describe, to learn, and to implement. On the other hand, these concepts have been applied “orthogonally” in order to maximize the expressive power of the language while trying to avoid deleterious superfluities. https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/report/Algol68_revised_report-AB-600dpi.pdf https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/report/A... , section 0.1.2, Orthogonality.
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
If you come from math, you should know that “orthogonal” means “independent” in statistics and linear algebra. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_independence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_independence https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1536234/correlation-coefficient-as-cosine https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1536234/correlation...

imgabe 4y ago

I don't think it claims to be particularly valuable, it's just highlighting that this is one person's viewpoint and is not intended to be the end-all be-all definitive take on the topic. Partly it's a way to head off the inevitable aggressive commenters who will jump all over some detail and how it doesn't apply to some particular situation.

tenebrisalietum 4y ago

It's just a fashionable term at the moment, and a pretty useful way to say "I'm not soliciting input on this so don't bother providing it."

mongol 4y ago

When I see "opinionated", I am interested in the popularity of the project. A popular opinionated framework has found something that works well. But opinionated on its own can equally well be terrible. So I am quite sceptical when I see something advertised as opinionated.

bilsbie 4y ago

Because most resources want to educate you to the point of making an informed decision. But that defeats the whole point of delegating. Personally I get analysis paralysis pretty easily. I couldn’t even figure out what water filter to buy and lost five hours trying to find out.

ryangittins 4y ago

I suspect it's part of an effort to push back against the overwhelming number of thoughtless "listicles" which seem to dominate the internet. I'm planning a trip abroad right now and half the effort is in finding a list of places to visit which was put together by someone who actually went there and has some thoughts rather than someone who slapped together some nonsense. Or someone who has taken the time to really whittle a list down to 7 items rather than making another useless "1200 Things to Do in Italy Mega Post!!!" I think you're right in that "opinionated" seems like a shorthand for "thoughtful curation" which is the opposite of what search engines tend to turn up.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

I like opinionated people and sources in general because, even if I ultimately don’t agree, it helps to clarify the dialectics present in the landscape of options.

yread 4y ago

I see it as a disclaimer: "I don't claim this to be the best thing applicable to everyone. I have strong opinions that some people don't agree with and this list doesn't include some things other people's lists would." In contrast there are some list which claim to be comprehensive.